Interview. Private network spectrum should be allocated to enterprises directly: Abhijit Dubey, Global CEO of NTT Ltd

I don’t see what is happening worldwide as a slowdown. During the pandemic, we went through a period of hyper-growth, which is likely to come down and normalise again. All indications are that, globally, the economy is better than anticipated. IMF’s forecast last November suggests we have improved quite a bit.

More of an opportunity, because of the nature of what we do. Because we have the unique advantage of providing infrastructure where data is stored. We have the the ability to not only host the data, but also manage the obligations. So for us, its a new opportunity, because at the end of the day, all the data has a security department and a compliance department. We only have to think of the infrastructure, so I see it as an opportunity. But leaving that aside, localisation of data country-by-country is not the best outcome. So I think regulators will be pragmatic about it actually.

Selfishly for us, it will be better if governments allocate private spectrum directly to enterprises. From a performance standpoint as well as from a security standpoint, it would be much better if private spectrum is directly allocated to us, as opposed to taking a slice of the operator spectrum, which is like a firewall ... it is not as secure.

I see Private 5G as an opportunity here, ORAN at the end of the day... Well, of course, NTT in Japan is innovating on ORAN. For NTT as a service provider, telcos are a major customer for us in that segment obviously. But we will see at the end of the day.

India is a strategically important company for the NTT group. We have around 47,000 employees in India -- the second largest employment base for NTT outside Japan. For NTT’s two businesses, namely IT services and data centres; India is already number 3 in terms of services. For data centres, we are the number one data centre provider for India. If you take the Japan business out, India is the eighth largest company in terms of revenue for us.

It is certainly competitive, but the competitiveness does not impact margins in the short-term. In the long-term, there will be consolidation. There is competitiveness in every market globally, it is a hyper-local dynamic right? It is different for every metro. I think, just because we are so global, and we have scale right. We do have leverage in procurement with our suppliers, right? We have relationships with global customers and hyper-scalers, which is to our advantage.