Telecom firms cheer govt's digital push

Reach of mobile payments rose six per cent in the week following note ban, usage frequency up 15%

At a time when businesses say they are reeling under the impact of demonetisation, some telecom and information technology (IT) companies have reason to cheer.

The central government's push on digitisation has created a new market for these companies, which say they're prepared to offer the latest technology for telecom companies.

From sectoral data, around 12 million more Indians have started using digital wallets. The reach of mobile payments rose six per cent in the week following the demonetisation announcement, while usage frequency surged 15 per cent, says Rajan Mathews, director-general at the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).

"Between the networks and the IT business, we are beginning to see the convergence of technology, application and services," says Ekow Nelson, head of IT and cloud at Ericsson India. "From an India perspective, it means enabling our telecom and non-telecom customers to build a platform in technologies to enable them to transform their businesses. It is designed to reduce the cost of delivering either a voice or data service. You have to reduce the cost because as the volume of transactions increase, you have to increase the volume of the infrastructure; it costs a lot of money," he said.

The company recently introduced the Ericsson HDS 8000, a new generation of hyper-scale data centre systems. This enables more efficient pooling of resources, ensuring higher performance, with higher security.

Another company which says it is geared up on this is Tata Teleservices. Tata Docomo Business Services recently announced a Mobile Device Management (MDM) offer, to address concerns on data security over mobile devices and workforce productivity.

The MDM solution has been made available on a monthly rental plan as well, aimed to help decrease capital expenditure, says Prateek Pashine, president-enterprise business. He says the service ensures secure access to official data and e-mails over mobile devices and easy data recovery in a case of theft or device loss, plus management of tablets and smartphone devices across multiple operating systems.

Vodafone has done a strategic partnership to facilitate cashless and secure disbursement and collection of loans for micro finance institutions. It claims the digitisation of disbursement has enabled speedy operations in this regard. Vodafone M-Pesa daily app downloads have doubled after the demonetisation announcement, said the company.

The telecom enterprise business is estimated at Rs 40,000 crore a year, with the small and medium enterprise market size at between Rs 12,000 and Rs 14,000 crore.

Worldwide spending on IT products and services are estimated to grow from $2.4 trillion in 2016 to $2.7 trn in 2020. A report says big segments such as financial services and manufacturing are expected to increase their investment in technologies such as cloud computing, mobility and big data analytics.

The Prime Minister's 'Digital India' no longer seems like a dream, with demonetisation pushing consumers to adopt digital payments, said Rajan.