STL Garv

Unleashing the Power of 5G with STL's Multiverse Fibre: The Future of Digital Connectivity

We are moving into the age of 5G and hyperscale data centres.
While the usual capacity at which the fibre works is substantial today, it might not convert into the data demand of tomorrow. This fast-paced digital transformation is a challenge that we take head-on.
STL brings you Multiverse Fibre. As India’s first multicore fibre and cable, this exceptional product packs 4 cores into the same size as that of the existing one. Multiverse boosts 5G technology with high capacity per cell site and quad-core fiber connectivity. Its cutting-edge fiber cables offer 28,000 cores for increased power and speed. Multiverse is also an eco-friendly solution reducing carbon footprint by reducing cable surface area and plastic usage by 75% and 10% respectively.

Revolutionizing Rural Connectivity with Gram Galaxy | Kaj Kulstad

Fibre cable installation in rural as well as remote areas is a challenging task. It requires the de-scaling of knowledge of the people who install these setups to make high-speed internet access available even in the most distant areas.
This video by Kaj Kulstad Gram Galaxy takes you through a step-to-step installation process that has helped fibre optic cable and, ultimately, the high-speed internet reach the remotest areas of India. This installation is uncomplicated so that it can be executed even with comparatively less technological knowledge.
Gram Galaxy, established by STL, aims at fiberising rural areas of India by overcoming specific challenges such as rugged terrains, network economics and deployment speeds and humungous scaling processes. Gram Galaxy uses components such as a comprehensive optic cable suit featuring weather-resistant aerial cables, outdoor distribution retractable cable and accessories and indoor/outdoor last-mile connectivity cables, fibre automation services and an application ecosystem to overcome the above-mentioned challenges.

FTTH Homeworld | The Key Components of Seamless Fiber Installation | Kaj Kulstad | STL

Fibre cannot reach your home with just a single cable. Several components are required to work in sync for the signal, cable, and fibre to reach your home. STL’s FTTH Homeworld brings you a wide variety of components that makes your fibre installation seamless. In this video, Kaj Kulstad walks you through these components including: Micro ODC - The most compact closure in the market, with a capacity of up to 96 splices, an IP68 rating and numerous configurations. CODC - A closure designed to have an easy routing of the fibre. Distribution Boxes - These come with a variety of configurations. Home Termination Box - A well-designed small box that can be configured with adapters or can be used as a pure splicer box. NGBO - A compact box that can distribute cables on different floors in a multi-tiered building.

5G Cosmos | Fiberising Indian Teleco Networks For 5G | STL

As India approaches the much awaited 5G buildouts, telecom operators need to look at fiberisation with a futuristic lens. India's fiberisation will increase to 60 Mn fkm annually, with tower and small cell fiberisation being the big drivers. Despite the intent and capital availability, India's fibre space is constrained by deployment speed and scale. STL brings you 5G Cosmos. This patented solution solves these challenges and connects every tower, small cell and node. The main components of 5G Cosmos include - 5G optical network topology design - The design will deliver a highly competent network with enhanced scalability, bandwidth, and reduced latency. StellarTM Fibre - This bend insensitive fibre, apt for congested 5G topology, minimises data loss and ensures speed through seamless splicing. Celesta intelligently bonded ribbon cables - These high-density cables will reduce installation time and optimise project costs. Plug-and-Play optical devices - STL's Opto-Bolt and Opto-Blaze offer a pre-connectorised, ruggedised Plug-and-play solution, resulting in faster execution and de-skilling of field installations. Automation-led fibre deployment - This technology-led approach offers backhaul fiberisation using robotics and AI-driven field management systems.

Secure Your Critical Infrastructure with STL Sensron+

Critical infrastructure systems and facilities are the backbone of modern society. To ensure the security of these systems, facilities must be fitted with advanced technology solutions. In this video, explore how STL Sensron+ can revolutionize the security of critical infrastructure. With its advanced features, you'll no longer have to worry about your critical systems and facilities being compromised.

Ankit Agarwal - MD, STL | Keynote Speech | IMC '22

At IMC 2022, Ankit Agarwal, Managing Director at STL, talks about India's digital backbone. He shares story of a few start ups that are leveraging 5G technology. Through them he showcases how 5G services are making their way here and impacting human lives.

Manish Kumar Sinha - CMO, STL On Building India's Digital Backbone | IMC '22

Manish Kumar Sinha, CMO at STL, shares his insights on India’s digital divide challenge, the biggest opportunity in the form of digital inclusion, device access to women, and the nuances and hidden elements that will help map the gap and the opportunity.

Ashwini Bakshi | IMC 2022

5G has a lot of potential applications, but digital education should be a priority. Ashwini Bakshi discusses how 5G can be integrated into the lives of ordinary people to raise a digital native generation. He emphasizes the importance of making 5G accessible to everyone.

Dr. Jitendra Balakrishnan at IMC'22

Watch the video as Jitendra Balakrishnan discusses the challenges of laying fiber cables, including lack of approvals, right of way, and permissions that can cause delays. He suggests that fiber should be treated as a utility and that policy changes should be made around it.

Praveen Cherian | IMC22

Praveen Cherian talks about various use cases of 5G. He explains about advantages of using network as a service for mid-market. The flexibility and scalability that 5G network can offer for mid market especially companies tha expand with branch offices across the country.

Fiberization - How are new technologies such as 5G and IOT managed through fiberization?

Hello there folks.Thanks for joining in.So this is part 2 of the Fiberization series that we aredoing as part of STL Tech learning and people who could notwatch the first part,I will suggest going to the link at the bottom of this particularvideo and you know, click the link to see the part one.It was very interesting, people who have seen, thank you for showingso much love and you know, liking the video and all thosethings. In part one if you would recall we discussed aboutthe basics of fiberization and you know different communicationmediums that we have in the world today. Fiber and microwaveand copper and all those things and we compared them along differentparameters say cost and the bandwidth capacity and allthose things and eventually we came to the conclusionthat fibre is the most disruptive medium of technology availableto mankind today. In the second part,we are going to take one step ahead and discuss more aboutthe technology that enables fiberization, right? And how isthis technology helping shape the communication industryaltogether. When people talk about 5G... 4G andyou know 6G coming into the future.How is fiberization related to all of this and we will discussall these things in the video today and there are certaindirectives or you know certain instructions that will comearound for the Telecommunications industry at large because amajor chunk of the communication industry is telecom andyou know, there would be some suggestions, some ideas thatthe Telecommunication industry needs to implement. Now, to do allof this, we have Sudipta Bhaumik with us today. People whohave seen the first part already know about him, people whoare watching this video for the first time, Sudipta Bhaumikis the head of applications and standards engineeringat STL.He has been in the industry for 22 years now, pretty mucha veteranI would say, has more than 40 research publications in hisname and several patents.He has also been a contributing member to Global standardsorganization of optical fibre and Telecommunications. Now,Sudipta thank you so much for joining in. It's been a pleasure to host thevideo with you earlier as well.and it's always a delight to have you with us speaking aboutfiberization, which is I think very core to you know, whatyou do and what you love, so the house is open to you.Thanks Achyut, glad to be here again. Looking forwardto discuss technological aspect of fiberization. The last timearound we discussed about different technologies, right?So you use talked about microwave, you talked about fibre,and you talked about a little bit about the copper infrastructureas well.My first question to you is when I speak to a particularTelecom company or you know, I speak to a particular internetservice provider?I realize that you know, there's just not one technologythat they use to provide internet or connectivity to theirend consumers, right?It's a mix of different technologies that they use.So what is your take on that?How are we managingall of these Technologies together? The Next Generation network,that wireline,wireless, IoT and all multiple technologies are going toco-exist and effective asset utilization will remain a primefocus for all the service providers. All the multiple technologieswill be supported it by a converged backhaul.And of course, it will remain a fibre optic network and thenetwork will be diversed towards the aggregate and the accesslayers. The multiple termination points of multipletechnologies are connected by the fibre optic cable for acommon fibre ring and where it is a cell towers ora small cell or FTTH like home connection or it is a publicor any private enterprises.So the converged topologies will create a need of high fibrecount cables and particularly in the aggregate and theaccess layers.Got it. So when I actually step out of my house, the first thingthat I see is the access essentially and when I go furtherdown the in connectivity path, I see Aggregate and then furtherdown the Intercity Network within a country.I would say as a backhaul or something, right.Yes. Yes. Yeah, absolutely right.So, you know that brings me to my second question and thatis when you say that fibre is such an imperative convergednetwork where all these microwave and fibre and you knowfixed wireless access and all of these things survive or youknow, don't work together to actually provide internet connectivityto the end consumers.What does it mean for the network infrastructure? Especiallygiven the fact that you know, people are gung-ho about 5G.Well, the current capacity of 3G or 4G Tower siteis around1 gbps, but for the 5G service the capacity need to be increasedto a 10 to 20 gbps and the number of cells for 5Gdensification. For example around 50 mbps per user would bealmost 10 times compared to the 4G macro sites andto achieve even a higher data rate like a 1gbps per userusing a millimeter wave kind of a technology and again integrateit with other different Technologies and services like IoT,the number of small cells will be installed every hundred meter,which is currently the 3G is around every ten kilometer or4G is around every two kilometer. Again this each small cellsneed to be connected with the fiber optic cables.There is another also point we should consider here likein the 5G environment, the indoor accessibility or experiencesby the user in the indoor environment.So because of the poor penetration of the high frequencybands used in 5G and outdoor antenna cannot provide 5Gexperience in indoor environment. As most of the mobile data,I think about 85% is consumed indoor and whichis expected to increase in 5G.So an indoor in fiber infrastructure need to be built andit is driving towards a concept called fibre to the ceilingor FTTC see where many indoor antennas connected with opticalfiber cable and provides a very high bandwidth services ina large building like a railway station or a shopping mallsor airports or many large Enterprises.So when you consider say for example, let's consider thecity where you know, we have somewhere around 20,000 peopleliving per square kilometer.let's say that is the density and as a Telco, if I'm a telecomcompany, I see a potential market and I see there are20,000 people living there. And they are prospective customersfor my internet connection or my voice connection.How do you go about planning a fibre network or a fibre infrastructurearound that particular locality?Important point to consider is a deployment costand the right of the way that is ROW because it remains a bigchallenge for the all the Telecom operators or installerif we talk about India that ROW cost is aroundseven million rupees per kilometers in some metrocities. So a futuristic optical fibre cable diployment strategyis the need of the hour.Is it a very straightforward calculation to actually arrivingat the minimum fiber countThat a Telco should have in their network when it comesto a population density of say are 20,000 people per squarekilometer? When we are going to have a specific geographyin mind and you need to have it all the input informations.For example, the population density how many homes needto be connected or is the number of families and also thefamily members, how many large enterprises in the vicinityof that particular area.And what is the kind of a mobile services you wantedto explore and what kind of bandwidth would you like to give to the users inthat particular vicinity, then you can do a rough calculationbased on the bandwidth requirement. whether it is for homeuse, for Enterprise use and for the mobile usage and basedon the different termination pointsfor example, if you talk about home, you have to give a fibreto the home service and the fibre to the home we have tokeep around atleast the one pair of fibre to each andevery home. For enterprise, we have to again, if a couple ofpairs of fibre and small cell, again, you have to give aroundsix pairs of fibre for each and every small cell to createa coverage, around 360 degree coverage.if you have all the informations available with you and you have a whole one kind of network topologywant to establish whether it is a point to multiple pointor point to point or again having a massive MIMOor kind of a millimeter wave technology is for a 5G kind of experiencethen you can calculate how many fibre termination you need to haveand from thatyou can calculate that how many fibre you need to havein a cable, to provide the service for all the terminationpoints. So it will help you to avoid a multiple cable deploymentrather than we can have a one cable which can be terminatedand give a service to any such termination points and users.Thank you so much for that. That was very detailed.Now, when we speak with the telecom companies and what werealize is that you know, everybody says yes fibre formsa major chunk of their capital expenditure plans, major chunkof their network strategy, having a very robust fibre network,but the two most important challenges that they always faceis one, deployment cost of a fibre network is exorbitantlyhigh I think what you spoke about ROW earlier. That is a majorcontributor to that particular deployment cost.The second one is they want to get it done as soon as possible.Now.What is STL doing in this particular space?STL has been developing many innovative solutionsto make fiberization easy and fast. Today, I can discuss fewof those. To start with optical fibre domain, STL launcheda generation optical fibre we called it Stellar, which isbasically a ITU-T G,657,A2 standard compliant ultra bendinsensitive fibre and Stellar is almost 40 timesbend insensitive compared to the traditional G.652.D fiber.So overall Stellar helps in creating a healthy and robustfibre network which is termination friendly and repair resilient.And if we see that this is basically optical fibre domain,if we go to the optical fibre cable space. STL also cameout with an innovative product called Yogalite which isbasically a micro module cable, micro module is a smallerand flexible tube or replacing traditional loose tube.So macro module has many advantages like it's kink free naturewhich eliminates fibre break or the network outrage due tothe tube kink.It can be stored in a smaller space helping in reducing thefootprint of the passive closuresand also in addition is its flexibility is semi drymicro module and can be stripped by just a fingertips and it doesn'tneed any stripping tool and by this way, it helps in reducingfibre end access and mid-span access time by almost 30% andoverall these STL's Yogalite solution helps in first timeright cable deployment. One more solutionI would like to mention here the another innovation happeningin this ribbon technology.to create the compactness of a ribbon cable, which has beena preferred design for high fibre count cableto reduce the splicing time. The ribbon technology is alsoevolving. So STL came out with a new technology called thisIntelligently Bonded Ribbon or IBR technology and in IBRthe adjacent fibres in the ribbon are not bonded along the lengthrather than some specific distinctive locations.That means the ribbons can be rolled over to make a bundlewhich ultimately increase the packing density significantlyand help in reducing the overall diameter of the cable. Forexample diameter of a6912 fibre IBR cable isjust 29 millimeter.Even over 10,000 fibre count cable can be produced withthese technologies.Now when the fibre is coming out at the end of the cablecan we made straight like a traditional flat ribbonAnother new type of ribbon.We called it compact ribbon which is basically a traditionalribbon with 200 micrometer fibre.It can be made with 250 micrometer pitch to splice with thetraditional ribbon. So a compact ribboncable reduces the stack height by almost around 30% anddoes help in reducing the overall diameter of the cable.Thank you so much Sudipta so I understand there's somethingcalled a compact ribbon.There's something called intelligently bonded ribbon, a micro moduleand Stellar fibre. I think essentially what you wantto say is guys.please have optical fiber cables, which are high in fibrecount because you need to have your network future-proof.Thank you so much for that.That was very insightful.Now, you know, I think all these Telecom companies all theseinternet service providers and Communication service providershave a Chief Technology Officer, a Chief Network officerwho decides how the network would evolve at their end, right?and what is their Network strategy going forward.Is there any specific message that you would want to give tothese gentlemen and to be speaking to these CXOs?I will say that a futuristic optical fibre cable deploymentstrategy is the need of the hour, and I'd like to give moreemphasis on three points here. First,Is that the technologies that we're going to use for theirdeep and dense fiberization is to help us to reduce the ROW cost.Where the existing spare ducts and empty spaceof the space ducts will pose challengesto be utilised and the cable and fibre technology to be selected insuch a way that it should help us to reduce ROW cost in deploymentfor deep and dense fiberization. Another pointI want to highlight is that the optical lifetime of the solutionsneeds to be increased to a beyond 25 years and thatcan be achieved by selecting a Next Generation bend insensitivelow loss fibre because optical lifetime remainsanother big challenge for the many Telecom operators in developingcountries, like India.So new technologies when you're going for a deepand dense fiberizationwe need to have a fibre network that's healthy and robust and it will remainover a lifetime.And the last point I would like to add is adoptionof a new technologies. A CTO should be more open to adoption ofnew technologies like ultra high fibre count cables and alsothe customized cables because when you are deploying opticalfiber cable in various geographies is one cable may notbe suitable for all kind of diployment environments.You have to select the cable which is best suited for thatparticular deployment environment and that particular applications.So overall these new technologies will bring many operationalbenefits. For example, it will make the networkrepair resilient, It will reduce the MTTRit will increase the lifespan and also,of course it has to be a compatible with the existing Networkand overall all of these is going to help in that first andeasy deep and dense fiberization.Thank you so much for that Sudipta. I think that was veryinsightful and I think we'll just finish it off over hereand I look forward to doing more such sessions with you.It is always a delight to speak with you on Fiberizationand fibre and optical fibre cable.ThanksAchyut. Yeah sure.We'll discuss again.

Wi-Fi 6 Explained | Technology behind Wi-Fi 6. What does Wi-Fi 6 mean for Network Infrastructure?

What will happen when the two most powerful Wireless Technologies Collide open heart surgeries with 10,000 miles between the surgeon and the patient ten seasons of Friends downloaded within 10 seconds large scale manufacturing that used to take months now takes minutes connect a dizzying array of devices from aircraft to nuclear reactors. Let's hear it from the experts how everyone My name is Sanju Nair. I head marketing for Network Services and software at STL. So Wi-Fi 6 and 5 G are probably the two most talked about connectivity Technologies out there and understandably. So Wi-Fi 6 is already here and 5G will be mainstream very soon. But for many commoners like me and possibly some practitioners. There are still many unanswered questions out there. Let me welcome Sandeep CTO of Network Services and Shantanu Head of Software into this discussion to explore three key aspects of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G coexistence. Do they and how do they complement each other some practical applications and considering their relative strengths? How should I as a practitioner calibrate my Wi-Fi 6 and 5G Investments. So let me get started with you Shantanu does 5G and Wi-Fi 6 complement each other see both of them come from very different technologies. But in the end, what they want is to power millions of IoT devices across the globe transmit incredible amounts of data speeds. We have never experienced before and to ensure that they support multiple new applications and use cases. If you ask me according to me where they converge is there in their ability to provide higher throughput lower latency and higher capacity. That's where we should see. They're converging one of the things that is traditionally linked with Wi-Fi is that Wi-Fi is primarily used for indoor connectivity right. Things like what we call carpeting world while 5G is going to cover not only indoor but very long range outdoor as well wide geography. So that is the kind of difference. So Wi-Fi use cases would be homes, offices, stadium, concert halls and hospitals. So on and so forth. That is where we see Wi-Fi normally. So that sandip are you saying that Wi-Fi is more for an indoor application and 5G for both indoor and Outdoors? Yes, I would say one way, but they are going to co-exist right? So there are other considerations, right. Wi-Fi is much easier to deploy as much simpler and has less expense in beginning. But I think the point is it is about experience both Wi-Fi 6 and 5G will coexist in different use case and they will provide that seamless ubiquitous experience. Think about it like you are in a coffee shop or in a hospital enjoying huge benefits of throughput and latency and speed on Wi-Fi and then you step out and you get very very similar experience in 5G seamlesly. So which is something that we can't say that we get it right now from LTE and Wi-Fi 5. So key thing here is they will co-exist and they provide a seamless ubiquitous user experience. That is how they are converging. So then we are seeing that Wi-Fi 6 and 5G complement each other and that there is a seamlessness between the two which delivers an experience right. Now then what would you think? Let's say a relative Merit of or relative capability strength of Wi-Fi 6 over 5G and for that matter the other way around 5G over Wi-Fi, what would you say are those relative differences? Yeah. So a couple of things one is Wi-Fi 6 obviously has much lesser cost structure in the sense, right. Like look at APM 5G comes out with large capex infrastructure spend in to begin with whether it is Spectrum with other things, right. Wi-Fi 6 is much simpler to consume may be using it for a while and there are applications. Use cases are already there while 5G is basically changes the Paradigm in different ways in terms of RF enhancement, in terms of the desired location, in terms of customizable networks with network slicing. It opens up huge net new use cases that are not only in the business to B2C but also on B2B side in IoT and other things as well. So both have their relative advantages and disadvantages depending on the use case, they will both co-exist in the marketplace. Right. and you know, at the end we need to understand that whatever said and done Wi-Fi has a lower cost to deploy maintain and scale and because of this it will remain and continue to the predominant choice for homes across the globe and let's say most of the Enterprise where multiple users need to connect to different access points. First of all it you know in Wi-Fi environment. The device is consumed less power, it uses unlicensed spectrum. So this gives us much more advantage to roll over Wi-Fi in places like homes and Enterprise so yeah they're going to work in tandem both of them as Sandip says. Basically, they are completely to support a wide variety of use cases across different Industries, different environments is the highlight that we have to look forward to. Right. I mean you know, why we spoke about 5G homes and Enterprise let's not forget that you know, when we're talking about in the coming times the connected cars, the smart city deployments and large manufacturing operations there 5G will definitely play a role. So think about it how they complement each other, you know, while homes and smaller enterprises go with Wi-Fi 6 the long-range connected cars and mission-critical. Let's say the factories or hospitals or some something like that will play with 5G. Both these technologies have evolved over their previous generations, right? So, can we just can we talk about how did progressively they evolved to address such a wide variety of use cases if you think about the 1980s we have you know 1G, right and that was just pure voice Base then came 2G and then we got the Mobile roaming in then we finally had 3G and it was Data capable and that was very big thing. In 4G LTE it gave us not only higher speed but also a virtualized infrastructure provide that kind of agility that really spun up huge amount of mobile Revolution. So to speak but 5G takes it a step further it not only enhances the radio with terms of spectrum and the speed and capacity and coverage that you get the with higher speed and the lowest possible latency. so it definitely has that kind of enhancements but it also has huge virtualized disaggregated software infrastructure you know talk about SDN and NFV and cloudification of infrastructure that is built into 5G and then the ability to have because of this infrastructure and RF enhancement ability to have customizable networks based on different. Let's say latency and coverage and capacity profile. You could have a network slice supporting a particular type of Enterprise and other networks slice supporting different type of Enterprise. So this basically opens up huge huge opportunity and generate net new Revenue generating use cases for not only telcos but various other type of Providers. So from 1G to 5G there is quantum leap as we see in terms of technology evolution. if I talk about Wi-Fi Sanju it's like this, you know, if you want to compare it or give an analogy like a boy Schoolboy from 97 to now this boy is from 25 to 22 year old now while at a certain point of time, it was restricted to our homes and our four walls. This boy is really grown much outwards to cafes airports hotels small stadium Hospital. So it has really the reach of Wi-Fi has gone much larger if you think about it in 97 when we started with 802.11 how that was how it was known and now we are talking about 802.11 ax which is basically Wi-Fi 6 the standards have really gone you up from where they were right in terms of the speed in terms of how it can work in tandem. What is the air time? What is the demand that is going on? How many users can connect can Wi-Fi be there to power the IoT in homes and offices ensuring that there is complete connectedness leading to a simpler. For humans, this is what the Wi-Fi 6 is all here towards it's essentially to eliminate some of the issues that what we had during the previous generation Wi-Fi like Network traffic jams, inconsistent performance or congestion and everything and the way we have gone ahead with Wi-Fi 6 all these things have been taken care with standards with technology and with the new radios and other things that we are talking about. This has really gone to the next level That's what I could say about evolution. What a journey that you described here shantanu. But i have to ask you this considering your deep understanding of this evolution. What are those real world Practical Next Generation applications are use cases that you're looking forward to so if I look at 5G, okay, let's see the Spectrum diversity. that 5G has come up instead of 4G, right? We are talking 5G right from low, mid, high all the ranges that we are talking about if you're talking about a real Industrial Automation you're talking about when you're on the move and you want to watch 8K video which You going to watch like if you want to have AR, VR experience you want to have a remote learning in some remote location. You want to have virtual classroom with hundreds of students will connect across the world. You want telemedicine you want to ensure that there are certain complexes which are doing life-saving surgeries and you want to power them the hospital's you want to monitor patients from thousands of miles away. What do you use will still use 5G right in the long term. You can imagine factories being run without any human intervention. Of course with convergence of Technology like Ai and Robotics and the power of 5G all this is going to be really something that we can look in very near future the whole virtual Marketplace that we're talking about is just around the corner. So when it comes to unlocking the full potential that's why she has to offer the use cases are immense its left complete to your imagination how they will evolve because the whole concept of 5G is made based on use cases rather than the other way around when we talk about the indoor space. let's say a stadium and then there could be an option of really what is the best scenario from cause storage capacity latency perspective in that area. Right and that's where they're both going to complement and that's true with respect to a lot of IoT massive machine learning type of environment. So there would be some commonalities but I think the key thing is we come to the same thing is depending on the use case. They are going to complement augment each other and depending on the cost and other areas Readiness people are The tools whatever is right for them, either one or two or four depending on what is their end objective on what is the state of readiness and what is their end objective. what is the state of readiness and what is their need. So Sandeep and Shantanu if I understand we're seeing that there is nice seamlessness between the two technologies Wi-Fi and 5G and they have all the capabilities to support a variety of use cases across Industries across implementation scenarios and the way they stand out. What are the Complementary nature stands out these by way of delivering that experience is that experience the main highlight that we focus on whether we are talking about experiencing consumers businesses or large Enterprises. The only focus of these both Technologies is about the experience that they will deliver. Ok And that's exactly the point of convergence of both these Technologies how they function right while on one hand Wi-Fi 6 is made as Sandeep rightly pointed out in the beginning is for home. Enclosed spaces and now the space is of course a much bigger. He's talking about stadiums and other things and when we talk about 5G, we are talking about really really large one here talking about connected cars and all those things why we are talking about because in the end we want the consumer whether it's the retail consumer and individual the business or a large Enterprise. They have a great experience of connectivity latency and throughput or capacity as we said, that's the point of convergence I would say. Now, let's just switch gears and talk about Some real business perspectives here. So, you know, in organizations make long-term bets on long-term investment strategies, right? So even this complementary nature of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G are their considerations or recalibrations to their those investment strategies needed to be kept in mind. Oh, Yes absolutely Sanju see 5G does require fully converge ecosystem and that basically whether it on RAN side, on the code side, on the application side. right on the virtualization side, physical side. You also need a reasonably priced Spectrum, right? In there is an additional need of how do you deep fiberization whether it is on the front hall or the back hall. All of these are still needed for 5G to really be fully available. In fact, it is still evolving as a technology as well 3GPP release16 standard was just released... a couple of weeks back. So there is an element of a lot of infrastructure capex requirement. and there's an element of readiness and evolution in technology that is going on. So those are very very valid consideration from people are considering what use case to use and when. This whole shift to digital is not just becoming permanent. I would say it is as good as permanent, you know, multiple organizations will start building a lot of Wi-Fi 6 use cases 5G use cases and we have been talking about the convergence we have talking about how they will complement to each other and to understand that one of Most important thing is that any CSP we go with most likely both these because we want as we spoke about this user experience. The thing is about how intelligently you are doing that offloading how intelligently you are changing from Wi-Fi seamlessly from Wi-Fi 6 to let's say LTE or 5G or vice a versa. That's how the real benefit will come because you cannot stay on one big if the experience is not great. You need to have more understand that how you move from one technology to other without a user really the standing that there is a change of technology behind the curtains and that's will be the real experience that will be delivered which will really deliver umpteen monetization opportunities for as we conclude one question to both of you and we went and we know what you are thoughts are on the transformational impact complementary nature of the technology will leave on the world. Let me take that first because one more thing I wanted to mention is STL play it we do have very strong play. In the 5G specifically in we have our own open disaggregated and fully virtualized CUDU platform that is aligned with ORAN standards. We also have a supporting RU's We have RU supporting small set and mecro deployments of 5G. So we are really really ready for 5G deployment I mean that said I believe and I'm sure Shantanu agrees with me is that we are getting to a place where this connectivity underline connectivity Wi-Fi 6 or 5G or anything else is going to be everywhere. It will be all-encompassing experience. That is the future that is being made possible by this convergence as I see it. And in fact, if I look at the numbers of Wi-Fi what we are talking about in a couple of years from now, we are talking of something like 628 million hotspots across the world. So today if I have 10 devices my house which are connected. I know that just in a couple of months or year I'm talking about let's say a year and a half from now. I'll have at least 30 to 40 devices which are connected and all of those will be under the blanket of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6 possibly so that everything we touch your feel will be connected and this is really going to be attributed largely not only to Wi-Fi 6 but in the bigger system of things the convergence of 5G and Wi-Fi 6 and there wouldn't be any latency issue. You wouldn't see something's moving on your screen while you are waiting for something to download on a Any device anywhere and it will be a Wonderful World. Hopefully absolutely so that's it folks. Thank you Shantanu and Sandeep for the wonderful conversation and insights. I really enjoyed the conversation. So as we saw 5G and W-Fi 6 are extremely complementary nature Wi-Fi 6 continues to build on the free Spectrum delivers incremental advantages over the previous generation in terms of speed latency is cheaper to deploy and is compatible with a wide variety of devices while 5G built on small cell thumbs everything. It's in terms of speed latency and range and supports a wide variety of use cases and Industry scenarios. Now most importantly though. They coexist seamlessly and can provide a different level of experience for consumers and STL with our Wi-Fi Suite of offerings and specific 5G products in CU, DU, and RU that exactly is our focus and with that, we conclude this edition of this Techtalk. Thank you.

Wi-Fi 6 Explained | Technology behind Wi-Fi 6. What does Wi-Fi 6 mean for Network Infrastructure?

STLerCAST: Episode 5 | World-class Digital Network Integrator

WiFi 6 Explained | What is WiFi 6? What makes it different?stl

This time around we are going a little bit Wireless. We're talking about Wi-Fi. Now you must be wondering why we talk about Wi-Fi. Everyone has been doing Wi-Fi for ages. You know you have Wi-Fi I have Wi-Fi all of us have Wi-Fi but what exactly is Wi-Fi and has Wi-Fi been the same for the last years or is it changing? To answer these questions we have today with us Shantanu Kulkarni. Shantanu is the head of Technology. Software division of STL and he has been passionate about Wireless G Wi-Fi for a couple of decades. Welcome Shantanu and hoping to have a conversation with you about Wi-Fi . Thank you so much. Manish it's a pleasure to talk to you on this Friday evening. The whole topic is something that I love so it's going to be a good conversation so I'm looking forward. Perfect! So you know Shantanu we have been doing a lot of things on Wi-Fi for a quite some time. And the question I have for you is why should we really care about by Phi these days you know we have G. I hear G's coming you know all of this is going to be there and it's going to be fabulous. So why Wi-Fi? Yeah you know manage the very fact is that right now both of us are talking on Wi-Fi. So that's that's something we should care about and you know what you feel that you breathe in oxygen. I will tell you something you breathe in somebody's data always. You will be always under some kind of data blanket. There is always some numbers flying around us. If you are under four walls for any two walls you are at home You are at hotel You are at mall you are airport You are in television World somewhere right? You will be under the Radars of WiFi. Maybe while traveling or commuting for some time there would be some spots where you if you are breaking on some low hogarth forts or somewhere you might not have probably but otherwise most most of the places you will be under the blanket of WiFi. That is a very very important reason for us to take care. I'll tell you something. You know what it's a matter of something. I'll tell you around to months maybe months Manish that Wi-Fi will be having around % of all the IP traffic. It will be traveling on WI-Fi. More than half of internet traffic will be on Wi-Fi. That's very conservatively speaking and I'm talking about you know in a couple of years guessing about some there will be more than and something like million Wi-Fi spots across the globe. Now Imagine. Will you find a space where you are not under the Wi-Fi coverage? Literally one Wi-Fi hotspot for every people in the world? Exactly. I mean imagine.. imagine that. Imagine that.... that's crazy... I mean the the size and the the coverage speed which it is increasing is multifold like you know like percent increase in public Wi-Fi that you will receive and the speed at which it goes which it will give you finally has four times the speed that you're getting. So it's going to be very very exciting times and it is soon going to be the de facto channel or rather it is already the way we are talking the way we are in this whole new normal Wi-Fi will and is already the de-facto channel. That's interesting. I had no idea that Wi-Fi is dominant not just one of those things that we have at our home but this number of why high being one for every people out there... That's crazy. I actually you know last time when we were just talking outside I kept hearing you mention wi-fi . Now that's actually interesting because you know I haven't heard of a number associated with WI-Fi all the time you know it sounds to me like Wi-Fi is getting into a new generation. But what's happening with Wi-Fi. What is this wi-fi that we we have been started to talking about? You know... these tech people especially the people who are making Standards they have a habit of making everything very cryptic. I mean imagine before Wi-Fi your Wi-Fi predecessor let's call it something as Wi-Fi it was called . AC. I don't know why at certain point of time. So even though this is called . AX they came out with calling it much simpler Wi-Fi and when they say that the previous one is Wi-Fi WI-Fi- and so on forth... Okay. So Wi-Fi is a new generation of wi-fi. What's special about this generation? Yes so it's one that it gives more of what you need. So you need what you need more data. You will need data faster. You need data when you want. So it does all those things much hostile. But you know it's not just about data being faster in Manish. It has the way has done is what makes a difference. So on one hand if I tell you that it is times faster and has times capacity. If you look you know all the promises that all all the operators have made about Wi-Fi in the previous times they were always more theoretical. So if they say that we will give you this Wi-Fi speed. It was always subject What is the quality of your router in your homes? What is the quality of your mobile device? What is the quality of your laptop? And what is interference? Does your neighbor have similar Wi-Fi channel is interfering. But what is Wi-Fi six guys have done is they have really taken some things from a very different engineering perspective. So all of them was to have a huge efficiency. Now while having efficiency they have really come with a lot of very very powerful use cases. I'll tell you you know last time tell me when did you watch any video Manish on Netflix or anywhere which was not HD. Oh yeah. I actually think everything is HD now. Everything. So yeah I mean there are times when you get poor quality reception but they are trying to send HD. Right and I'm sure that in some time you're going to go for this K and at this stuff like. Yeah it's fabulous... I mean I've seen it. I've actually seen Ks It's amazing. So all this HD quality streaming and we are we are we are talking about as really gone not just a notch hyper new level with my concerns. There's a lot of seamless experience and we'll talk about it once you know we could get into a bit of deeper discussion. How Wi-Fi looks at creating a completely new chapter in user experience. It's not just about having speed or efficiency or something. It's a new user experience. Plus it talks about one very important thing. The average number of devices Manish in your home. I'm sure you have at least devices which are connected. I'm sure that you have Manish gone to watch an IPL match or a football match sometime. Right? In the stadium Live stadium. Have you tried to record a video and try to send it to your friend? In those environments? Honestly I have not but I have heard that it's very difficult. It's just chokes up. The congestion is so high you just cannot do that. And now not only that you know the kind of devices. I'm talking about in a household if there are devices. Each competing for that Wi-Fi attention from the router is practically impossible to do that with the previous generation of Wi-Fi for the one which we are having currently. So all these things is taken care by Wi-Fi and hence it becomes something so powerful. See what are you saying is that with the quality and the capacity and the experience? The efficiency the ability to handle dense environments and new devices and all of this being done securely. This Wi-Fi thing is actually pretty disruptive. I mean it's not just a little jump from the you know that . AC or whatever it was but it's a massive jump... Would you say it's very disruptive. Absolutely it's completely disruptive and you know the things that we spoke about this wi-fi does Manish is that if you have five devices you have let's say a small device which is just connected for let's say you have a security system which is just going to say that there is some movement in the house versus you are watching a K video. The kind of attention the router today gives and the kind of channel it gives is similar but this one comes is with a lot of intelligence. It knows how much attention to give who's more data hungry who's less data hungry. One place you are having increased network capacity and high throughput. You're talking about ...I didn't speak out that to your efficiency. Let me speak about that as well. So what happens is WI-Fi comes at the very very important feature. As you know you were talking about disruptive is a good word for it. One of the major reasons that any device is actually drain of battery because they're always trying to connect to a router or they are trying to get the attention of failure point an access point to get connected. I think it's super disruptive you know the kind of impact it's going to have on your home Wi-Fi your e-learning your enterprises... your transportation hubs. Either a public Wi-Fi is going to completely change when you go to a mall today the kind of experience you have currently versus what Wi-Fi promises is of a different level. The stadium and venues... and all these things is really going to be a big differently.. Right? Okay. It's amazing what you talk about the power management that will be very useful. I... for one keep hitting my phone going out of battery but you are right.. when you think of devices in factories you don't want to be charged all the time. That that might be its killer app actually... You did you did say about how it handles congestion and this next generation of Wi-Fi it's actually working on so many of these things that it's getting better at. Thanks for sharing this high-level simplified perspective about Wi-Fi with us Shantanu. In the next time when we will catch up with you we'd love to hear from you a little bit more detailed perspective a little bit more technical and how this impacts the industry? So looking forward to catching up with you again Shantanu. Thank you Manish and it's been a pleasure and looking forward to the next one.

STL TechTalk | Edge Computing Episode 2 | All Things Tech

As the Edge Computing adoption increases, it becomes really important to understand the relevance of Compute Power and Scale built on a robust Network Infrastructure. This becomes a key backbone for running applications on the Edge. Hi, there. I'm Manish Sinha. CMO at STL, Sterlite Technologies. Today, we have with us Sandeep Dhingra, who is been a technologist with IBM and Cisco and now he is the Chief Technology Officer at the network services and software business at STL. I would love to know, as a Technologist, What do you think about running the Edge? How do you think of managing applications on the Edge, on the data center Cloud? Where is everything being run, what exactly is the place that is called the Edge? That is a very interesting, very important question Manish. I think first thing before I answer that question, You also have to understand that Edge in isolation means nothing. Edge without a back-end data center or cloud is Edge of nothing.Right. That doesn't make any sense. So, whenever we talk about Edge, we have to think about in a complete topology where it has Data Center and the Cloud and something connected in here, right, now think of those as workloads for compute. They can run on the Edge. Some of them can run on multiple different Cloud. Some of them can run on on frame Data Center. So now there is what should run on Edge. These things have to be automated, these things have to be orchestrated because the sheer scale and time required, you cannot just do it man. You have to think about geolocation, you have to think about latency, you have to think about the amount of bandwidth, you have to think about the data localization. So, you have to think about you know, in terms of, What is the compute power that is available locally at the Edge. So, Sandeep you just talked to us about how the Edge is actually the Edge of large Computing backhand and how it is changing the way you know, data centers will be operating. What I think is it's changing the network infrastructure. Right. And what does it really do to the job of the network infrastructure designer? How does it really change or impact the Network Infrastructure? Very very good question again Manish. I mean this is actually even closer to my heart. I am from networking background. So, fundamentally, there are four things. If I characterize that number one is, you're adding a huge amount of new locations, you know, call it Micro Data Centers, different type of Edge, so different type of sizes and types of data center. So, adding huge number of new locations that need to be, that is number one, that impact on network. Second thing is when you connect all of these new things and with huge number of things you cannot manage such large number of devices in a physical way, it needs to be virtual. right. It needs to have things like automation and zero-touch provisioning. The third thing is the SDN and NFV is required to make it happen. The fourth thing is, now the security changes as well as the topology and architecture and dynamism of computing changes, security need to be also distributed and granular and it needs to be software driven. So, these are the four fundamental things that are changing in the network. It's almost like the entire network is getting impacted. I mean it in a very positive sense that every different aspect of the network whether it is the hardware, the software, the networking between them. All of them are actually elevating. My guess is all of this will also impact how Telcos designed their networks and how they are actually working with providing connectivity and data center services. How are Telcos changing their approach with Edge Computing? It's dramatic, dramatically again a very good question, Manish. See what's happening is, in the Telco world, it is the term that is called, used is multi-access Edge Compute. That basically is revolutionizing the access network both on the fibre side, wired side as well as the wireless side in the mobility side. Now with 5G coming in, this is changing the Edge also dramatically, in there are a lot of things that are happening in the multi-access Edge space to make sure that Telcos can generate more money, make use of the huge number of use cases that are coming, number of new applications that are going to be run, they have seen huge huge opportunity, and this is already being deployed. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us Sandeep and looking forward to meeting you at the Edge. Thank you. Manish, I have to say we are on the Edge of a revolution. Thank you, Manish, thanks for having me. Thank you so much.

STL TechTalk | Edge Computing | All Things Tech

Hi there. I'm Manish Sinha, the CMO at STL, Sterlite Technologies and today we talk about something that all of us know a little bit about and most of us want to know a lot more about. What is it? Edge Compute. Well...I'm sure you've heard the term and if you're watching this video on LinkedIn or twitter or any time when you watch videos on Netflix or Amazon Prime or whatever is your favorite streaming service, you know, you're getting it from something from a server that's not too far away. They are sending the stuff close to you. They are sending the things that you need for your internet experience close to the edge. That's the Basic understanding, but how about we try to dive into it a little bit more. Today we have with us Sandeep Dhingra who has been a technologist with IBM and Cisco and now he is the Chief Technology officer at the Netflix services and software business at STL. Welcome Sandeep. Thank You Manish! Glad to be here and I believe you have described Edge pretty well. So one of the things that I actually want to start with Sandeep, you know, why should we care about Edge Computing? Very good question, right and especially during the time when there's a lot of hype around it. So I will say three things, number one It is a major generational architecture shift, right. The 2nd it is essential for the key revolution that is going on in the digital infrastructure called Internet of Things. It is not IoT, but there are huge number of use cases which will be enabled by Egde Compute. So, for these three things it is very important. So, let me talk about it. What do I mean by architectural shift? If you look at in 1960s, we had this big mainframes, right? We had all the terminals we connect to i.e. the standard centralized model, right? And then in 80s kind of everything was upside down and we moved to a client-server model and the AS400 version and you know Oracle servers. These were the type of things that were Kings... and then in 2000 and again, we took a turn and we started Cloud Computing. Now Cloud Computing is you know it was a large-scale model, shared infrastructure across this thing, but it is centralized. Now you have seen how it has revolutionized IT and technology in itself. But now, we realize when the IoT came, we realize that you know, everything cannot be and must not be run in the cloud, i.e. centralized model. So, then what did we do in Edge Computing, cloud moves to the edge, the computing moves to the Edge, but now it completes the circle. Now if you look at IDC, they have displayed it very nicely. It is really a generational shift that is completing the full technology cycle from centralized to distributed combined. So that is about the architecture shift. Now, there are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 billions of devices are going to be connected in future. But the point is a huge amount of data will not only be created at the Edge, but it will be processed, needed to be computed and processed at the edge and by some estimates we are talking about 45 to 50 percent of overall data that needs to be processed at the edge. So that is what is changing. That is why we should care. That is very very interesting and thanks for taking us through the journey, but two things that really popped out to me is that this whole thing of Edge Computing has been here for nearly two decades and also that way soon it will take over 40 to 50 percent of the things that we are Computing But one thing that I would love to know from you is what exactly is Edge Computing? You're right. So, there is lot of confusion about Edge, right? So, first thing that we realize that the users, the devices like cell phones, your laptop, your sensors, your robotic arms, your army tanks, potentially these things connect. That is the physical location is called Edge. Now if you talk about Edge Computing, Edge Computing is nothing but computing happening on the edge, that basically a topology element. So, compute can happen at the cloud at the data center. This gives me about you know, what is happening at the edge. Now cloud computing is really a style of computing that basically, provides you, shared infrastructure, the resource elasticity, you can up and down, you can provide through a platform provides like horizontal scale, it provides you catalog pay-as-you go model. So, these are the basic style of computing. When you create the style of computing to edge of the network. You can call it Edge cloud or cloud model. Thanks for telling us a little bit about what exactly it is and I think the differentiation between Edge and Computing on the edge and the cloud, all of that really helps. If you can help us understand, why is Edge Compute so disruptive? What is it fundamentally changing? Let's say like, what does Edge Computing do? Right. Let's say if you do this amount of compute of work at the edge of the network where things are connecting. So, it does provide three things. Number one. It provides a very low latency that enables lots of applications. That would not have been possible otherwise. Then it ensures when you have huge amount of data that is being generated that does not need to be sent back to the cloud or data center. Third. There is, it helps keep the data local. If there was no compute at the edge and computation was necessary to make decisions, Then, the data would have to be inevitably sent to a data center or cloud but with edge compute, with local processing, we can keep the data local. These three things are enabled by The Edge that basically makes it possible for thousands of net new applications to be run and new use cases form that a new efficiencies and productivity in, you know hundreds of different verticals in sectors. That is why it is disruptive. Yeah, it is very interesting. Thousands of new applications running but you actually mentioned something that probably is a very simple word in the way technologists understand, but I wanted to understand it in a more simpler way, which is latency. What is really latency mean and you know, what are some of the reasons and why do we care too much about it? Really, literally it means time it takes for you know, information or packet from point A to point B, right? So, typically it is an Intense of basic and so, but what is happening with IoT is there is a lot of machine-to-machine communication. So, at machine scale, the machines when we talk there, we talking microseconds, right? Let's say if there is a gas pump in a refinery that is monitoring a pressure that needs to be shut quickly without human and human intervention and you know, lots of these things can be adjusted now that requires ultra-low latency. Very very low latency. The latency in human scale and human applications is different than in machine scale, human scale it is tens of milliseconds in machine scale, it is under 10, under 1 and sometimes in microseconds. Anything else that you think is making it imperative for the Edge compute to become important? So yes, there are other things, one is the sheer amount of data, right. When you have millions of sensors or you have you know, 8K streaming surveillance videos, that data you don’t want to send it because it is costly to send data. So, just the bandwidth and data is another one, right. And then there are scenarios where you know, you need autonomy. That is, you need Cloud, but you need to have most of their first just to be able to run if there is no Cloud. You basically use cloud only to send let's say, data for further analysis or you send for training your machine learning models. In the case of let's say a hospital or a military outpost, where you still make everything, needs to work properly and then you have the privacy and security for data localization. So, these are the key imperatives that you know, make Edge Computing really important and critical. On the other hand, Sandeep. We also know that Edge Computing ranges from a lot of different use cases. Right. Maybe you talked about machine-to-machine, there is a wide range of things, I also hear that, it's extremely important for Edge Computing to be at its best for things like connected cars and autonomous vehicles. What is happening there? Why is that important? So, there are two majors. One with the edge does not have any impact like whatever we are doing now, If I am doing a web application. It's running without the edge, I am fine. But some applications get enhanced with the edge that you touch in the beginning, right? But then applications that are really... make use of Edge in a super enhanced way that is where we talk about like say high definition video surveillance from 4K 8K video streams. But the real difference that comes where there are applications that cannot run without the edge, that are called edge native applications. There is no way they can run without the edge, and autonomous cars you mentioned, vehicles you mentioned, is one such example. One use case that is also very important is Telco space, its called multi-access Edge compute. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us Sandeep and looking forward to meeting you at the edge. Thank you Manish, I have to say we are on the Edge of a revolution. Thank you, Manish thanks for having me. Thanks so much.

STLer Cast: Episode 1 | Transforming Everyday Lives During COVID19 Pandemic

Hello everyone. We are in conversation today with Akanksha Sharma who heads the corporate social responsibility for us at STL and we are talking to her about all the good work that her team is doing. Welcome to the show here Akanksha. Would you want to tell us a little bit about what you and your team are doing? And why are you choosing to do some of the things. I think this is definitely one of the most unprecedented times that the entire human race is witnessing and perhaps we are witnessing in our lifetimes and it's a really tough situation for the community and we're really trying to build some resilience out there with the people, especially the daily wage workers and bunch of peoples who are left stranded on the streets. The entire team and I'm very proud to see this when I'm speaking that... and there have been a lot of logistic issues when doing these arrangements because most of these places as you would know are quite remote and NGOs are not ready to go there most of the time. So it's definitely difficult time and but we are trying our best. So what are the core things that you are doing with your team? And how are you actually making sure that you're getting things done on the field? Yeah, so we started with a holistic plan that we developed for the community response looking at the needs of the people who are there in the community and trying to support the front line workers in health and the police department and provide them with the PPEs, the equipments, the gloves and the masks and also the ventilators to most of the government hospitals because we are getting numerous requests and most of the hospitals do not have even a single ventilator in the rural areas. And I think everybody is going beyond the Call of the Duty to enable this entire support system. So any people from within or from outside of you know, your own teams that you would like to share some stories about what they have been doing how they've been making an impact and also coming up with ideas in such an interesting time? You know Manish It's so interesting that you ask this because people not only who belong to the company but also outside they are coming up as invisible Heroes and my entire team I think we all were awake and made sure the supplies reached to the local loborers out there. The support of the Maharashtra Cops, Maharashtra Administration, CM task force. So I think what this crisis is also telling us and teaching us is a unique way to collaborate and develop solidarity at all levels, which is amazing. I mean, the spirit of those each individual is really inspiring. Yeah, absolutely. It's an interesting time for us to all stand with each other. But at the same time it is also not just everyone who does it. Some people do start the shine. Some people do take responsibilities, some stories actually show how you know normal people can become heros. So any story that you would want to relate or anyone you want to...? Sure so we have Shambhavi here and you know, she leads our women empowerment program. Shambhavi would you like to speak about how women are responding to this from the community? They are so proactive the moment like we received this request of making masks 10 days back around evening and which is floated a WhatsApp message that we have to make masks at our Jeevan Jyoti centers, and I we understand that this the crisis time and lockdown period and you guys won't be able to come because in rural things are different... little challenging. There are certain other problems, family problems involved and we are ready to work from home as well. So likewise we gathered around ten women, two however two were working from Center and while eight were working from their respective homes and slowly we got permission for three more women. So it was something like, you know entire family like this crisis was all about uniting people and how we park all our differences, everything aside and be united together for this cause. So that was definitely very overwhelming for me as a team. And of course a wonderful experience for me... Loutte anything else you would want to share that would be... all our colleagues would love to know about? Yeah, so we had quite a few contract laborers in places like Gadchiroli, Lakshadweep, Andaman where the regular NGO we were looking at helping us with food distribution wasn't operating because local authorities and taken over or ships with supplies had been stopped. Even you know in the absence of the NGO operating, their contractors as well as reaching out to their caterer contacts and you know, helping who will provide food for these laborers. We missed a little bit of what you said there but it seems like you were able to provide food to a lot of contractors in different parts... It's more about...What she said is that just we have also been instrumental at some of the really remote locations and they have been..... every place had unique challenges Manish for example... There were no food in Andaman. We somehow really coordinated with the District administration out there and being a UT It had its own challenges and coordinating with them then same is with Lakshadweep because STL operates incidentally at some really remote places. You mentioned Lakshadweep, Andaman, You mentioned Gadchiroli... This is literally, you know, we are standing with people in all parts of the country. Right? It's really commendable job. What are some of the things that you are learning through this experience that you would like to make sure that you are better at handling these things in the future. What.... how are we becoming better at doing this? One thing which I would really like to highlight and I have deeply realized it myself that STL stands for transforming everyday living. And we don't just stand by it at during normal course of business, but even during such times of Crisis which which are unique and once in a lifetime, I think that makes this Spirit of STLer in a unique way and I'm really very proud of that. The team here is actually showing the way not just by working together from within the company but also by working with cops and healthcare workers and sometimes the people that we have been helping our people that are helping us back. That is the community that we are seeing and it's so great to hear your stories and we will be sharing this with folks across the company. Keep up the good work and let's be in touch.

The Future of Business Models

JuhiHajela: The current situation has brought many long-lasting changesfor businesses. Digital transformation is moving ahead infull steam.These changes are having large impact on the waywe run our businesses.What does this mean for local manufacturing?Is this going to increase local employment?What about unmanned processes?What about global supply chains? We've been discussing some of these questions with Dr.Anand Agarwal, Group CEO of STL in this show. Anand Agarwal: Hi, Juhi. JH: The big news on the front of business technology is RelianceJio attracting an investment of over 10 Billion dollars(At the time of interview recording) injust about a month.They will be launching innovative digital platforms at scalelike JioMart with WhatsApp payments. In this contextwhat do you think is the future for large technology businesses? AA: Jio started off as a good connectivity platform. Post thatwhat started playing out was the applications. First and foremost,it was just voice, people connected topeople creating a thin layer of internet on it. and then you start putting in all the applications on it.What Jio is trying to do rightnow is behind the platform,you have a full infrastructure, where all this informationbecomes ubiquitous.All the technology companies are bifurcating this part,so you would have an Amazon e-commerce platform as one and Amazonweb services another. So clearly you see at one end you have large applications,which are B2C applications, behind that, you have a verystrong core infrastructure, which is managing, manipulatinginformation and data and that's what's becoming the big intellectualproperty of all technology companies. JH: STL was amongst the first few companies tohave a CxO level position of a Chief transformation officer. While STL has been very fortunate to have beenahead of the curve,a lot of smaller companies have not been. In this contextwhat do you think is the future of digital transformation? AA: This is extremely important. You cannot anymore do without it because it's nowbecoming a clear value proposition for the customer and cleardifferentiation from the competition. The idea is to create a very high degree of very well defined customer experience. a very high degree of repeatability,a very high quality decision support system. JH: As we have seen global supply chains, international tradeand production have been severely impacted. How do we make our global supply chains less complex, more nimble and more agile? AA: You got to start thinkingof multiple dimensions.One dimension is if the currentsituation was in anybody's prediction model or forecasting modelitself? The second area is essentially more geopolitical then the third thing is, essentially what leads to people sort of buyingor holding on stuff and that is more to do with psychologyand behaviors.The good aspect is that things are still workingin a macro sense in terms of food,grain etc.If Istart thinking of it in a mid to long-term perspective, volume will start prevailing. And at the same time, a very disruptive aspect on the supply chain or manufacturing modelwhich will starthappening through things like 3D printing. JH: Let's move to customer experiences.Do you see shift happening in the way sales, marketing andcustomer facing teams now interact and engage withtheir customers? AA: Not many companies are purely B2B and without having a B2Cinteraction, even if it's a purely B2B company its becomingB2B2C company. The accountability of the original companyalso becomes towards a consumer.In a B2B environment,it is happening through mechanisms, like net promoter scoreagain... and things like voice of customer. Everyone is working for the ultimate consumer experiences. JH: I know that you've been working with very large organizations and doing virtual hackathons.What's your experience been? AA: With our three largecustomers in North America and Europe in Asia pac, we havebeen doing these hackathons or very deep collaborativeinteraction using the digital platforms. If we had tried doing this physically in the world earlier,it would have taken months. And then the quality of the interactionwould not have been as deep as it has been now. Earlier, we used to think that everyregion we need to have a full-fledged sort of a team whichcan do sales, technology, applicationengineering, customer services.Now we are thinking that wedon't need to do that. JH: Companies are talking aboutdiversifying their manufacturingmoving operations away from China.What does this mean for the future of countries likeIndia? AA: I see India opportunity in a very different manner.The India opportunity is largely facilitated by the Indianmarket itself.The Indian market provides a great platform. Anyonewho comes to Indiais coming as a critical mass of the marketplaceand the experience of doing Business, Manufacturing and Researchin India.

Future Series with Anand

In the last few months our lives have rebooted. It's like that we have hit the control-alt-delete buttons. The way we live, the way we work, the way we play has all changed. What does this mean for business models? What does this mean for leadership and workplaces? What does is it mean for digital Technologies and internet, which have today become our lifelines. Chief Executives of this gener ation have perhaps not faced a crisis of this magnitude in theircareers. How do they navigate through all of this? We explore some of these questions with Dr.Anand Agarwal, a technology Visionary and group CEO of STL. So let's welcome Anand to the show the first one, the future of the Internet. Anand Hello, welcome to the show. Yeah, Hi, Juhi. As you know, we'll be talking about the future of the internet today. It's interesting, we are having this conversation over the Internet. So we've seen in the last several weeks and months how the internet has become the lifeline of the way we exist. The way be two businesses, the way we govern, governments. They are using the internet to monitor ground situations while other personal level we are seeing birthday parties happening online. So what do you see as the future of the internet? Now, under the current situation we are now seeing the very different usage of the internet. Enterprises are using it, governments are using it, individuals are using it. As you said for connecting even for social reasons. So it's now become a very, very common utilitarian platform. We are already seeing advent of machine-to-machine communications. We're talking about private clouds being hosted on internet. We are talking about machines communicating with human. So internet is now this large platform, it would become thetransportation highway for data across the world with multiple subways being structured and it will transform or shift from being largely entertainment-oriented platform to being extremely, extremely utilitarian platform. In terms of the surge in traffic Anand, we find the last few months a huge amount of traffic surge. In fact in the first week of the lockdown alone a few of the top operators reported heavy growth worth almost an entire year's traffic. In spite of this the internet hasn't really broken. You work with Cloud companies and Netwrok companies across the world. Is there one view on how we can build a sustainable internet? Yeah, you are absolutely right that the internet hasn't broken down. It's because the network was always designed in a manner that itnever breaks down. Whenever you design a network you look for resilience, you look for 1 plus 2 or 1 + 3 kind of alternate paths to assume that. But what has also happened is that the demand for the internet has been much,much higher than the supply of the capacity. While the internet has done a greatjob in terms of providing the connectivity. The fact that it hasbeen operating at peak levels for the last five six weeksshowcases that the internet needs to be now redesigned for this new normal. This new normal where the traffic is at various parts of the network. It is not concentrated in one part of the network. Where the traffic is symmetric. It is both upstream and downstream where concepts like latency etc start coming in. Where there is absolutely no delays. Where the order of the day is having video conferencing calls where 25-30 participants are participating together and everyone has equivalent experience of say meeting physically. The potential that the Internet of tomorrow has, is amazing and we are seeing glimpses of that in today's environment as individuals our efficiency or effectiveness has gone up tremendously. In the same dayyou can be in Japan and you can be in the west coast of US and you can have multiple interactions with customers, with investors, with associate, with employees, with partners and this will be a new normal where work-related travel might decrease but interactions will increase. The quality of experience has to be very, very high. We are in discussion with multiple customer during the last few weeks and all of them are talking about this aspect itself. Very high capacity, two-way communication, very high resilience and having a backup almost towards taking the peak aspects. So you speak about usage patterns. We find that home is becoming the new enterprise. So, so much of traffic is moving to homes, you know, we found companies like Optus and TCS who are saying that a fair numberof the workforce is going to work from home. And these are very very large companies at the same time on the entertainment front we are seeing that wedding sangeets are actually happening online. You find stuff like internet gaming is becoming big. I can see that in my own house. What you think is the future of a great home internet experience? Now this entire network is the platform where we will work, we will play, we will interact most of the times. The physical aspects will be more for social experiences than a necessity. The smart home or a smart enterprise or a smart factory or a smart city are all different components of the same design. There are aspects of say a smart factory where you would have different kind of IoT sensors versus your smart home where you wouldhave Google home or Amazon Echo. But the way the networkis going to get configured, the way the quality of that experience is going to be... the way the information that needs to be accessed from an edge infrastructure. That is all going to be the same. That's why the thought right now is towards designing things which are converged in terms of wireless and wireline. You are no longer talking about things like fiber-to-the-home. You're talking about fiber-to-the-home, fiber to the Enterprise,Fiber-to-the small cells in the same breath. You're talking about fiber and 5G in the same breath. So Anand, the more we speak about this, the more stark it become that there's a huge digital divide between the people whohave access to the internet and those who don't. As we knowalmost 50% of the world's population has no access today.And in these times it's becoming even more starks. So what is the future of an Internet for all? I'm glad, you asked Juhi and that's something see it as very close to my heart. The economic divide is much larger than the digital division. Digital is a way which will remove the differences in the economic divide, the education that can be imparted through the online platforms can be exactly the same. The whole concept of a brick and mortar model of the school, which was teaching everybody exactly the same manner in a class which has hundred to three hundred students. It's no longer required. My own two daughters do homeschoolingthat does not require a huge amount of fees to be paid.You can do one course from Stanford you can do another one from MIT and you can do one from IIT and you can do one fromNirma institute of management. You can create things which are more what you love doing rather than being forced into a cookie cutter solution. So I see digital has a big way of removing the the difference between haves and have-nots. I'm so proud of our project that we are bringing almost twoand a half million people in Maharashtra on 100 Mbpsconnectivity. I'm so proud of our SterliteGarv platform where people had to spend hours and days, is getting resolved within minutes. So I think by getting access to information that getting access to the world class education by getting access to the worldclass Healthcare that divide actually goes away. I realize that a lot of people are still not on the internet, but it is that is much easier to fix than moving everybodyto the cities which are all already under a burden. I would rather have taking internet to allparts of the world than people moving to parts, which have the so-called better internet. Anand, in terms of technologies that empower the internet and networks. Do you think the time for artificial intelligence, machine learning, Big Data, EnterpriseIoT has their time really come in terms of real applications? Technology is a tool. Tool must be applied to the right application and the right problem statement. Sometimes we get carried away by cool sort of names and start applying it to situations which do not require it. Data science is a great science which integrates all the information and applying artificial intelligence or data science towardsdecision support is a greatgreat tool. Machine to machine communication is a great tool. All these tools have now been actually leverage because of the capability of both compute and connectivity together. So it's a convergence of two technologies, which is making all these tools more and more powerful. But today is the best time towards application of Technologies and collaborating because all this power is available. Never in the history of humanity you could collaborate like millions of people today are collaboratingtogether towards finding the right vaccines, towards finding the right structure of say this virus. So they are using a AI, they are using the right kind of data science, they are using robotics for the delivery of medicines.They're using predictive algorithms for seeing how the curvesare flattening out. The tools have become active right now because of the fact of that connectivity and computation both haveconverged and both are extremely ubiquitous. Both are extremely cheap and both are extremely powerful. Our cell phones that we carry now is multiple times more powerful than the first computers which took the rocketsto the moon. Just imagine that in 30 40 years now, each of us carry more computational capability which is connected on a large internet which each of us can leverage to take ourselves to the Moon. Thank you for this very engaging conversation Anand and I'll see you soon for one more such topic. Thank you for your time today. Thanks Juhi.