Airtel SVP on Industry Challenges, Wireless Strategy, and Customer Experience

While the wireless communications industry has been growing rapidly in recent years, fueled by the growing demand for data, multi-faceted challenges may slow down the industry's growth. Sawan Gupta, SVP of Wireless Strategy & Head of 5G Experience at Bharti Airtel, talks about the major challenges of the wireless sector and key elements in building the wireless strategy catered to its distributed user base. He also highlights Airtel's efforts in maximizing network capacity and coverage for an enhanced customer experience.

What are the biggest challenges facing the wireless sector today?

While the rampage of new technologies in the telecom realm has been creating ample growth opportunities, there are certain challenges that we observe daily, making this quite a dynamic sector to be part of.

Economic Challenges: The average revenue curtailed from the end user remains relatively low concerning global measures owing to the tariff wars. Adding huge expense with respect to spectrum costs and technological investment to this creates a dicey imbalance. While government policies help to reduce the margin, the wide disparage remains that potentially hampers the industry's growth.

Energy Consumption: With the advent of new technologies and a multifold increase in end-user devices, there shall be more power requirements due to the substantial computational needs for intelligent processing. Subsequently, enormous energy consumption is expected by the various connected nodes in the wireless networks. Demand for wireless information and power transfer (WIPT) integration that would enable proactive energy replenishment of wireless devices is also rising to combat the same. 

A multitude of End Users Devices: How to design a network architecture to tackle dynamic cooperation among terminals to meet users' requirements, support seamless and ubiquitous communications during the movement, and enhance spectrum efficiency and user experience. Characterizing the environment dynamics to ensure that the system takes full advantage of this new topology will be crucial in the next generation of wireless networks. Moreover, due to the dynamic behavior of devices joining and leaving wireless systems, maintaining privacy and anonymity will be challenging in future wireless networks. Here, to a large extent, dynamic network slicing shall be a key management driver to resolve the network and resource management.

Development of compatible ecosystem: Availability of a proper and well-matured ecosystem to make new technologies accessible to the masses. Currently, 5G is the revolution introduced in India. While the end-user device support to cater to this technology is present, there is still a long way to go before the ecosystem matures. 5G NSA device support is strong, but major OEMs are yet to introduce key functionalities that will further improve the 5G experience. And 5G SA is still relatively nascent in terms of supported devices available in the market. Also, device capabilities should mirror technological advancements. While the devices may help the new technologies, battery consumption during usage is also a matter of concern which degrades the performance of the technology. 

As per your role, what has been your consideration in making a wireless strategy? With a presence in a number of countries, what has been Airtel's overall wireless strategy to stand out from the competition?

Three significant aspects are juggled to carve out a unique tradeoff that consequently builds our strategy to cater to the users across our distributed base. Customer demand and grievances, spectrum availability, and un-tapped but potent market are accessed at cluster and circle levels to understand the scope. Network design is then subsequently pursued, keeping in mind the bandwidth and spectrum availability, population and region to be catered to, and the cost-effective product selection to deploy on-ground. Using the higher bands to serve capacity demands and the lower bands for range and coverage increases the efficacy of our network alongside several techniques to improve spectral efficiency. Also, considering the ecosystem support for the technologies to be implemented in the network is important to ensure accessibility to all. 

Airtel focuses on winning customers for life through an exceptional experience. What are the keys to keeping up with the increasingly high demands for network coverage and connectivity performance, and what have been your efforts? 

Indeed, customer experience is at the forefront of Airtel's driving pillar for success. We continually work toward catering to the end user's demands and satiating their expectations. Anticipating the increasing request and proactive planning for the same is a crucial aspect of our focus that allows us to develop the required capacity well in time. Further, projects to improve spectral efficiency, network harmonization, and densification of the existing sites with innovative high-power small cells and various IBS solutions, along with targeted customer complaint resolution, cumulatively assist in maintaining the ubiquitous network while catering to both coverage and capacity-based demands' exponential rise each day. 

Looking at the advancement of 5G, and as a part of that, how do you feel about the essential role of CPE within that process, and what do you expect to see for CPEs in India? 

The concept of FWA—Fixed Wireless Access has been around for quite a while, but the existing technologies were insufficient to cater to the demands and guarantee service ubiquitously. But with the plethora of exciting features of 5G technology that supports 10x lower latencies and higher bandwidths, the realization of this concept into a reality is inevitable. 

Customer Premise Equipment (CPEs) are portable, small, user-friendly end devices that shall power the last mile connectivity by connecting to a live 5G network. This technology finds its applications as an alternative to wired fiber-based Broadband and DSL connections. 5G network can be leveraged to connect the end user at a much faster pace and provide a fiber-like experience.

The untapped market potential is enormous in India, where almost 64% of the population lives in rural areas. 5G can power the rural regions and those areas where a fiber connection is quite impossible and consequently prove to be an excellent alternative service. 

In parallel, the urban world would also benefit from this for building capacity-heavy connections in shopping malls, intelligent factories, and even for temporary entertainment venues like stadiums, private campuses, and concerts. 

Where do you see the telecom industry going within the next few years?

Telecom has constantly been evolving to bring the next big revolution in the sector. The pandemic has brought new avenues for the operators as the focus shifts toward digital realms through a multifold increase in online content consumption. Telcos now have to look beyond mere connectivity and lead digitization from the forefront to support the onslaught of demand. 

In the coming few years, the cellular networks in India shall be capable of supporting emerging technologies such as AI—Artificial Intelligence, Augmented & Virtual Realities, Edge Computing, IoT-fulfilled smart cities, smart villages, and much more. Hence, in the coming years, the primary ambition for the industry shall be to change from a simple bandwidth supplier to a business ecosystem of partners providing a platform, security, and analytics in this era of Digital India.