Cloud To Client

Anand Bhaskar, MD, Service Providers Sales, Cisco India & SAARC, speaks about the various dimensions coming up in the telecom sector

With the telecom sector getting stabilised to a new normal after a period of consolidation, what would be the opportunities going forward?

With significant changes over time, the telecom industry has transformed into a sector dominated by a few large players. While we are currently going through a period of stabilization, the operators are leveraging different strategies to improve existing services and experience, or get the next 500M subscribers on a data plan, or to retain high-value subscribers with newer services as well as to manage profitability by lowering cost/bit through various strategies. Telecom operators also have a significant opportunity to tap into the enterprise market with industry specific solutions to enable collaboration, security and IoT.

Executing these requires significant changes in the organization across People, Process and Tools (IT & Network). All of these present enormous opportunities for Cisco to partner with telecom operators.

How do you see macroeconomic changes impacting the sector, and what measures should the industry be taking to address these impacts?

Telecom operators across the world including India have faced periodic disruptions due to rapid advancement in emerging technologies. The Indian telecom sector is one of the fastest-growing markets, seeing a rise of over 7% in the last decade, with GDP contribution estimated to reach 8.2% by 2020, which is why all smartphone makers set up base in the country. As the telecom industry continues to stabilize, there will be a need to renew strategy for talent acquisition efforts to focus on creating new roles, generating more jobs and getting more investment into the sector in the process.