Tag: ISP

Lockdown is painful but may be ISP’s best chance to capture the market

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we are facing an unprecedented situation on a global level. Countries are in lockdown, and people everywhere are being asked to stop or minimize their social physical interactions. Our broadband connections are becoming our lifelines. We are using them to get news, connect to our office work, and for entertainment too.  

Working from home during lockdown means guzzling of internet data more than what we usually do. Sometimes this means hitting the FUP limits before the month ends and sometimes working at a slow internet speed due to several devices connected to a single network.

Due to affordable data availability on cellular networks, wired broadband in India was stagnant for some time. But this trend has changed drastically due to the coronavirus outbreak that has locked the lives of many people around the world. Now, fixed broadband has a great opportunity to expand in India as they provide steady link and speed. Covid-19 has forced people to work from home and this has become the new normal. Also with too much pressure on wireless networks, professionals working from home have to use Wi-Fi for consistency of speed and internet.

India has 19 million fixed line broadband users which include enterprises and offices and 17 million home fixed line broadband users.

ISPs are seeing an increased demand for new connections across various. Some ISPs have also introduced a promotional standalone Broadband plan for free of cost to all the existing customers. Others are offering one month free trials for all new customers helping them to keep business as usual during COVID 19 precautions. Currently, plan upgrade is ongoing across service providers as people need even faster speeds and to complete their operations from home.

Though, all ISPs and telecom operators these days are working hard to provide adequate Internet access to their customers. Many of them have also brought various upgrades to their existing systems to keep the Internet up and running for the masses in the country. Service providers need to ensure that their internet infrastructures are up to these new tasks – with enough capacity and ability to deliver all services with high performance under the increased traffic demand.

Service providers need an integrated O/BSS suite that can enable them to rapidly launch of new revenue services without spending countless hours in endless integration. They need tools for subscriber centric operations & billing platform that allows service providers to rapidly deliver volume metered, differential bandwidth services based on subscriber identity, traffic flow, location & time of access. A new generation O/BSS suite such as Inventum UNIFY™ can help broadband providers to rapidly deliver personalized & differentiated revenue generating services. ISPs can integrate various modules (Reseller Mobile App, Self-care Mobile App and salesforce automation) as they grow.

UNIFY Subscriber & Service Management Suit

Today’s heterogeneous broadband networks require a multi personality AAA solution that can address all forms of access networks. Inventum’s AAA solution supports both IETF & 3GPP standards within the same server, including protocol translations which save both integration & capital costs.

At the same time service providers need multi gigabit routers for bandwidth management, firewall & IP filtering, lawful logging, and QoS etc. Inventum offers a range of multi gigabit Integrated Services Routers suitable for service providers. They can play multiple roles in a network. Deploy for gateway connections or enable the BNG module for subscriber & service aggregation. Other modules include WAG, and DPI.

Routers & Gateways

With the advent of software defined networking (SDN) many functions of the modern enterprise are being virtualised to save cost and vendor lock-in. Inventum’s VSR is a virtual router that can replace any hardware router. The VSR software automatically detects the PC hardware and sets it up to function as a router.

The lessons we are learning and the challenges we are facing will forever change the way we work, communicate, and entertain. Mobile service providers are increasingly using Wi-Fi hotspots to decongest their mobile network traffic. Mobile data offload is allowing telecom operators to seamlessly acquire and move mobile traffic to the Wi-Fi network while retaining policy and charging control. Inventum offers products & solutions for both trusted (3GPP release 8) and untrusted (3GPP release 6) mobile offload projects.

Mobile data offloading

Despite low mobile data prices, customers are turning to Wi-Fi for better and much improved experiences. This has also carved a niche market for managed Wi-Fi services. Managed Wi-Fi solutions and services play a key role in better managing the user’s access and the entire lifecycle of WLAN right from designing to installing wireless systems including proactive network and infrastructure management. Adoption of cloud based Wi-Fi services is the future.

ISPs/WISPs can use Inventum’s Udaya brand of Wi-Fi 5 products that offer a fully cloud managed experience for offices and premium homes, allowing customers to use a mobile app and control everything about their Wi-Fi experience.


  • 100% cloud hosted

  • Monetize your Wi-Fi

  • Awesome Analytics

So how will you deal with growing internet demand at homes during this period? We can provide you the wireless equipment, the backend software systems, lawful interception systems, security systems and routers that are all made by us; but more importantly, we can also install and operate the entire network for you.

Inventum receives WiFi Leadership Awards 2019

Inventum Technologies has been conferred with the 3nd My India WiFi India Leadership Award 2019 for  “Best WiFi OSS/BSS  Solution” at the recently concluded My India WiFi Summit & Awards 2019 at The Imperial Hotel, New Delhi on Aug. 20, 2019 organised by DigiAnalysys.

This award recognizes Inventum as one of the top most OSS/BSS Solution provider in India. This is Inventum second year in a row. Inventum had received  My India WiFi India Leadership Award 2018 for “Best Cloud WiFi Solution”.

Mr. Anil Walia (extreme left), CSMO, Inventum, receiving the award from Mr. TR Dua (centre), Director General, TAIPA  accompanied by Mr. Pradeep Kushwah (extreme right), Marketing Manager, Inventum 

The awards ceremony was attended by imminent industry leaders including Dinesh Tyagi, CEO, CSC SPV; Sarvesh Singh, CMD, BBNL; A Seshagiri Rao, CMD, TCIL; Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director, C-DOT; K Alagesan, CMD, ITI and many other dignitary.

Mr. Sachin Mehra (extreme left), CEO Inventum, receiving the award for “Best Cloud WiFi Solution” from Mr. Anuj Jain   (centre), President, Reliance Jio accompanied by Mr. Anil Walia (extreme right), CSMO, Inventum

 Speaking on the event, Mr. Anil Walia, Chief Sales Officer, Inventum, says “We are delighted to receive the My India WiFi India Leadership Award 2019 for Best WiFi OSS/BSS Solution category. This coveted award is result of our continous efforts of improving  ISPs & WISPs customers experience and  providing them a end-to-end solution.”

Inventum’s UNIFY is a complete stack of billing & operations management (B/OSS) software. The key modules for the stack includes AAA, Subscriber CRM, Financial Accounting, Prepay & Postpaid Billing, Reseller Management, Electronic Wallet System and many more.

Inventum is a leading provider of fixed & wireless data networks technology with a strong made in India portfolio. Inventum builds routers, cloud solution, security and software systems that power some of the world’s largest communication networks. Inventum products are used by mobile operators, FTTH providers, ISP, Wi-Fi hotspots, Airports, Hospitality, Convention Centres and Smart Cities.

My India WiFi India Awards were instituted by DigiAnalysys Media in 2017 to recognise and celebrate visionary enterprises across industry segments and to focus on highlighting key trends and technologies in the WiFi segment.

Why Free Basics & Airtel Zero are bad for India

Free-Basics
“Free Basics is the new colonialism, its the new East India Company…”, said someone on television the other night about Facebook’s charitable initiative. I’m thinking to myself, there are no free lunches, so why is this even a debate?

Free Basics is an old debate about Net Neutrality. Its been defeated by regulation in the West, but in India we like debate. Facebook has made it so easy to sign a petition supporting Free Basics that hovering over the banner in your FB feed is enough! Many have accidentally succumbed.

Policy makers, telecoms, COAI & even TRAI are favouring a trial. They cite Delhi’s odd even car trial to reduce pollution as a precedent. Exactly how toxic pollution that is killing people compares with Free Basics eludes me.

To understand Free Basics, its first important to understand the Internet eco-system.

First The Basics

I see the Internet as a large reservoir of water. There are the content providers (Facebook & Google) who pump water into the reservoir and then us, the consumers, who tap in with little pipes drawing what water we need. The plumbing is owned by the telecom operators who charge both the content providers and subscribers for their respective pipes. The content companies make money from the subscribers who receive a service that they value and life comes a full circle.

Neutrality is in the fact that everyone gets the same water, just more or less, faster or slower. Everyone pays and none of us get champagne even if we can afford it!

Strange Bed Fellows

Circa 2000, the new new content companies were fighting tooth and nail with telecom operators. They wanted lower bandwidth prices, fatter pipes, unlimited always on Internet. The underlying motive was to drive faster Internet penetration leading to greater valuations which were based on unique user visits. Slow growth in Internet connectivity directly impacted their future.

AOL’s merger with Time Warner was an attempt to solve the slow growth problem and create a behemoth that built its own pipes and content. It has since become a corporate disaster case study.

Is Free Basics a similar attempt? Of course it is, just that the theatre is the third world. India still needs to connect billions and Facebook doesn’t have the patience to wait for our telecom providers and government to deliver connectivity. It wants to guarantee it’s market dominance in India’s future. Not charity, just plain old profit motive.

What is different this time is that Indian telecom providers want to join forces with Free Basics. Let’s try and understand their game.

How Internet Providers Makes Money

The provider game is simple. Lay a big fat pipe to the reservoir, say 1 gigabit (1,000 megabits). Then we split this pipe between a 1,000 paying subscribers, each sold a 10 megabit connection. Hold on, 1,000 x 10 is 10,000 megabits or 10 gigabits, so how do we fit all of them into the original 1 gigabit reservoir pipe? By betting on the fact that not all 1,000 subscribers will download at the same time. This is what we call oversubscription and this is how we make money.

Subscribers only see the ill effects of oversubscription during peak hours when everyone starts downloading and consequently everything slows down. Oversubscription to my mind is fair game, so long as it doesn’t mess with the end deliverable.

Content Differentiation & Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)

So how does a service provider differentiate content? How does your ISP create differential pricing?

DPI technology has been widely used by ISPs and telecoms to look inside your Internet traffic. Most people don’t know that their ISP is already differentiating P2P & torrent content, throttling it down to improve oversubscription and pack in more paying customers.

Free Basics, Airtel Zero and other similar initiatives all use DPI to control ALL your flows, throttle & (eventually) charge depending on what you access.

Think of it like a new toll gate for every website you wish to go to. Its only a matter of time that premiums will be linked to peak hour traffic!

How Airtel Zero Would Make Money

Airtel Zero is simply a differential pricing game. Zero charge for curated content, delivered faster, regular charge for everything else. An express lane of sorts, for the wealthy content owners to expand their market share while telecom operators add to their profits by charging the content providers for delivery. Of course, the real game all along is control over the medium and eventually the customer.

Imagine if your electricity company could charge you on the basis of which appliance you used in your house? Large appliance makers would subsidise electricity giving them an unfair advantage in the marketplace, making it tougher  for smaller appliance companies to compete. And in time, the nexus of the appliance and electricity companies would monopolise the market, affecting all consumers.

 

How Facebook Would Make Money

If Facebook is the only channel you can watch on TV, what would advertisers be willing to pay? You do the math.

With nearly a billion people waiting to come online in India, Facebook wants to accelerate connectivity, while ensuring they become the de facto medium with a captive audience.

No thank you, but India is done with colonialism. We can pay for our citizens to come online in good time.

Conclusion

The Internet is a great leveller because you cannot differentiate upon the end use or user. Governments should focus on building affordable broadband services accessible to all citizens with a view to empower and provide a level playing field to all stakeholders. TRAI & COAI should stop pushing agendas that are less than charitable.

Telecom operators must focus on building capacity, improving service quality and ridding themselves of a monopolistic mindset. Data is growing rapidly and companies like Airtel have benefitted greatly from 3G growth. If anything, they are responsible for driving voice tariffs to global lows and now trying to slice and dice the Internet is poor strategy.

Facebook should realise that free Facebook, WhatsApp & Instagram ain’t making anyone smarter. And basics without its competitor Google is a dead give away!

 

 

Full disclosure – I work for Inventum, one of the only carrier-class Indian router manufacturers. The company provides Broadband Network Gateways (BNG), DPI appliances, Routers, Billing & Provisioning systems for telecoms and Internet Service Providers. The views expressed here are my personal experiences as an entrepreneur in the Indian high-technology space.