Need clarity on rules for Internet of Things: Telenor

Telenor Group’s subsidiary Telenor Connexion, which offers machine-to-machine communications and Internet of Things solutions, said it wants to enter India but not until the Centre clears regulatory hurdles. In a conversation with BusinessLine, the company’s CEO Mats Lundquist said he will be meeting the Telecom Minister on Sunday to discuss these issues. He is part of the Swedish delegation that will be attending the Make-in-India week. Edited excerpts:

Do you see smart cities offering a big opportunity for IoT deployments in India?

The reason why we came for this trip is because India is a very exciting market from a population perspective but also a growing market when it comes to Internet of Things. India is important to us from three perspectives. First of all to support our international clients such as Volvo that are selling products in India — having IoT in their lines of products. Secondly, and the main reason why I'm here is to support Indian companies to build IoT solutions for the international market.

And, third area is the national deployments of smart city and smart production — that's where the big growth of IoT will be in India. India still is a very small market with low penetration but growth is very high.

What are the biggest challenges that you are facing for entering into India?

There are two countries in the world that are not allowing international roaming for machine-to-machine and that is Brazil and China. There is a question mark on India. Today, we can sell IoT to international companies that sell in India and also to Indian companies exporting to other markets but not for local deployments.

But why do you need international roaming?

As per Indian regulations, for national deployments, the data centres need to be in India because the law doesn't allow m2m data to leave the country. So it is not just up to us but also Ericsson need to set up its data centre here. My understanding so far is that Ericsson wants a global platform with global scale. Ericsson today has one platform with a centralised data centre in Amsterdam but if you have a requirement that servers need to be physically in India, Ericsson will have to set up its servers in India.

Are you working with Ericsson to create India-specific IoT solutions?

No. That's the core issue — whether we have multiple platforms for each country or a single global platform. The point here is that Indian laws do not allow data to be taken out in machine-to-machine communication. The moment you allow international roaming, we can bring in our equipment with our global SIM card and when things are moving here, they can be monitored from Stockholm. The moment we break it down into country-wise solutions, it gets complicated. To keep things simple, regulations need to be tweaked.

What are the communication networks that you are using for m2m communications?

For mobile networks, it is mostly 2G networks as of today. We are starting to see 4G implementations as well for high data. In the future, something that is really going to drive the market is something called the low power wide area network (LoRa) with cheap devices, low battery power and very good indoor coverage. With LoRa you can connect a lot more devices.

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