How do you serve the next billion is the the central focus of conversation in many telecom companies. How do you address the bottom of the pyramid in emerging and developing economise? I caught up with Anil Raj of VNL, an Indian-Swedish telecom company that recently introduced a new product: solar based GSM -system that appears to clearly address the needs and challenges in rolling out mobile infrastructure into rural areas. VNL uses the term microtelecom to address the needs of the bottom of the pyramid.

The current population of the world is 6.68 billion out of which close to 3 billion have access to a mobile phone. While telecom operators have figured out how to manufacture low-cost handsets they are still working on how to manufacture low-cost, rugged telecom infrastructure that can be deployed in the rural areas of these countries. A central challenge for expansion has been the high cost of energy bills, non-availability of engineers or trained technicians along with the high cost of transportation.

The needs of the next billion is very different from the first billion. Big telecom Research and Development dollars are focused in providing streaming media, web services etc for consumers in these developed companies, but what about those people who have never used a phone and live in less developed country asks Anil. He sees an opportunity in providing mobile phone access in South and SE Asian and African countries. For instance about 80 percent of the Indian population is still without access to mobile phones he points out.VNL has factored in all these capital and resource constraints in creating their base station that they have dubbed as people’s base station. VNL’s WorldGSMâ„¢ system base stations needs about 50W and 120W of power to operate (compared to 3000 W for a typical GSM base station. The system also includes a rural-optimized MSC (Mobile Switching Center), and a compact BSC (Base Station Controller) that in essence makes it an end-to-end GSM network.

The OPEX costs of installing the base station is very low according to Anil. Installing the base station does not require trained engineers or laptops, but instead with the aid of simple to follow diagrams and audio prompts anybody can install it within a few hours. Once the base station is installed, people can start using their mobile phones within hours. Anil says they were inspired by their Swedish neighbor IKEA’s do-it-yourself strategy in developing their microtelecom solution.

In Part-1 of the interview Anil talks about VNL’s product, how they came up with the idea, their inspiration from IKEA, and also how the company started and how they plan to grow the company. VNL is backed by Rajeev Mehrortra of Shyam Telecom, who is also the man who brought the cable TV revolution to India according to Anil.

Prior to VNL, Anil was with Ericsson for many years. He was first head of Ericsson’s India operation and later served as the chief strategy officer for Sony Ericsson. He was the first CEO of Hutch Max, which became Hutchison that was acquired by last year.

Tune back in for Part-2 of the interview where Raj talks about the mobile revolution and what he thinks is is store for us.

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