Computers Today, December 1-15, 1998 Chief Guest

December 1-15, 1998 CHIEF GUEST

"Without timely permission, lost our chance of being South Pacific hub"

Bureaucracy didn't seem so impregnable while relaunching Coca Cola in India. Jaydev H. Raja, 45, ex-vice president of Coca Cola International, and now the managing director of Iridium India Telecom Ltd, feels the hurdles in introducing the Iridium satphone service much more toiling and challenging: the security concerns, cellular operators' inertia, and the usual technology phobia. In a long chat with Computers Today, the University of Wisconsin MBA explained the bottlenecks before the new comms service. Excerpts:

Now that the worldwide launch of Iridium has been announced, where does it find itself in the Indian space?

We are already in service. We are serving incoming international traffic into India. We are also taking care of Iridium subscribers who are coming to India with Iridium handsets. What we have not commenced is service originating from India, either of the satellite phone through handsets or from PSTN. That's because we are still awaiting the import licence for import of commercial handsets. The other limiting factor is that the interconnection to the terrestrial networks is not hundred percent complete. The call termination into PSTN network is already in place.

Will the delay from the Government's side push India backwards in Iridium's strategy ?

If you are specifically referring to the transit traffic, yes. In the absence of timely permissions, we unfortunately lost--or had to surrender--our chance of being the Iridium south Pacific transit traffic hub. The service had to start trials way back in September. In the absence of Government permission, the Indian franchise could not start the trials. By the middle of September Iridium wanted the switches to be reprogrammed to recognise the gateway relocation. With not much time, the gateway had to be switched to Thailand.

At the outset, will there be security problems, because anyone can get in touch with anyone and leak information?

Jaydev H. Raja There are features that ensure denial of access, limits access and bars access. And it provides for complete interception and monitoring like any other cellular system. For the past 18 months, we had been demonstrating the features and capabilities of the system to all the security agencies of the government. This system, at the very least, is as safe and secure as any telecommunications system in the world today. It has got much more enhanced features of safety, security in all the issues.

What is the marketing gameplan?

This system is meant for people who are on the move all the time: professional travellers who traverse the globe and are in need for global communications round the clock, without having to go through different phone numbers, different bills and different phones. Iridium satisfies because of its compatibility with cellular protocols.

We have also found a huge market potential in the industrial segments without any means of communications: the mining industry, the steel plants in far-flung locations, oil rigs or coffee and tea plantations. This service caters to everyone above the water level.

As for the size of the market, we should be able to get one percent of the cellular segment in the first year and then add one percent in each of the subsequent years. By the fifth year we should be able to reach about five percent cellular market.

Apart from that little nudging into the cellular, it remains a service of its own?

Today, if you to go from India to the US, the Indian cellular phone you carry with you will not work there. You have to have the cellular phone compatible to the protocols existing in the US. You go from here to Japan, you can't use the same phone again in Japan. The Iridium phone gives you the ability to roam. Further, it's dual-mode. So while you are on cellular coverage, you have a choice to use the cellular mode and it then automatically switches to satellite as you lose cell coverage. Furthermore there is a paging service that also operates on the same phone numbers. For example, the satellite phone will not work in a room. But if you have the pager connected to the same phone, your pager will be able to receive a message. We call that global notification service.

Costwise, how does the Iridium service compare with a that of a cellular phone?

With multi-protocol or cross-protocol roaming, you have to pay more. Right now, the auto roaming facility is operable only in GSM areas. That too GSM 900, not GSM 1800. But the Iridium facility offers cross protocol roaming across the globe. The tariff: wherever you make the call and receive a call, the fares in that area will apply, in addition to the 30 percent premium for having the global roaming facility. That's for the cellular part. On the satellite side, STD or ISD rates would be applicable plus a 30 percent mobility convenience premium.

We are even using cellular network operators as our service providers. We are not competing with them, we are complementing them. For subscribers, this will be a value addition.

How it can cater to the rural segments?

Iridium is not just about mobile phones. There are fixed terminals of Iridium that can be installed in a solar powered phone booth. Such booths can be placed in a cluster of villages, and then connected to a mobile exchange unit, which then terrestrially connects to a PSTN network. This gives instant connectivity in rural areas without terrestrial telecom infrastructure.

The governments of developing countries have to decide whether they want to spend resources worth billions of dollars to build the terrestrial infrastructure in rural and remote areas. Or, as an alternative, divert some of those resources in establishing cost-effective technologies such as satellite comms network. As these technologies expand their user base, the critical mass and economies of scale will bring down costs.

Lastly, how do you find the transition from selling cola to comms services?

In the simplest term, it is a transition from liquid to fluid. Otherwise selling Cola or comms is the same. There, it was the challenge of knowing the per capita consumption of soft drinks; here, we have to know the per capita consumption of minutes. This industry also falls into the phenomenon of consumer impulse. If soft drinks are an impulse driven product, the mobile telephonic usage also, to a large extent, is an impulse-driven tool. How you influence, of course, differs in many ways.

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