COVER STORY 1-2-3…ARE WE HEADING FOR A MONOPOLY? The mobile is the future of computing and he who controls it controls the ecosystem of the future. 5G and its successor technologies will go beyond mobiles and power entire connected cities Sunil Rajguru [email protected]

odi Telstra. Hutch. Spice. S-Tel. . . Virgin. T24. Videocon. MTS. . Telenor. Docomo. . Phew! That’s the long list ofM telecom operators in India which either didn’t take o or went bankrupt or got merged into a larger entity. BSNL is a government white elephant, is in the doldrums and AirTel has not been that consistent with its performances in the last few years. That leaves only one company which has the potential of being the Last Man Standing—Reliance Jio, the newest kid on the block that has captured market share and whose disruption long ago still reverberates in the Indian telecom industry. While there has been economic doom and gloom handset + apps + data pipe. Mukesh Ambani is thanks to the COVID-19 crisis, only one company seems baking the complete cake and not just looking at to be on a spree to acquire money. Recently, Jio has individual ingredients. Years ago, Dhirubhai Ambani picked up a whopping US$10 billion+ from its deals was not just into textiles, but the entire backend of with Facebook, KKR, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners the production process. Mukesh is doing the same and General Atlantic. Here are three things to note… with the mobile ecosystem. 1. Money. Money. Money: The COVID-19 3. Life beyond 4G: The future belongs to Industry economic recession may be in full swing right now 4.0, the Internet of Things (IoTs), Industrial IIoTs, and nobody knows how long it is going to last. But wearable IoTs, connected buildings, connected cars, when things pick up, Jio is the only telecom operator smart factories, collaboration, drones… Connectivity in India which currently has money in its war chest of that sort cannot be sorted by 4G or copper/optical and can go all guns blazing during the economic bre cables but only 5G. It is possible that when upswing. After every recession, usually the market the 5G auctions are nally held after the COVID-19 beats its previous records and rising investments sees recession, Jio may be the only credible bidder for a a slew of new products. You can be sure that Jio has variety of reasons. a long-term gameplan. You can be sure that it will be Till 4G it was mainly about mobiles, but once big. You can be sure that when that happens, the gap you got to 5G and beyond, the scope widens will further widen with its competitors. exponentially. In the future whoever controls 5G and 2. Mobile + Apps = Karlo Duniya Muthi Main: its successor technologies controls not just mobile Facebook is not just Facebook. It’s WhatsApp. It’s telephony, but the entire home-oce-factory- Instagram. It’s Messenger. It’s Oculus. Jio, apart from drone-connected car ecosystem. It won’t be mobile being the market leader in mobile connections is telephony but universal connectivity. We already also JioFi, JioFiber, JioApps and many other things. know who is a frontrunner for dominating that The future belongs to the ecosystem of the mobile impending future.

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