Day 2 / Session 2

Wireless empowerment for India Inc

Innovation is the name of the game when it comes to mobility

Uttam Soni

Uttam Soni, Vice-President and Head of Enterprise Business Group, Tata Teleservices Limited said that, “Mobility is more than just voice, SMS, or accessing the Internet on a mobile phone. It is about strategy and building a scenario wherein you have access to the same environment on the move that you have in your office.”

Soni went on to talk about how the marriage of telecommunications and computing was resulting in the emergence of applications such as teleoperating and teleconferencing that did away with the need for hour long commutes both ways that are a fact of life in urban India. TTSL is in discussions with leading banks in this regard. Soni highlighted the fact that it is more expensive for a bank to set up a branch than for it to offer Net banking.

“You pick an application and see how you can mobile-enable it,” he stated. For companies, mobility not only gives them a new way to stay in touch with their customers, it also brings down the cost of doing business.

For an insurance company it can mean the difference between taking days to clear a claim and mere hours. The technology exists to make policies available on the Net. It can enable field agents and turnaround things much faster.

The business benefit of mobile applications is in recovery of lost time—on an average a user converts nearly an hour a day from downtime to productive time (a greater than 10 percent rise in productivity). Soni talked about the devices and platforms that are available in the market including notebooks running Windows, PDAs and smartphones running Symbian and mobile phones running BREW or Java.

Matters are moving beyond voice, SMS and push-pull e-mail on the phone. Companies are enabling Line of Business applications on mobile phones. Insurance, travel & tourism, hospitality, manufacturing are some of the verticals where such solutions are being adopted. Remote access enables distributors and C&F agents to use a company’s systems. Soni gave the example of a consumer appliance company in North India that has mobile-enabled its supply chain and distribution applications and in the process boosted sales while bringing down costs.

Take the case of an application wherein the ECG readings of a patient in an ambulance are monitored wirelessly during the ride to the hospital. GPRS/EDGE does not support this kind of an application. The next generation networks that will debut in six months time will.

Utilities are using telemetry as the cost of capturing information is high as are errors. On the air meter reading is the answer.

A maker of tea vending machines is tracking how many cups are consumed in an office down to the level of how many cups each employee drinks. All this is enabled by telemetry.

“Kingfisher Airlines has started wireless check-ins. So has Jet. But you can go beyond that,” he said.

In Media, Balaji Telefilms’ employees generally end up travelling home between eight and nine o’ clock. A device with personalized IPTV would be useful for them.

Banks are using alerts on transactions. “A bank is talking to us about making account statements available on mobile phones.” Imagine, if you will, your phone acting as an e-passbook.

Soni cited various examples including that of an insurance company using wireless laptop technology to electronically record details of claims inspections. The staff of a consulting company access core systems using wirelessly enabled laptops. A health organization employs wireless PDA technology so that staff can access patient records while in the field and immediately respond to emergencies. Transport companies use satellite tracking in conjunction with wireless data to track their fleet and monitor vehicle systems. Courier companies are using wireless data for tracking orders and gathering proof of delivery at the point of pickup. A real estate organization is investigating the use of MMS to deliver photographs of potential properties to prospects across cities on need basis.

Soni concluded with a look at the challenges in deploying wireless. He said, “Wireless works and is similar to any other IT project insofar as there is a systems development life cycle, solution architecting takes place as do project management and systems integration. The response times and throughput must meet the end user’s needs and to this end an IP Network must be designed, secured and integrated.” Where a wireless deployment differs is with regard to the plethora of choice when it comes to the access device in terms of form factor, battery life, processor speed, memory. Going further will the access device be a notebook or a PDA? You can get a low-end notebook or a high-end PDA for Rs 30,000. Looking at security, CDMA goes back to US military applications. Integration is not an issue. Like any other IT Project careful planning is needed for integration which may be done in standalone mode via manual and batch transfers, as middleware providing a level of configurable integration to the back end or as a direct connection wherein the application is directly wireless aware. “Cost isn’t an issue. RoI is and it has to be established as do business benefits,” said Soni.