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| The wave of the future for telecom companies is internet protocol (IP) infrastructure, declares former Bell Labs president and venture-capitalist-to-be Arun N. Netravali.
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| That's the message that he will be pounding home in his meetings with the Tatas and Reliance over the next two days, before he heads off to the capital to address a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) seminar on Saturday and a meeting with communications minister Arun Shourie.
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| "I'm talking to the Tatas and to a senior Reliance team," Netravali confirmed in an interview today to Business Standard.
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| "Should we move to IP infrastructure from today's circuit-based (telecom) infrastructure? The answer is very, very clear -- we should," Netravali says firmly.
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| IP infrastructure refers to a set of equipment -- switches, routers, multiplexing gear and transmissiin media -- that carry content as tiny packets of data. It transforms content into data (a process that's called `packetisation') and carries as 'packets' any content, be it voice, text, pictures, audio or video, regardless of origin or destination or the device used.
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| So email between two computers or conversations on phones or compressed video files from a cellular content provider to a cellphone can all be carried on the same IP infrastructure. Such infrastructure, therefore, offers cost advantages compared with the "legacy" telephone networks which typically engage a channel or circuit each time a phone call is made or the internet is accessed.
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| Netravali points out that IP infrastructure offers 10-15 per cent cost advantages -- that is, telecom service companies will be able to offer services at prices that are 10-15 per cent lower -- compared with the current circuit-based infrastructure. "It allows you to offer many, many services on the same infrastructure," he adds.
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| Netravali points out new telecom companies like the US-based Level Three Communications and Reliance Infocomm (for its long distance network) from the start implemented an IP infrastructure. "Their cost structures are, therefore, better," he adds.
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| The older telecom companies too, he says, can shift gradually to IP infrastructure because they have depreciated most of their assets over the years, though they may be less eager to do so because they're making money on their assets.
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| Netravali will be listened to carefully by Indian busienssmen -- he holds more than 70 patents in the areas of computer networks, human interface with machines and picture processing. He led Bell Labs' high density television (HDTV) research.
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| So what does he plan on telling Shourie? Two things. First, that telecom operators are building up too much long distance capacity. This happened in the US with dire consequences. Secondly, he will point out the the growth of service providers is not aiding Indian manufacturers.
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| "The Wirpos and TCS' of the world produce software for, say, a company like Nortel which then bundles it and sells it to companies like Reliance," he says. China, in contrast, looks first at the benefits that providers of services offer local manufacturers. |
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