Indian telecom industry is in its most exciting phase right now: Gulzar Azad

New Delhi: Google is looking to tap rural markets in India using its Google Station service in partnership with internet service providers, said Gulzar Azad , head of Access Programs at Google India. In an interview with ET’s Danish Khan, Azad discusses the search engine’s broader vision for connecting the unconnected, besides sharing the monetisation strategy. 

Edited excerpts:

What is Google’s vision for connecting people?

Google's vision has always been about bringing in universal accessibility to information. In India, 350 million people are online, but a large part of that population still does not have access to high-speed connectivity, and in that effort we did the RailTel partnership to launch highspeed and scalable Wi-Fi, which has taken off very well. The usage has been 15-20 times of what a person on an average uses on mobile cellular data, which is a great indication about the demand and growth of internet in India. The Wi-Fi ecosystem has been there but it is fragmented and is not built for scale, and thirdly, doesn’t provide good user experience. Current, Wi-Fi networks are slow and don’t provide use cases like streaming and high-speed downloads. We have created a platform, which we want to take to all public venues and enable the similar kind of experiences. This platform, Google Station, has Wi-Fi network management capability and ensures user experience on devices. It also focuses on monetisation to make Wi-Fi self-sustainable, given financial self-sustainability is an important thing for our partners who are internet service providers (ISPs), infrastructure providers, operators and venues.

Does Google see a potential in rural markets?

There are two parts of the population, one is people who are online but they don't experience high-speed connectivity. Then there's the more important need for people who are not online to be connected. We're definitely looking at both the sections.

What is Google India’s monetisation strategy for Google-led Wi-Fi initiatives?

Once the business is well established, business could trigger monetisation, which is why we are very focused converting footfalls to usage, converting usage to important use cases and then use cases, once that's established, the value is very clear to the user, you will then see lot of revenue streams kicking in.

Can you shed light on some monetisation models?

Spectrum is always going to be broadbased with 4G and 3G technologies playing their roles, but there also has to be Wi-Fi and they have to inter-operate in a way that sustainability can come in for ISPs which are setting up Wi-Fi, and capacity can come in for operators who are setting up 3G and 4G. The other revenue stream could be triggered by advertisements or by incentives that sponsors could bring in because the nature of Wi-Fi is also very different, depending on where you are.

What are your views on the Indian telecom industry?

I think you couldn't be in a more exciting phase. We’ve seen this industry evolve from 2006 onwards when there were no smartphones; at that point, Google India used to get less than 2 million searches a day. Today, we get hundreds of millions of searches a day. We've also seen 3G ways go from few millions to 100 million plus, smartphones go from few millions to 200 million. Now, 4G is coming in. A lot of regional ISPs are coming up and they're getting active in the space of providing connectivity to homes. We're also seeing a lot of movement of these ISPs in tier-2 sector. Also, alot of cable operators turn from TV to broadband, that's the third trend and I think that's very interesting. The fourth trend is really Wi-Fi — the government's drive from the top about Wi-Fi.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.