Contents - Connect-World

Industrial Development
India Destination for the World
by Deepak Jain, General Manager, IT Solutions, Telecom Industry, Wipro Infotech
India is a world leader in information technology and business process outsourcing (IT
& BPO) services. The government, recognising the role telecom plays in Indias economic
development, issued licences to a number of new players to compete and offer
telecom services. The resulting improvement in Indias telecommunications has been a
great help to many industries. International FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods)
companies running centralised applications have shifted their data centres to India—to
telcos offering data centres and reliable global connectivity.
Deepak Jain, is the General Manager of IT Solutions for the Telecom Industry at Wipro Infotech. Mr Jain
has risen through a series of post in his long career at Wipro. Among his many executive posts, he has
served as Head of Sales for Service and as regional Head for Customer Service. Most recently, Mr Jain
headed Wipros pioneer effort in the Infrastructure Management Business.
Deepak graduated from the Delhi College of Engineering with a Bachelors degree in Electronics &
Communications Engineering.
India has been one of the worlds foremost
contributors with respect to
information technology and business
process outsourcing—IT & BPO—services.
For the last few years, India has been,
and certainly will be for next few
years, one of the foremost models for
the telecom community around the
globe. The primary reason for this has
been the Indian Governments initiatives
to realise their goal of opening up
the countrys telecom sector to private
investment.
The government has recognised and
supported the role telecom infrastructure
can play in the economic development
of India.
Some of the key points on the governments
agenda have been:
ˆ To issue licences permitting a number
of Indias telecom operators to
compete and offer telecom services.
This has driven growth - in excess of
100 per cent—of the wireless market
and has made telecom services available
at extremely competitive rates for
Indias large population;
ˆ To allow global companies to participate
in Indias market by providing
telecom infrastructure and related
services to telecom service providers;
ˆ To encourage the introduction of
new technologies from the technology
leaders of the world with a minimum
lag time;
ˆ To achieve a tele-density of 7 per
100, 15 months ahead of plan;
ˆ To reach a tele-density of 15 by 2010
— currently, this also seems likely to be
achieved ahead of plan;
ˆ To build the size of the telecom
Service industry—now US$ 12.25 billion,
up from US$ 10.24 billion last
year;
ˆ To increase Indias undersea cable
connectivity to other parts of the
world—the Singtel / Bharti joint ventures
i2i cable links India to the
worlds highest capacity system in
Singapore.
The telcos in India include global players
such as Hutchison, Singtel
(through its joint venture partner
Bharti TeleVentures), Indias corporate
giants such as Reliance
Infocomm, Tata Group, and the
incumbent Government operators
BSNL and MTNL. All these telcos are
working on a number of initiatives to
offer a wide variety of telecom services
to customers.
The major telecom equipment suppliers,
such as Ericsson, Motorola,
Lucent, Nokia, Nortel, Tellabs, Cisco
and Alcatel, have all bagged major
contracts to supply parts of the countrys
telecom infrastructure.
Qualcomm, with its CDMA technology,
has been growing rapidly in Indias
marketplace. More than 75000km of
fibre has been laid across the length
and breadth of the country to support
upgraded telecom services. The telcos
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