Headwinds in the telecom can be faced with digital transformation: VnD TLF 2016, Delhi

Voice and Data successfully hosted its 16th annual meeting of the Telecom ecosystem on 21st December 2016. This year the theme was " The transformation imperative".

Today telecom industry is recognized as the backbone of the country in many ways and is going to play a transformative role in the coming years.There is a lot of pressure on this sector due to the promises made by the government and the regulators. There are changing demands and users expectation from the users also.

Speaking on the occasion Deepak Kumar, Lead Analyst,V&D100 & Founder-Analyst,B&M Nxt said that "2016 has been a year where people started taking digital seriously. Recently, digital transformation is seen in not just mobile voice but also mobile data. From a technical standpoint there has been favorable policy environment which has helped the industry in its own way and on the other side OTT voice and messaging pressure which we have seen. All these factors has accelerated the base of this transformation".

"This is the first time ever in the voice and data survey we saw the telecom industry crossing the 5 lakh crore mark. Overall growth 8%. while 5 lakh crore rupees hold the services segment and the equipment segment and we see that this year services segment score higher than equipment segment", he added.

Telecom in India has an important role to play when we talk about digital technologies like cloud analytics, big data etc which involves lot of IT readiness and awareness to be there which was not present traditionally in India.

Telecom industry as a whole has a dual role in terms of developing and nurturing this market and bringing smartphone not just for broadband and internet but also to access services. So this is a unique challenge for Indian market and so an opportunity.

Akhil Gupta, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprise who was the Chief Guest at the event talked about digital transformation in India. He said that in terms of transformation, there are two big initiatives taken in India today namely Digital India and cashless society in India. These two initiatives will transform India fundamentally. Digital ecosystem and internet are the two pillars for transformation and innovation. But above these two pillars is the telecom networks as the connectivity is only possible through these networks. Gupta, however, emphasized on the need to make telecos profitable and urged, in general, TRAI and, in particular, the government to review the prices for spectrum sale. He indirectly hit out at Reliance Jio for its free services.

The forum helped various stakeholders to come together and voice their views, opinions and concerns. Most of the experts rested faith in India's capability in taking leaps and surpassing the global trends. India did not go the wireline telephony way and straightway adopted mobile revolution. The industry believes that India is at the cusp of positive change with initiatives such as Digital India and cashless push after note-ban. This is yet again an opportunity for India to take the lead in the most comprehensive manner to ensure that the players in this industry help for the betterment of the people and the country as a whole. It is not the emerging market problem in particular but the emerging market must become healthy in term of telecom. Potential of Telecom industry in India is truly mind boggling. However, most of the speakers and analysts, present at the event, advised telecos to modernize their infrastructure to handle new demand and enhance customer experience which is the key to retain customers.

Some of the eminent speakers at the event were Ekow Nelson, Executive VP and regional head of IT & Cloud Business, Ericsson, , Sanjay Kaul, MD, service Provider Business, CiscoIndia & SAARC, Partho Banerjee, President & MD OF Hughes Communications Sergey Savchenko, CEO,MTS , Ankit Agarwal, Director- Telecom Products, Sterlite Technologies, Shyam Mardikar, Chief-Strategy &Telecom, Airtel, Aditya Chaudhuri, MD and Lead-Communications, Media & Technology, Accenture, Kamla Nath, CEO, Sifty Technologies, Anil Tandon, CTO , Idea Cellular and others.

The event had CISCO as a Presenting partner, SterliteTech and Ericsson as Platinum partner, Accenture as a Gold Partner, F5 as Associate partner, Railtel as Supporting partner and ETNOW as Tv Partner.