Rs.Ten Trillion Business from Smartphone Based VAS: Next Big Thing in Telecom

Online, July 13, 2013 (Newswire.com) - The wireless Value Added Services would subsume all services that today are delivered through different devices which are expected to create over 25,000 highly scalable new businesses with a revenue potential of Rs 10 lakh crores ( Rs 10 trillion) over a period of time.

While addressing the 14th VAS Asia 2013 Conference, at New Delhi today Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Member Mr. R. K. Arnold said, "To achieve this, all the stake holders involved in telecom industry will have to work together to create a low cost smartphone device and make people aware of the potential of such a device." The 14th VAS Asia 2013 Conference was organized by Bharat Exhibitions.

Welcoming the delegates to the Conference Mr. Shashi Dharan, Managing Director, Bharat Exhibitions said, "The issue today with TARI is not against the industry making money, but how does it make money is surely an issue."

Today the country needs to examine the fact that less than 40% of the Indian population has the connectivity and out of which about four percent are having smartphones. "Mobile data could generate revenues worth Rs 40,000 crores by 2015. To achieve these numbers we need to look at the bottom of the pyramid where Mobile VAS will be most useful and economical," said Mr. Rakesh K Upadhyay, Chairman & Managing Director, BSNL.

Dependence on the Internet for day to day life is on increase, said Mr. Shyam P. Mardikar, Bharti Airtel Chief of Strategy, Architecture and Engineering while dwelling on the vast changes that were already evident in the common man's work due to the mobile delivering newer and newer services. In a wide ranging presentation at the conference the Bharti Airtel executive demonstrated how the onrush new innovations were overtaking several traditional services like SMS. "Messaging applications have depleted dependence on SMS", he said.

Mr. Mardikar further said that new services like M-Wallet, M-health services, are changing the market scenario. Text books are being replaced by wireless access to books that makes knowledge available to a much larger mass at low cost. The viability of this mode of information is making data consumption an opportunity. According to the speakers "The last mile connectivity is being replaced by a first mile super highway. The challenge for the operator is to make this happen by a dense network that would have flatter architecture with dynamic and on demand capacity as against the layered one. The move is towards a network that would be closer to the user forcing the last mile to shrink."

"The challenge which needs to be addressed to create a situation where-in crossoperators platform(s) needs to develop and deploy services with ease, in local language, across operators," said Mr. Mouli Raman, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, OnMobile Global Ltd. According to him all the industry stakeholders need to collaborate to find the right solutions through technology.

Analyzing the problems faced by the telecom service operators Mr. Rajan S. Mathews, Director-General of Cellular Operators Association of India, welcomed the latest changes that the TRAI has made in the regulations in VAS service provision. However, we need to rethink on revenue sharing model between operators, application providers and government.

If the Government wanted broadband to be universal, the operators should be offered 500 MHz of spectrum and not the small quantities now placed on auction," he added.

On the issue of refarming of spectrum use, Mr. Mathews said that the operators should be allowed to use it in the way they consider best rather than government forcing it on them as it involved huge costs that would impact service charges. He specifically pleaded for AADHAR being incorporated into the mobile to expand the services the user could obtain from them. There was a huge opportunity in penetration of vernacular languages in the mobile smartphones specifically in speech recognition at the bottom of the pyramid level.

The possible fall in profitability for the operator as voice was substituted by data was a matter of concern, said Robi Axiata CMO Mr. Pradeep Shrivastava. Scale was the next step forward in Mobile VAS. Telecom developments in Nepal and Maldives were explained by Nepal Telecom MD Mr. Amar Nath Singh and CEO of Wataniya Telecom Maldives Mr. Haroon Shahul Hameed respectively.

Making it truly global platform to conduct business, global majors engaged in the business of VAS had participated at the event - OnMobile, Qualcomm, Radisys, IMImobile, Tri-O-Tech Solutions, One97, Dialogic, DigiVive, Gemalto, IPgallery, Ehangcom, MediaTek, Synway, BincaTunes, DONJIN, SUPRANETCOM, DSNL, D'Well Research, InCights Mobile, Nexge, Teracom are participating at the event.

About Bharat Exhibitions:

In a world where technology is erasing borders, it is indeed ironical that professionals find it increasingly difficult to maintain peer to peer contact on regular basis. Bharat Exhibitions fills in this space by managing and hosting some of India's premier Telecom & IT events. We own niche and prestigious conference properties in the new generation technology arena such as VAS Asia, LTE India, Broadband Tech India, Enterprise India, Cloud Computing India, Data Centre India, Green Energy India and Mobile Payment India. We have a simple mission: Establish & deliver contacts that create value for your business.

For further details, please visit http://www.bharatexhibitions.com

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