Are we competitive in the digital space to be a leader and not a follower?

Asoke K Laha, President & MD, Interra Information Technologies

The other day I was listening to a talk by a renowned IT buff, who was ecstatic about the IT revolution that is taking place in India, particularly in recent years. He had his own points and eulogized the brownie points India scored in the last decades or so. He talked about how digital transformation has brought about economic inclusion, how transactions have become easy, how many new accounts have been opened, how rural people are using mobile telephony for their day-to-day transactions, and a lot more.

Undoubtedly, these are feats that every Indian should be proud of. Yet, we have to be circumspect about our achievements to recalibrate our goals to move in the value chain.  First, how much of these achievements are due to our own efforts? Here what I meant was how much we could achieve by deploying our own breakthroughs and discoveries. It is not to belittle ourselves but to set higher targets, much higher than what we have achieved. That only can push us forward and leap us into the unfathomable canvass of technology.

Let us understand first how such digital breakthroughs have become possible. Foremost, I believe is the advancements in mobile telephony that de-mystified how we communicate, how we do business, and how we engage with social media and a lot of other things.  For the uninitiated, mobile telephony breakthroughs are characterized by Gs. Prefixes like 2,3,4,5 etc, denote Generation, thereby meaning the ascending numbers represent innovations over the previous one.

Let me dwell on applications of each generation and how they helped mobile telephony to move in the value chain.  Successive generations bestowed on humanity more facilities not only to communicate but also inducted ease in doing business and transacting deals. Not many can make out when I say Short Message Service was a bye-product of 2G. Many may wonder what it is. It is nothing but the full form of SMS, which has occupied a prime role in our daily life. Across the world, millions are using this facility, which was nothing but an application of 2G.  Not only SMS, multimedia messaging, digitally encrypted voice conversations, efficient use of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum, and a lot more are the spin-offs of the 2G. 

India is reckoned as the third largest digital power in the world, a ubiquitous name to be proud of. But we have to introspect how much we contribute in making these breakthrough innovations happen. What is the role of our universities and higher schools of learning in conducting research on these higher uses of digital technologies to emerge as a technology leader and not a follower? Indeed, we have to cover a long distance to reach that stage and contribute to unveiling such technologies.

While the complete applications of the 3rd and 4th generations are being unbundled in several parts of the world, several companies are working on the 6th and 7th generations. They also acknowledge that the 6th generation (6G) can be launched only by 2030. It will take several years for its applications to permeate to the grassroots. Trials toward 7G will start from that time onwards, although the research is still on to develop that scale of digital networking, frequency, and speed of data transfer.  Why I mention all these is to drive home between the germination of a concept and its rollout; there is a huge time lag. That is the type of planning and investments that are needed in the telecom sector. That is what countries like the US, China, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and South Korea are doing. That is something that we in India are lacking.    

The research to develop 5G had taken place in more than one country involving several researchers and corporations. Amongst the involved in the huge task were Samsung Electronics (South Korea), Huawei Technologies (China), LG (South Korea), Nokia Networks (Finland), Ericsson (Sweden), Qualcomm (US), ZTE Corporation (China), NEC Corporation (Japan), Verizon (US), Orange (France) AT&T (US) and CISCO Systems (US). It is not just striking the technology one day, it was the end result of a long-drawn-out research since 2011, that took collaborations and trials in different countries. All corporations are involved in the research to develop the technology. Research on the application of the technology is still continuing to discern more areas.

Although 6G (sixth-generation wireless) will be rolled out in 2030s, the research is on how to improve upon the 5G in data transfer capability.  6G networks will be able to use higher frequencies than 5G networks and provide substantially higher capacity and much lower latency. One of the goals of the 6G internet is to support one-microsecond latency communications. This is 1,000 times faster -- or 1/1000th the latency -- than one-millisecond throughput.  It is expected to facilitate large improvements in the areas of imaging, presence technology, and location awareness. The technology will have a lot to do with artificial intelligence (AI). It also involves more research on data storage, processing, and sharing. The technology will operate by using signals at the higher end of the radio spectrum. Even though 6G networks are not expected to be operational until at least 2030’s, research has started on seventh-generation (7G) wireless technologies. Device manufacturers are being given design specifications to govern interoperability and performance.7G technology will represent a quantum leap in bandwidth to support ultra-dense workloads. It will have the potential to enable continuous global wireless connectivity via integration in satellite networks for earth imaging, telecom, and navigation. Enterprises could implement 7G to automate manufacturing processes and support applications that require high availability, predictable latency, or guaranteed quality of service.

I have explained all these things in some detail to drive home the importance of research and more importantly, investing in it without expecting any results for years together. Although this awareness is fast catching up in India, we are far below the reckoning in the race, though we proudly announce that we occupy the coveted third position in the pecking order of the most digitized economy. Where do we lag behind? We have to put our brains together to find an answer that can power us to be in the race.

Our first pain point is insignificant research on telecom and for that matter on any other vertical of the industry. Our expenditure on R&D as a ratio of GDP is less than one percent. It is too little. India's research and development (R&D) expenditure-GDP ratio of 0.7% is very low when compared to major economies and is much below the world average of 1.8%. The main reason is the low investment in R&D by the corporate sector. That is not the case elsewhere. In countries where there are major R&D breakthroughs, the involvement of the corporate sector is significant.  Some of the comparative ratios can be examined to see where India stands.

Let me start with China. It spends close to 2.55% of its GDP on R&D, which is estimated to have a GDP of US$ 19.37 trillion. This means a lot of allocation is being made for the R&D in absolute terms, which gives the country a head start.  While R&D expenditure in the EU's business enterprise sector was equivalent to 1.5 % of GDP in 2021, this ratio reached 3.81 % in South Korea, 2.60 % in the United States, 2.57 % in Japan, and 2.14 % in Switzerland.

The other is our mindset about R&D. The National Laboratories, which are doing research on various verticals, most often do it in silos. A researcher suspects sharing his findings with another apprehending that would be copied by someone else. This trend is there in almost every layer of researchers including the top. How to address this problem rests with national laboratories by drawing up guidelines including recognition of people who are doing research monetarily and otherwise. There should be an incentive for them to do research as a team and not as individuals.

Last not the least, attracting the right talents to the research. They should be paid attractive packages to woo them away from mundane work in a bank or a corporate. I often wonder why an IITian goes to a software development center for work. The foremost attraction is salary, perquisites, and stock options. Against this, a researcher gets a pittance. Can we not have a system to recognize and reward people and attract them to hardcore research? Some of the large corporations should have a proper outfit for continuous research and not for availing government tax concessions. They also should realize that R&D is a continuous effort, which can produce results over a long period. I sincerely feel that culture should be deeply ingrained in every system.