Leading The Telecom Initiative

Telecom in India is one of the most exciting yet challenging sectors to work in, and it takes a special kind of grit and mettle to achieve success in the field. Naveen Tandon, Director-International External & Regulatory Affairs, AT&T India, has had a stellar career in the Telecom industry where he not only oversaw great initiatives, he was also an integral part of the policy-making process as part of industry stakeholder group in coordination with the Government of India. At an event at a leading University in Pune, Naveen spoke to Corporate Citizen about his success journey, the challenges he faces, and the uniqueness of the Telecom industry in India

There is a clear intent from the government’s side to try and understand the challenges the industry faces and help to come up with measures to provide policy impetus for the industry to grow a habit of being systematic and prioritising issues

- Navin Tandon

Could you take us through your career?

First starting with my education - I did my graduation in commerce, an associate member of the Institute of Costs Accountants of India (ACMA), MBA in Finance and a bachelor’s degree in law. I started my professional career in 1997 with Reliance Telecom in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Pursuant to the liberalisation measures announced in 1991, the telecom sector was opened for private sector participation. New Telecom Policy was announced in 1994 and companies were accorded cellular and basic telephone service. The sector was evolving. Having worked in Ahmedabad for two years in Finance & Accounts function, I later moved to a corporate office in Mumbai for a year and worked in the area of Finance and Business Planning. By this time New Telecom Policy was announced in 1999 and the sector was making space for new players and policy announcements to take it to new heights. In 2001, I moved to Delhi and worked on various areas of regulatory affairs till 2005. During the course of things, I realised that telecom continues to be regulated in the country. Stakeholders constantly need to refer to the policies, guidelines, and this caught my interest. Since 2001, I started working in the public policy and regulatory affairs role. No business planning is complete without considering government policy as it defines your scope of work as well as opportunities to policy reforms. Having prior knowledge of finance really helped in understanding nuances of policies from a business standpoint. I worked in Reliance in the Regulatory Affairs function till 2005. Then I joined Tata Teleservices and had a brief stint of three years in the same role. In 2007, I joined AT&T as the Principal Regulatory Officer for India. My previous experience was in the area of wireless and mass market / consumer mobility from policy and regulatory affairs. AT&T provided me with an opportunity to dabble policy advocacy and regulatory affairs in the enterprise data services sector. In three years, I was promoted as the Director and currently head the External and Regulatory Affairs function for AT&T in India. My responsibilities include supporting the entire enterprise business of AT&T in India, from a policy, regulatory and advocacy perspective.

The journey spreading over two decades has been really exciting which provided learning, experiences and rewards in equal proportion. The leadership, work culture and learning in all the previous and current organisation has been very helpful in evolving my career. In India, the role of a public policy professional is evolving and becoming important and I am fortunate to be part of the industry almost since its beginning.

Spectrum charges in India are some of the highest in the world. Regulatory policies in the telecom sector too are not always perceived as favourable. Does that make your job more challenging?

The job indeed is challenging as well as interesting and there are many positive reasons for it.

Almost every sector is witnessing a wave of digital and technological transformation. Telecom is the second sector after media experiencing moderate or massive digital disruption over the next 6-12 months.

Presently, nearly 43% of the world is connected to the internet. The next five years to witness the advent of disruptive technologies and innovations. The emerging technologies have started drastically disrupting the existing landscape.

Digitisation is driving rapid technological progress and growth. Widening gap between policy and pace of technological innovation emerging. Policymakers are actively collaborating with the industry to manage or adapt to the explosion of technological innovations.

Rapid innovation and disruptions are blurring the boundaries between once-distinct markets. Move to data/digital economy inevitable! Social media/app based economy is opening up new digital opportunities. This fast pace of change means “status quo” to become obsolete or irrelevant.

To be relevant and competitive in the market, there is a need for out of the box and disruptive thinking / keep pace with technological innovations. Challenge is to seize the opportunity and respond in a manner which hinges on disruption and innovation – both for industry and Government. Evolution of a digital eco-system where ‘change is the only constant’.

India has a success story in voice telephony. Since the last 25 years, and we are now at the cusp of a digital revolution driven by technologies, innovation, service formats like cloud computing, internet of things, AI, Quantum and Edge Computing. Data and technology are at the forefront. In voice, we only had two main types of technology - Analog and Digital. In data, we have multiple flavours of technology, and the opportunity it presents is immense. Telecom historically has been a regulated sector, requiring companies to take licenses or registrations to provide services. However, the digital revolution has provided opportunities and has expanded the eco-system to include application service providers also known as Over the Top (OTT) providers. The digital space is no more a domain of only a few operators. We are witnessing the emergence of OTTs, application service providers, even social media companies. Traditional brick and mortar networks are moving to software-defined networks. The opportunities that come with these dynamic changes is that now it presents more opportunities for engagement with the government from a capacity- building standpoint. The positive part is that the government is collaborating and engaging with the industry. Now even the market has started demanding what it wants. Now the policy has an equally challenging role in terms of meeting technology as well as market requirements at the same time. Hence making the role much more challenging.

Telecom penetration is higher than ever in India. But on the flipside, profitability is not so high. Do you think this is a temporary phase?

India has the lowest tariffs in the world. We are the second highest in terms of mobile subscribers. The market is competitive, but right now it is slightly squeezed. Many companies have either exited or merged. That in my personal view may have an impact of reduced competition in the long run, especially, as it reduces the choice to the customer. The penetration is also largely concentrated in semi-urban and urban areas, so there are limited opportunities in that perspective. Certainly, the sector has challenges, but in the past too, such challenges have overcome and the industry has handled them quite well. When the first telecom licenses were accorded in 1995- 1997, the licenses were given on the basis of the fixed license fee which was later migrated to a revenue share based license fee regime in 1999. This time too, there are challenges, although they are compounded by the heavy debt the industry is facing. One of the issues, especially in the Asia Pacific region, is that telecom is one of the highest-taxed sectors which takes away a sizeable share (30-35%) into profitability. The uniqueness of the Indian sector is that it sees the lowest tariffs in the world side one side with one of the highest taxes in the world. The industry needs to work in identifying niche areas to expand services. The ecosystem has to expand to allow new players. There are options available. The government, for example, now has a policy for virtual network operators, which is a good opportunity for operators to expand the ecosystem so that there are more players willing to work on behalf of the operators. There is also a recent consultation by TRAI which seeks to enhance the scope of infrastructure providers. This means that infrastructure providers who earlier used to provide only passive infrastructure, now have a possibility of providing active infrastructure if allowed by the government. There will be a cost shift from the operators, who won’t buy the equipment but lease it out. autonomous driverless cars. In these cases, there has to be zero scope for error.

It will take one or two years more for real 5G to happen in India. In fact, equally important is the security aspect that comes from 5G. This is something the government is rightfully concerned about. There is a major difference between 2G, 3G, and 4G on the one hand and 5G on the other. In 5G, even the noncore is as critical as the core. So these things will take time.

In the last five years, we have seen a lot of positive support and initiatives by the government in embracing new technology and driving innovation. The prestigious initiatives and programmes like Digital India, Smart Cities, building broadband highways to boost growth, National Digital Communications policy are all steps in the right direction. There is a clear intent from the government’s side to try and understand the challenges the industry faces and help come up with measures to support and provide policy impetus for the industry to grow. The challenge with data services is that technology and innovation happen every second. The licenses are technology-neutral. However, the services which these technologies are able to offer are not always stated. The learning curve is steep.

Key is to have more transparent, consultative and multi-stakeholder engagement which benefits all participants of the telecom ecosystem

What are some of the highlights of your career?

Success in public policy and advocacy is possible with a joint effort comprising of, your own work, organisation, support of the government, industry players, technical and academic community. I have been part of the consultative and advocacy efforts from the industry to drive and steer policy initiatives. Our policy historically did not allow the resale of telecom services. If one wanted to offer telecom service, you would have to take a facilities-based license. As President of a global carrier association ‘ACTO’, we led advocacy on opening up the reseller market in India. It took almost three years for us but we were quite successful. Finally, that policy was announced in 2016. India is one of the very few countries in the world now which allows reselling of all telecom services. The other policy work on the machine to machine roadmap through an industry effort. That’s still in a nascent stage. There have been experiments and test cases in connected cars, medical devices, and banking. There have been other initiatives as well on cost reduction which we have endeavoured. Other advocacy initiatives on the cost front to advocate for the removal of double taxation from the methodology for computing license fee as a well as National Digital Communications Policy announced in 2018. The journey certainly has been exciting, and unlike normal work, public policy is an area which takes time because the stakeholders may have questions and you need to come back with specific answers, make continued meaning engagements, provide international best practices, link policy reforms to development goals and help evolve a framework which benefits consumers, government and enterprise. Key is to have more transparent, consultative and multi-stakeholder engagement which benefits all participants of the eco-system

How do you strike a work/life balance?

I really don’t believe there is any such a thing as a work-life balance. I think it can come only after you retire which I don’t intend to. The organisation is very flexible and we certainly get the time and it allows you to work from wherever you are. I have never been in a situation where my personal life is compromised because of work because when you have such an open environment and trusted leadership, you yourself get into a habit of being systematic and prioritising issues. So in that way, I have been able to maintain a semblance of work-life balance.

Telecom is changing rapidly. How should students prepare themselves to be ready for the industry when the industry is changing so rapidly?

Unlike voice, data has evolved on its own. Voice was always on a license. Imagine if the development of the internet would have been under a license, we wouldn’t be where we are today. The pace of development wouldn’t have been so rapid. In terms of skilling, there are two parts. The first is to embrace technology. The skill could be something as simple as starting with using new technology in your day to day life. You don’t have to be a computer engineer or an app developer or a cloud buff or an ethical hacker to learn new skills. For us, we should use technology and define areas where you can try and use technology. If you are doing something manually, if you can find areas where something can be automated, that can be our contribution. I don’t believe you have to have knowledge of Java or AI. It’s best if you adapt it, and try and identify use cases where it can be applicable. That itself is skilling yourself for the use of technology. Tolerate, engage and enhance capacity to deal with complexity, opinions – start developing that.