As we delve further, let’s look into the digital ecosystem and innovations, which Airtel emphasised during its Q2 FY23 results. This analysis is in continuation to Airtel Mobile Business Shows Organic Growth. Digital products and services and enterprise use cases play a significant role when the telecom Industry is getting ready for 5G. After all, there is nothing much an end consumer can do with 1 Gbps+ speed, even if telcos market the speeds at the core of everything to promote 5G for customers. While 4G networks facilitated customers to experience wireless broadband, 5G is more of customer experience, service and innovation, if we may say. Most of the core purpose of 5G lies at the telco/network level and for enterprise play.
Trust in the Brand Matters:
After all, the business in the enterprise segment again depends on the trust and track record of the service provider. As a customer, I don’t simply opt for a service when I can’t trust the service provider, and such are the enterprises as well. You will understand the purpose of bringing brand value and trust into the discussion in the topic ahead. Airtel has highlighted a few of its digital services and offerings as its developments, and let us now look into them.
1. Airtel Xsafe:
Safety and security have become an integral part of everyday life. We never know who knocks on our doors or storm into our homes at unexpected times. Of course, there are other sweet personal use cases as well. In such a scenario, a product like Xsafe from the very telco itself feels like ‘Ours’ and secure. Visually Slide: Airtel Xsafe Features and Specifications These cameras are designed to ensure customers are connected to their homes even while they are away, ensuring complete peace of mind. The service has been launched across 40 cities, including Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. So, when security cameras capture everything from our personal lives or surroundings, it definitely matters where the data gets stored (data centres) and with whom. Irrespective of the industry encryption standards labelled by the service provider, these particulars matter for enterprise customers too. Hence, brand trust and track record matter while using certain products and services. So, these products can be tagged and used with peace of mind and trust.
2. Always on IoT Connectivity Solution
We have been hearing about IoT (Internet-of-Things) for many years now. But owing to many constraints and scenarios, the uptake has been slow. But we may see some improvements going forward as part of enterprise use cases. Automatic toll billing and vehicle tracking are essential to use cases, and Airtel’s solution is around the same. Airtel’s “Always on” solution comprises dual profile M2M eSim, which allows an IoT device to always stay connected to a mobile network from different Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in the eSIM and complies with AIS-140 standard.
3. Wynk Music - Wynk Studio
Who doesn’t like music? In fact, it is a therapy for some users, and music lovers always look for new artists and the latest releases across the globe that suits their tastes. We believe that talent needs platforms (no, we are not talking about influencing or promotional), and Wynk Studio enables artists to launch their music and will also partner with them in monetising their music on a host of platforms. Wynk studio is a music distribution ecosystem for independent artists in India and overseas.
4. Cloud Technology and Getting Ready for 5G
Ahead of the 5G service launch, Airtel announced cloud offerings that will fall under Edge Cloud Portfolio and will include Edge CDN. Consumer and Enterprise use cases like OTT delivery, Gaming, Healthcare and Ed-Tech sectors need the caching mechanisms to seamlessly stream and deliver the content onto the users’ devices with reduced latency, costs and load balancing on servers. This is where Airtel Cloud’s Edge content delivery network (CDN) comes into the context, which supports most of the data-demanding use cases, both consumer and enterprise. This offering puts light on the capacity preparedness aspects of the telco with respect to content delivery. We also believe Airtel needs to revamp the customer-facing digital platforms as there is a scope for further improvement in the customer experience segment. That’s it and what we feel about the digital offerings highlighted by the telco during the results.
