NEW DELHI: Funded by the European Commission, the EuroIndia2004 Co-operation Forum on the Information Society was the fourth in a series of international co-operation events to showcase the European vision on Information Society Technologies (IST) and enrich it further through international cooperation with a country like India.

The three-day (March 24 to 26) event attracted industry and academic participation from India, Denmark, Italy and other EU countries. It also offered a pan-European dimension with participants from over 40 countries including a number of SMEs, highlighting their innovations, technologies, applications and products. The event saw the participation of 300 European and 650 Indian delegates, with SMEs and academic researchers forming the bulk of the participants

UMTS as the right choice

Speaking on the topic of mobile communication at EuroIndia 2004 – Jean-Pierre Bienaime, UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) Forum said that UMTS is the right choice for telecom operators moving towards 3G.

"At a time when GSM operators have invested heavily on creation of telecom infrastructure, UMTS provides them with a capability to leverage on the existing infrastructure. In the process they can save operational costs and upgrade their networks as well," he added.

On a worldwide scenario GSM has exceeded the one billion - customer mark and around 15 million new customers are being added every month on a global basis. "As of now there are than 620 GSM operators that are providing services in more than 200 countries, so GSM as a standard is well accepted in the telecom markets," he added.

While not much of India’s population has been able to connect itself to the telecom networks, on the other hand it translates into a situation where is enough potential for a number of players to provide the connectivity in bridging the digital divide.

"India as a country has got immense potential. Lower cost and wider deployment are key to success in a country like India. And we already are witnessing a cellular explosion in terms of customers in the country. UMTS is designed as an end-to-end mobile system and it provides network optimization, it is cheaper and also provides medium to long-term increase in revenues for the operators. All these factors will push its adoption in a country like India," he explained.

At present there are more than 3 million customers for 3G/UMTS worldwide and a number of telecom operators in Europe, Asia and US are testing their networks to provide 3G applications. In all 15 operators in Europe and Asia like T-Mobile, NTT and Vodafone have forayed into this technology. "Before the end of 2004 there are about a dozen operators venturing into this technology," he added.

"Operators like NTT DoCoMo (more than 2 million) and Vodafone (0.5 million) are quite upbeat about this technology and are on their way to provide an array of services and applications on this technology. UMTS forum predicts that by the end of 2004, we would be having more than 15 million customers using this technology and 50 per cent of that customer base would reside in Europe and the rest in the Asian region," he explained.

He went on to say that - moving forward 3G or UMTS can help Indian mobile operators to future proof their existing investment in GSM infrastructure.

Speaking at a session on IT security and data protection at EuroIndia – M Vidyasagar, Executive Vice President (Advanced Technology), e-security practice for TCS informed that there is a need to detect a security breach of security policy.

"A lot of organizations do not know that before there is a breach of security, there is a breach of security policy. So they should be more worried about the breach of security policy and not the security itself," he added.

At a time when bugs and viruses keep complex networks on its toes, industry needs to evolve proper metrics to measure security at the policy level. "No one can guarantee perfect security. So companies should evolve their security policy in such a way so as to address this issue properly," he explained.

Forum for 4G in India needed

Expressing the importance of having a 4G forum for the country, Jorge M Pereira, European Commission, Information Society Directorate General said that India should move forward in having a 4G forum that can provide insights into the country’s needs and capabilities in the area of fourth generation telecom networks.

"This forum when formed, can address issues like R&D in 4G technologies, educating the industry about 4G, expanding wireless with an increase in demand, seamless mobility and utilizing technologies of higher frequency spectrum," Pereira added.

India as a country has got a big talent pool in terms of educational institutions and research organizations and this can help the country in early adoption of technologies like 4G. "India is very good in terms of talent, so the country can provide the talent manpower needed in the areas of computing infrastructure, signal processing, backbone networks, multiple access technologies, channel coding and VLSI," informed, Prof Shankar Lall Maskara from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Creation of such forum will boost the chances of India moving towards cutting edge technologies like 3G and 4G. "Establishment of 4G forum is essential for the country now. In fact I am going to meet up with the government of India representatives and very soon we will have this forum functioning as a body," said, Ramjee Prasad, Director, Center for TeleInFrastruktur (CTIF), Aalborg University, Denmark.

The Spectrum dilemma

Even though, not much of an adoption has happened in the area of 3G, the government of India is quite sure of moving forward with its 4G plans. "There is a big thrust going in for 4G and the government is fully committed to make sure that 4G adoption happens within 8 to 10 years time frame," said, PK Garg, Wireless Advisor to the government of India, Ministry of Communications & IT.

"So as we move forward we will have to allocate spectrum for 4G operations and applications as well. At the same time, we will have to increase the increase the efficiency of spectrum usage. We will have to create dynamic situations where co-existence of existing infrastructure is possible with the futuristic one," he added.

At a time when wireless technologies like Wi-Fi and WiMAX are being introduced in various parts of the country, spectrum allocation continues to be a topic of concern with the industry.

"We have to allocate spectrum for more than 40 different radio frequency services like – security agencies, aerospace mobile services, maritime mobile services. Over the years, there has been an increase in high data rate and with that the spectrum requirement have also increased to quite an extent," he added.

Speaking on the issue of spectrum management he said that there is a need for proper management of spectrum for the rural and urban areas of the country. "There is a difference in the need pattern for rural and the urban populace, so we cant provide similar applications to rural as well as the urban segments. Spectrum management is the only answer to this," he added.

He also informed that the government is in the process of reviewing national frequency allocation plan and the final plan is likely to be rolled out very soon. "We are taking proposals from different segments of the society as well as the industry. The final plan will be out very soon and it will address all the issues related to spectrum allocation," he informed.

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