The power of Smart networks

The power of Smart networks
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How 4G can transform India′s economy and improve both governance and the delivery of many essential services across India. In February 2016, Singularity University, an organisation that focuses on the impact of “exponentials”, held their first summit in Asia in Mumbai - in collaboration with Deloitte - to discuss what they felt were key factors or exponentials that would shape societal and business challenges in the coming era. It was a true learning experience to sit through the sessions on various topics such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and robotics, and crowdsourcing, among others, and their possible impact, and listening to renowned professors and practitioners speak on how such exponentials will shape the future. The session on Smart Cities was remarkable for a pithy statement that the speaker made - A Smart City, he reasoned, was nothing but a Smart Network. A network that had the bandwidth, the speed and the robustness to sustain the smart applications that would deliver various government-to-citizen and government-to-government services. What would be some examples of such smart services The 'Deloitte Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) Predictions for India' in 2016 list a host of such expected Smart City services in multiple areas - Energy, Public Utility, Buildings, Transport, ICT, Healthcare, Education and Governance, with Entertainment and Integrated Payment Solutions making up the others. Ranging from the digitisation of records that enable access of central repositories, to applications around safety and surveillance, to smart buildings which help in conserving energy, to the distribution of healthcare and education benefits by serving physically remote locations brought closer via the network, to greater transparency and openness in dealing with public systems - the range and impact of applications that could be facilitated via a high-speed network is significant. Each of these services will need a strong, robust network to withstand the data volume and deliver the right service and data at the right speed and at the right time. Thus, the speed of the network and its reliability will be a key in the plans that the current government has for Smart Cities, and therefore for Digital India, of which Smart Cities is an integral part. In another study that Deloitte did with ASSOCHAM in September 2015, on e-governance and Digital India, one of the key challenges identified to Digital India was data speed. In terms of mobile data speeds, the average speed in India is 0.0099 mbps. India is ranked 20th amongst nations in terms of mobile data speeds, while Canada, the top ranked nation, has average data speed of over 4.5 mbps. Thus, India is almost 500 times slower on the average. All of this points to a clear fact - without an increased speed of the network or success of 4G, the future of Smart Cities will be hard to realise. Apart from the obvious applications in Smart Cities, what other applications could ride on such a high speed network As the Deloitte TMT study in India for 2016 points out, healthcare delivery could be revolutionised by the right applications riding on such a network. According to the report, the Indian Telemedicine market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20 per cent to reach more than Rs 1 billion by FY15 from a base of Rs 500 million in 2010. As part of NEGP (National E-Governance Program) that runs the Mission Mode projects (MMP), the government of India has set up multiple CSCs (Common Service Centres) where a variety of G2C services will be delivered to citizens. Should the speed of the networks be sufficient, this could revolutionise the delivery of primary healthcare in India with such CSCs also serving as the bridge between rural areas and the doctors at the divisional and district hospitals This could also reduce the burden that most city-based hospitals face on the basis of multiple references from the field, as there is a lack of facility and infrastructure in the field. Similar applications could be developed around education where students in remote villages could access the latest tutorials from the likes of Khan Academy or TED talks with the content riding on such networks. Imagine how such a high speed network can be leveraged in a technology and innovation ecosystem to tackle a growing social problem in India - of taking care of old parents living in cities different from where their children are. As India's geriatric population grows, and the concept of a nuclear family with people living with their parents diminishes, managed healthcare could become one of the fastest growing businesses in India, where the doctor comes to a patient instead of the other way around. This will be possible through an ecosystem of technologies such as wearables that the vitals of the patient can convey the data through a high speed network to a central medical centre, where a doctor can then supervise the reports and attend to the patient via immersive augmented reality. This interactive session could then also include the son or daughter living elsewhere, in a consultative environment with the doctor. While the need for direct touch will never go away, it will at least allow elderly people the opportunity to access healthcare services, otherwise difficult with growing age and disability. The significant increase in speed that 4G gives over 3G would also be critical in an ecosystem where there will be an abundance of data, structured and unstructured, flowing in from internal as well as external sources such as social media, consumer and industrial IoT, that will need to be transmitted fast for consumption in various applications such as analytics. Finally, the question of how 4G can be used, boils down to one fundamental issue - in the 21st century, the right to information and therefore the right to infrastructure to deliver that information is almost fundamental across nations. In the absence of this, information asymmetry in which only specific groups of people have access to key information about markets or goods or services, leads to loss or restriction of opportunity for the broader population, thereby leading to market anomalies. That hampers individual and social growth and creates social tension. That is where the power of the network lies - the ability to transform millions of lives by delivering services such as healthcare or education, by setting up Smart City infrastructure, thereby offering everyone an equal opportunity to grow by access to information. That is where the 'Smart' of the Smart City or the Smart Network comes in.

Rajarshi Sengupta is Partner, Deloitte.

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