US-based Syniverse Technologies helps telecom companies around the world to quickly react to market changes and demands, enabling the delivery of everything from voice calls to sophisticated data and video services wherever and whenever subscribers need them. In India, the company is at the back of the system that runs Mobile Number Portability and is looking to offer location-based services to telcos. Joe DiFonzo, Chief Technology Officer, Syniverse, was recently in India to inaugurate the company's new office in Bangalore. Business Line met him to understand the global trends in the mobile segment and what Indian telcos can do to keep pace with the changing demands.

How important is the Indian market for you?

India is strategically very important. It's the second largest mobile market in the world. And I think that overall, we have very good hopes that we will be able to develop a lot of business here. We already have a lot of business here -- both with operator customers and with enterprise customers. and we will see both of those growing by leaps and bounds in the next few years in India.

What are the big trends that you are seeing in the mobility space?

There is going to be the continued evolution of data services over the mobile networks. India is a good example for potential for growth there.

Today, a lot of India is still 2G and 3G being introduced and I think 4G is extremely nascent here right now. So over the years, that is going to change. There are a lot of factors that will make that accelerate and become a more rapid evolution in India mainly because a lot of the learning is already done around the world and now you can take the technology and apply it. When Verizon first started rolling out LTE, they had a lot to learn. But right now, a lot of those things have been figured out so we can go faster and it will be cheaper and it will be better. May be you can just jump right into LTE in terms of capabilities set.

In terms of other things that have happened, devices continue to get better, faster, cheaper.

I think we are already seeing the mobile device being the number one portal that most people all over the world have to the Internet and the Internet-based services.

You will see the mobile device become a "universal portal" around everything that you do...it will become your primary interaction with every company that you do business with, and it will be, if you will, a tool for your own purposes -- to control your home, to control your car, to interact with your employer or your workplace. I think it will be the primary delivery of entertainment content for people.

Especially in places where it may be difficult to get good reach with landline and fixed type services, it's much more cost effective to roll out radio networks. As 4G and LTE advance and start coming out I think it is reasonable to think that there will be a very big base of the population that says -- "Hey, I am going to be getting my television service over my mobile device" and they will just take this thing and they will plug it into their bigger TV or they won't even have to plug it in as this will be a wireless interface.

So I think in all of these ways, we will see a very rapid shift in the telecom landscape here in India.

One of the challenges that telcos around the world are facing is from over-the-top players like Google. How can companies like Syniverse enable a telecom company to get a larger share of the services revenues which is going to be driven on the mobile space?

Up to now, a lot of the services that have been delivered over mobile devices have been as most people will call - Over-the-Top type services. They use the mobile device essentially as an internet terminal and they use the basic internet protocols to deliver the service. But mobile operators have a unique advantage in that they have a service that is more than just the internet service. They have awareness of location. So for example, an IP service provider could maybe guess your location because maybe it's on your IP address. But when I am on a mobile network, you don't know where I am or where I am going to be. The mobile operator has a very precise notion of your location because they have to deliver traffic to the right cell tower.

The mobile operator knows what kind of device you have, they know more than just what the little indicator on the browser is, they have awareness based on data from the network, they have information based on data from the device, they have data based on the subscription that you have with them, they have awareness of the kind of the service that you are getting. So Google doesn't necessarily know if I am on 2G or 3G or 4G, they do not know if I am getting good data services or bad data services, so they try to deliver to me the same experience no matter what I am on, so they leave it up to me to try and figure that out.

If YouTube starts playing something and it starts to get all choppy, then it's up to me to say - "oh, let's go and select a lower resolution".

Whereas mobile operators can know the kind of service and delivery that I am getting. So they know if it's more expensive or less expensive to get the kind of data service at particular prices at a particular time in the day, they know if I am roaming, they know what kind of a roaming plan I have. So now there is awareness of the financial relationship that I have of the network. Which again could be used to distinguish how content is delivered to me. Maybe I don't want to get fancy multimedia things when I am on a cheap data delivery mechanism, maybe when I am roaming in another country then I don't want to get a lot of data ... I just want a text message.

So there's all of these pieces of information that the mobile operator is aware of when you are on the network , that the other companies that are using the network are not aware of and they just have to kind of simulate.

For example, they will try to simulate location with the IP, and they will say - "Oh the device has GPS" -- well, GPS doesn't work everywhere. Not only that, it sometimes takes a long time to get it accurately fixed, it also consumes a lot of power on the device and then finally, it is not really reliable. Because I can't really use it to deliver a service that absolutely has to be guaranteed that I am really where I am at because potentially someone could hack the phone and make it report a different location from the GPS from where you really are at...

And so for all of these reasons, the operator has unique and distinctive advantages over an OTT provider.

But we don't believe that it is an all or nothing deal...like money goes to an OTT player or money goes to the mobile operator. We actually believe in the long run. Those OTT service providers are actually going to be very good customers for the mobile operators.

And so that's the way we think operators can cement their value proposition and get them a secure place in the value chain. They've invested billions of dollars in building these networks all over the world, making all the interoperability work, making all the security work and making all the features work. And what we are telling the operators and the enterprises is - you want to work together.

Operators - you want to work with these enterprises because eventually they will be your very good customers who will pay you money for this awareness and capability set. Enterprises -- you want to work with the operators because instead of just treating them as a pipe, you will get these capabilities that you really, really need to ensure that you are delivering good service to your customers. Not just something that works most of the time or something that frustrates them or makes them pay a lot of money to their operators which they don't want to have to pay.

And so what we are trying to do as a company, is essentially enable this eco system to come together...so that banks, airlines, retailers and Governments can reach all their constituents, and can reach all their consumers, through their mobile networks.

But is there a disconnect here. While the Government is telling telcos in India to deploy location-based services for security purposes they have been delaying it. Don’t they see a business opportunity here?

There is a disconnect but I will tell you that the disconnect is just a disconnect in time. Because we've seen this happen all over the world and it happens in the internet space too...there's this whole notion of the "land grab" which is what it's called -- where you have a completely open space and you start providing service in there like Facebook and there wasn't any other big social network like them...and so they immediately go after every consumer they can get and they did that well.

But you get to the point where the trends starts topping off...and then you are like --ok, so now what's next for growth and I think that's what's happening with the mobile operators because right now, you are still in a very big growth mode and you are still just really scratching the surface of data services compared to some other countries in the world, like Korea or Japan or the US, maybe even China. And I think it's going to rapidly develop in India because like I said, a lot of the lessons have already been learnt.

When that space becomes full then it will be like "uh oh, we've gotten all the revenue we can get from just selling bandwidth to customers or just selling voice to customers. So now what can we do?”And worse yet, when they get that bandwidth out there and then they start seeing potentially the voice revenue or the messaging revenue being eaten away by the OTT service providers, the Whatsapps and so on, then you will start to ask the question -- what can we do to continually grow our company and that's when these things will start to really happen.

And they will be pushed from outside forces. So maybe in the general sense, for example, of having location awareness or having location APIs that can be used or sold, Government will push that for reasons of safety and security -- in the US they said you have to do this because you have to support 911 service and we have to be able to know where somebody is. So that will be one form of pressure.

Another form of pressure will be some businesses where there is a lot of money at stake like the financial industry. Now, when you get to the point when somebody like a credit card company is willing to pay you a significant amount for that location check and because you know potentially it is saving them hundreds of dollars if that transaction goes through, that's another place where, operators will probably get their eyes opened and they will say "Wow, if we can really do this, then it really creates an opportunity".

How expensive is it for telcos to deploy location-based services?

The first thing is that we have already spent billions of dollars to grow the network. We already have some sense of location. Just because they already know what cell tower server you are on.

So I think that there are levels of awareness that you can talk about. And so, let's come back. If you want to say -- "hey we have to have a national capability to do a 10 metre bubble of location correctness for every operator", yes then that can be an expensive thing compared to where you are now.

However, if you look at a lot at the capabilities that are required here, they don't necessarily require a 10 metre bubble.

The telco's also don't seem to be convinced about the business case especially in the location-based technology.Can you give some examples of what telcos can do to recoup whatever investments they may have to make?

The only way they are going to recoup that money is that they are going to recoup it from businesses that are willing to pay for that information.

There might be a way where the Government does fund some kind of that stuff as part of a general taxation sort of thing, to support the capabilities and I know that in the US we do that from general funds and things like that.

So that's one way. But I think that in the long run it is going to work because there is a real business value in that doorway. So if you look at what's going on I mean all around the world today, you might have seen some announcements recently about the Apple Beacon technology for example.

That is kind of a very ultra precise location awareness thing and what does it require you to do? It requires you to put these beacons around your store or office and essentially have a blue tooth connection between the mobile device and these beacons. And then you see the internet connections just tie in those thing together. The mobile device sees the beacons and the beacons sees the mobile device and the location and you can do something interesting with that.

The mobile operators could do a similar type of thing. Again, technology shifting capabilities are going to be there, but I think that the investment will sort out when there are enough businesses that value that information and that really need it to do their jobs effectively. And I think that over time, over the next few years, that's going to happen, and I think that there are going to be use cases around advertising, and here's a good one -- package delivery companies that can do something where they want. That they come and get the package from wherever you are and literally they want to have a service where your mobile device says - "come get this package. How quickly can it be delivered?" And you've seen these services like Uber. Or Halo where the taxi comes to you. A lot of the times these are based on GPS coordinates. But wouldn't it be better if the mobile operator can provide that in a way that is safe, secure. There might be things where for regulatory reasons why they have to have true location. So around health and safety -- they might have an application that keeps track of my heartbeat and if something happens, then there will be a medical alert to come and get me from wherever I am.

So there are lots of these types of use cases out there that will be developed and that people will pay money to have, because they have been provided convenience, or capability, or safety, your security or they help them make money somehow. And so the operators will be in a position to then collect their value on their investment. And in a sense it is like a bit of a chicken and egg and so should the operators make the investment first before they actually have the business. Or will the business come if the operators do not make the investment in further capability? I actually don't think there is a better answer right now.

What are the interesting things you are working on currently for the future.

Basically we are looking at the evolution of mobile communications and a movement towards 4G and beyond. On the applications side, we are looking at growing our business exponentially on the enterprise front. We have already reached most of the operators in the world today. In general, we just think that there is a large opportunity, growing business by doing more business with enterprises all over the world and how we can connect them to the mobile space. In fact we would like to see that enterprise business which is now about 15% of our total revenues become 50% or more of our total revenues. In terms of real world data, there's hardly any more big data in India's telecommunications than anyone else on this planet. So a key thing here for us is to try to intelligently drive value out of that big data and to do that, we are building lots of different systems.

We have what we call our Real Time Intelligence platform which can be very widely distributed and can process input in real time from lots of different data sources simultaneously and essentially try outcomes that would help businesses.

What challenges do you see ahead?

My biggest problem right now is can we get all the talent that we need to take advantage of all the opportunities. Thats why we are here in India. Because this isn't just a support office. This isn't a back office.

We pretty much have all the functions of the company represented here, across all of our different types of services. But the real thing is the engineering team where we are going to build the future of this company. So we have to find those resources, those people who can help invent, devise and develop these capabilities and products for the future that we are going to be able to offer to our customers and the industry at large.

We have a growing talent pool that is very open minded, looking at the future, and realising that they can just go and create things, they don't have to be bound up by past traditions. And also do them in new ways. So I tell them, let's do them more quicker, more cost effective. the other big pressure that we get from customers all the time is - faster, faster, faster -- sometimes they don't mind if it costs more, they just wanted it yesterday. And so, that's another challenge that we have. And in some way we have learn to work across bigger teams in collaborative ways coordinating with multiple sites simultaneously.