/telecomdrive/media/post_attachments/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Swapnil-Shah.jpg)
Spotlight on 5G Opportunities | TelecomDrive.com
With an aim to realizing the full potential of 5G, Comviva launched its innovative ADriN (Application Driven Network) platform earlier this year. It is designed to deliver simplified, harmonized and personalized customer experiences.
Swapnil Shah, Vice President for 5G Business Unit, Comviva speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com about how the company is realising 5G opportunities for its customers and its future plans.
Do you anticipate 5G playing a more prominent role in enterprise use cases, potentially bypassing traditional telecom providers entirely?
The advent of 5G indicates a transformative era for enterprises and vertical industries because of democratization and harmonization possibilities. Firstly, the more accessible spectrum marks a significant departure from industries' reliance on service providers, not fully there but on the growth globally. Now, they possess the autonomy to control and manage their SNPN or collaborate with a service provider on PNI-NPN.
This forms the baseline of leveraging "Private 5G” to it’s full potential. While it elevates the expectation for enterprises to construct, operate, and oversee their networks, it offers the invaluable trade-off of becoming a custodian in true sense, an increasingly impactful advantage. Secondly, whether they choose to operate and manage their network independently, enlist a system integrator, or partner with a service provider, the goal remains the same - to simplify the processes, have on-demand access and control mechanisms on network parameters, infrastructure and cloud configuration and most importantly look at every problem as a use case and spend only to optimize that specific use case.
This is where Comviva is playing a significant role, on enabling enterprises and vertical industries to manage the application lifecycle of their machineries and devices, where application can drive the network based on absolutely real-time necessity of the device in SNPN or PNI-NPN scenarios.
Does India currently have a strong 5G ecosystem to support the seamless adoption of the technology?
India stands at the forefront of the rapidly evolving digital landscape across various industries. We are already witnessing the fastest 5G rollout in the world in just a year of the launch of the services and now India has around 100 million subscribers using 5G services.
5G is seen as a critical enabler for various initiatives in India, including Make in India, Atmanirbhar Bharat, and the development of the chip ecosystem. Government schemes like DCIS and VEPP are really encouraging startups and established organizations to leverage 5G for enterprise and consumer use cases. This is bringing together industries, networks, application communities, and hyperscalers to create a complete ecosystem and generate tangible value for all stakeholders.
Despite the hype around successful 5G rollouts, India still lacks scalable use cases with widespread access and service consumption. To truly drive growth across B2B, B2C, and B2B2X segments, we need more open networks and democratized access to services. This requires collaboration between startups, industry bodies, large organizations, industry verticals, hyperscalers, and application communities, with continued government support to facilitate the process.
What market share does Comviva aim to capture within the 5G-enabled business applications domain in the next few years?
We have steadfastly maintained and expressed our conviction that the key to elevating service providers' Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) lies in returning control to the custodians. This belief aligns seamlessly with the notion that applications utilized by consumers (whether on smartphones or any connected device) or by various industries' devices should evolve to become more intelligent. This transformation enables them to access, control, and configure the network, providing a personalized experience with cohesive access.
Most importantly, our focus continues to be on harmonizing, personalizing and simplifying the experience part of this application lifecycle journey - on how do we continue to make application community stronger with access to network assets, so the devices can continue to generate minimum committed experiences (MCE) which will enable topline increase on ARPU and ARPA for enterprises and subsequently telcos.
At Comviva, we believe that the application developer community forms the core of catalyzing the next S-curve in the 5G industry. Our aim is to execute at least 10% of the $2 billion addressable market for 5G-enabled business applications worldwide over the next five years. Recognizing that telcos aim to boost their enterprise revenues from 6-7 percent to 40-50 percent of the total within three to four years through 5G-enabled solutions, we position ourselves as an ideal partner for service providers and their end customers, the enterprises.
In what ways do you think the emerging API Economy will revolutionize the landscape of 5G technology?
The key to 5G technology's success is something called the Application Programming Interface (API), which acts as a bridge for communication. Think of it as a new kind of currency. People from different groups, like open-source communities and government bodies, are working together to make sure these APIs work smoothly.
They're focusing on different aspects, like making sure the communication between devices and networks is seamless. For example, if a camera detects something unusual, it triggers what we call an "intent API" - the application of the camera triggers this towards Comviva platform. The things the camera wants, like access and configurations, are part of it’s ask towards the network, that we transform and process as "service API." The process of setting up and managing these configurations is the "network API" - which either would be in control of the enterprise itself in SNPN scenario or could be owned by service provider in PNI-NPN case All of this makes up the API economy, which is expected to handle a lot of interactions between many devices in the future. The key to this economy booming is, the intersection of intent, service and network has to result in a minimum committed experience for the device or the consumer.
As more and more groups, like network element providers and cloud players, get involved, the way digital technology is used, keeps getting better. This is making things more equal and pushing for smarter applications, where the device and consumer (because of the application intelligence, access and control) are able to control their own experiences.
Briefly explain Comviva's newly launched Application Driven Network Platform (ADriN). Additionally, provide insights into its current growth and expansion strategy?
We launched ADriN platform earlier this year. Aptly stands for Application Driven Network, ADriN is designed to deliver simplified, harmonized and personalized customer experiences through intent interpretation, processing and execution, all of this - irrespective of the experience provider. We've meticulously validated problem statements, use cases, and the value proposition of ADriN through collaboration with various global service providers, enterprises, market analysts and hyperscalers.
Through the year, we have heavily invested on teams, technology, use case and product feature built-up - not just looking at standard bodies and communities, but also continuously talking to end customer, consumer and interpreting market movements.
Our focus continues to be making customer and application lifecycle simpler with network aware insights, abstracting complexities, offering AI-driven insights, utilizing machine learning and bot driven applications to seamlessly trigger intent, encouraging and enabling the application developers to upgrade and publish enriched SDKs.
Since its launch earlier this year at MWC, our platform is progressing along the planned roadmap. We are nearing the committed product release day with global availability, that is a significant milestone that we are looking forward to.
As we approach the year's end, we express confidence in taking a significant step toward realizing the MCE dream we spoke during MWC. The transition from ideation to conceptualization to commercialization stage is marked by the gratifying commitments of service providers, a growing set of ecosystem partners, hyperscalers and engaged enterprises. We are closing in on executing our platform capabilities with niche use cases for a couple of customers with global impact, that’s something we are very excited about as we welcome the new year.
This interview is published inside the January 2024 edition of Disruptive Telecoms