In yester years, internet connection to your home was provided by an MNTL/BSNL line. Since then, things have changed a great deal. Broadband internet connections are now common — they are faster and economical. A 100 Mb/s connection is available for Rs.600 plus a month. It comes with a direct fibre-to-home (FTH) option.

The receiving devices such as laptops, TVs, iPhones and Notes support Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi AX networks, thus giving speeds equal to a LAN wire. There are other IoT devices such as speakers, fans, switches etc. which too need speed.

Wi-Fi router should also support the higher speeds. An old router cannot give you speeds of Wi-Fi 6. The equipment such as laptops should be of new generation.

Wi-Fi 6 addresses the connectivity and speed issues. It connects with multi-user, multiple input and output — MU-MIMO. Wi-Fi 6 employs orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). It gives super speeds. OFDMA uses a single transmission line to deliver data to multiple devices at the same time. Thus it accelerates the speed of the data being delivered. Wi-Fi 6 gives up to 40 per cent higher speed and increases multiple simultaneous connectivity 4X. This saves battery life for smartphones and laptops. The battery efficiency of the connected devices goes up when paired with a Wi-Fi 6 router. The two are in communication and can plan their interactions, keeping the antennas powered off when not needed. It prolongs the battery life.

Big Tech companies are virtual monopolies and leftist economists want them to break up. However, such monopolies are temporary. New technology overtakes the old giants. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) in the US was a monopoly between 1920s and 1930s, but became bankrupt in 2010 on account of new technology and market forces. Nokia was dethroned from its monopoly in cell phones market by Apple. Kotak became history in cameras on account of digital photography. iTunes was superseded by Spotify and Pandora in music. New innovators killed the old giants. The original social media giant Myspace was ousted by Facebook

Facebook is experiencing falling share prices — from $400 a year ago to $93 today. It wants to enter metaverse market but has suffered a loss there. TikTok has adversely affected Instagram and YouTube. Amazon’s share prices have been reduced by almost a half in a year. Amazon has diversified from e-commerce to cloud services to maintain its profile. It has also entered entertainment, health services and autonomous cars. Apple too has experienced pressure, and a decline in share prices. Netflix does not make a surplus. It spends more cash than it earns. Google witnesses declining share prices. It is being fined heavily by the regulators. Market forces have affected it more than the the regulators. Its search engine faces competition from Bing and Alexa. It also has diversified into cloud services, autonomous cars, smart appliances and life sciences. Twitter has been losing money for eight successive years.

Innovator oust the existing leaders, which in turn are ousted by new innovators. It is not prudent to break them up. Let the market forces do the job. Liberalism fosters innovation and consumer benefits. The huge profits of monopolists are temporary.

IC is also called silicon chip. The US has put sanctions to prevent China from having the capability to design and manufacture leading-edge chips. In fact, the US citizens and green card holders too are prohibited from taking employment in the Chinese companies in tech area. The sanctions also apply to US companies and their firms, as they are dependent on US technology, say firms such as TSMC from Taiwan or Samsung from S. Korea.

China wanted to leapfrog but the sanctions are a deterrent. China expected a lead time to develop its own capabilities. It is not short of investment in research to keep pace with others.

Currently TSMC is the leader in cutting edge chips and 3nm processes. Samsung and Intel too are building their own capacities. All the three firms are now working on 2nm processes.

China’s biggest firm SMIC is still in the 7nm process. Chip fabrication in China is of a much older generation.

The US-trained Chinese manpower working in Chinese companies will now have to choose between China and the US. China’s current capability is based on copying the Western designs and technologies. China too is focusing on research in its academic institutes, but still lags behind the US and Europe.

They can catch up, but the sanctions are the impediments, and will take a longer time to catch up.

Europe, Australia, Japan and Korea back the US.

India has lagged behind. India has taken initiative by Vedanta-Foxconn project to enter into low-end chips — of 28 nm. India should move up the value chain. However, this calls for active private players participation.

In the 1970s and 1980s, nuclear technology gave the countries a competitive advantage. These days semiconductor related items which also power weapons of mass destruction provide the competitive advantage.

The US sanctions are for trading of logic (processor), DRAM or dynamic random access memory and NAND or not and or memory chips. China will thus be left behind in innovations in 5G, AI and defence.

The semiconductor industry, to begin with, was funded by the US department of Defence.

There is a growing chips market in China, say 30-40 per cent chips made in the world travel to China. The Chinese demand for chips is 25 per cent of the global demand which equals the US demand. Chips in the short run will become expensive. At the same time, there are opportunities for other players from Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and India.

The US leads semiconductor research. It is home to the IP revenue and patents. Big research labs are in the US with a few interspersed in Japan, Europe and S.Korea.

Facebook, Google and Amazon share prices have seen a decline. The companies could not meet the expectations and have missed revenue and earnings estimates. The future guidance too is gloomy.

Of the total global digital advertising revenue, an aggregated 75 per cent is earned by Google, Amazon and Facebook. In calendar year 2022, the digital advertising is expected to reach $300 billion.

Of late, there is slowdown in advertising revenue — both online and offline. It is on account of the slow down in economic activity. In recessionary conditions, advertisers cut the budgets.

There is competition to the Big Three from Apple, Spotify, Snapchat, Walmart, Pluto TV, IAC, Instacart, Roku, Yelp, and Tubi. All these entities earn a billion dollar plus ad revenue in the digital market.

Amazon earns revenue from advertising and cloud services. It has, in addition, the e-commerce business. The global consumption has slowed down, and that has affected its e-commerce division too.

YouTube has been affected by the shift in the viewership trends. It has seen fast growth in the ‘Shorts’ featuring videos of short duration. It has given YouTube a toehold in a market so far dominated by TikTok. But it is difficult to generate revenue from ‘Shorts’.

Facebook has been affected by the Apple’s ‘App tracking transparency’ policy. It allows iPhone users to opt out of being tracked by default. It becomes difficult for Facebook to deliver targeted advertising, which is its bread and butter. Metaverse too is a nascent business.
Big Tech is mature as a business. They are unlikely to deliver counter-cyclical performance in key markets. Slow down affects Big Tech. Smaller and nimbler startups have better capacity to adopt to the adverse times.

The RBI declares that it is launching central bank digital currency (CBDC) in November, 2022 on a pilot basis. It has chosen nine banks to issue the digital currency for transactions in government securities. It will be first used to settle secondary transactions in G-Sec ( government securities) market.

The CBDC can be classified into two categories — retail and wholesale. The categorisation depends upon the use and access — the wholesale currency can be accessed by financial institutions. India’s pilot consists of testing CBDC in the wholesale market. The RBI plans to explore the use of wholesale CBDC for OTC transactions, commercial papers (CP) and certificates of deposit (CD). The wholesale transactions will be account-based.

The purchase of G-Secs, CPs and CDs can be done by issuing tokens (thus by passing the bank account route). Such tokenised CBDC can be extended to non-residents to make them invest in domestic asset classes.

The RBI is exploring token-based CBDC in retail segment. The wholesale transactions will be account-based. And the retail transactions will be token-based.

The technology architecture, token security, central bank node, standards and protocols to be followed — all these will be tested. There would be focus on prevention of counterfeits and on security.

CBDC will be further developed to provide a risk-free virtual currency. After the present wholesale CBDC Pilot, in a month’s time the RBI will start the pilot for CBDC in the retail segment in select locations and in closed user groups consisting of merchants and users.

CBDCs are aimed to complement, rather than replace, the current forms of money . Being digital, these are easier, faster and cheaper. It will provide the public with uses that any private crypto can without associated risks.

On 1st November, 2022, the trades using CBDC or the e-rupee in the government securities in secondary market went live recording a value of Rs.275 crore. There were 48 trades on the first-day of the RBI pilot run.

IIT, Madras has developed a touchscreen display which carries an image of textile fabric to feel its texture as the finger moves across it on the screen.

There are software algorithms which detect small edges in any image and create friction on the display. There is a multi-touch sensor to assess the movement of the finger. The software adjusts surface friction on the screen.

With this software, different textures are created — crisp edges, switches and rich textures. The feel is from smooth to gritty. Advantage is taken of the phenomenon called electric adhesion which controls electric fields. Though this the software modulates friction locally as the fingers travel on a plane.

A material that adds electrostatic friction is added to feel the texture shown on the screen. It works 50 per cent, and another 50 per cent work is done by the algorithm. These images can be clicked by ordinary smartphones. These can emulate the texture on the screen. Additional processing is not called for. Sensors in the display of the smartphones, laptops and PCs can do image processing. The energy requirement is minimal. Thus it is safer.

This can be used by e-commerce organisations. IIT-M has patented the technology.

It will cost a few thousand rupees when it will be commercially available.

Bharti is likely to launch satellite internet in 2023. It has in October 2022 deployed 36 LEO satellites through ISRO. Thus it has completed the launch of 70 per cent of its planned LEO fleet.

Starlink of Musk has launched around 2300 satellites and expects to offer services across 40 countries.

There are losses of satellites because of geomagnetic storms. It results into financial losses.

There is an issue of spectrum pricing in India. Bharti expects the government to charge an administrative price as per the global practice. The telecom operators and the government seem to be veering to the auction route for pricing. It will make the service costly.

It is difficult to predict the size of the market. There is a substantial business-to-business (B2B) market which a Tata Group company Nelco wants to exploit. Startlink of Musk is targeting business-to-consumer (B2C) market. It offers services in certain regions to in-vehicle internet on pay-per-use basis. Bharti has tied up with Hughes to provide broadband services across India. It also wants to target specific segments of the market. Both Bharti and Starlink would like to cater to the rural and remote areas.

Can satellite internet match the 5G speeds? Say speeds of around 1Gbps to 150 mbps. OneWeb expects to offer 195 mbps. Its network is built with terrestrial technology and is ready for 5G. Starlink expects to offer speeds between 50 mbps to 300 mbps. The customers in the US and Canada, however, feel the actual speeds are far lower.

Cloud telephony refers to a communication service that provides business organisations a cost-effective way to setup a virtual call centre using telecom network and internet. It bypasses the traditional systems such as private telephone network or Electronic Branch Exchange (EPABX) used by companies to manage client calls, or internal communications.

Amazon and Flipkart successfully managed multiple calls during the pandemic through a virtual call centre which also offered features such as IVR, automated call recordings, call routing etc.

Exotel is a full-stack consumer engagement platform. It offers solutions such as enterprise communication suite, voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP), among other cloud telephony solutions.

Cloud Connect Communications has a license to operate as a virtual network operator for its services in Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

The government seeks to enforce mandatory KYC requirements for calls. There could be lawful interception. Many enterprise customers of cloud telephony complain that their virtual numbers appear as spam to their customers. It makes them lose business.

Cloud telephony players welcome the government’s move to regulate the OTT players which run the communication apps such as WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram to ensure end-user protection and national security. There should be a level playing field for cloud telephony and OTT players.

Cuemath is an Indian education-technology (edtech) startup which aims at capturing the global mathematics education market (K12). It was founded in 2014, and is present today in 80 countries, and would like to expand further to 100 countries by 2023.

They are focusing on middle-east, the US, the UK, Europe, Africa, South America and other international territories. They are designing customised products, and right pricing pints for these markets.

They have over 2 lac students and 8500 math tutors.

Kumon, a Japanese player, is their competitor. Mostly it runs bricks-and-mortar centres. Cuemath concentrates on digital presence, though in India it has both online and offline classes.

The curriculum is approved by STEM.org.

Cuemath employs Indian math teachers. These teachers have a neutral accent, and are acceptable to foreign students. Still they are trained on cultural, communication and related skills.

Cuemath is dedicated to excellence, rather than the size of the organisation. In the process, if it becomes the biggest edtech, so be it.

To drive revenue growth, social media platforms are investing in shopping features. It is called social commerce. Here the user discovers and buys products through social media apps. There is targeting based on user interests. Facebook is the leader in social commerce. Google sells through YouTube and Snap. Twitter too indulges in social commerce. Facebook communicates through messenger and WhatsApp. There is influencer marketing.

Facebook launched shops in May, 2020. There are curated and personalized clips on Facebook and Instagram. Snap uses augmented reality to enable users to buy items like watches, jewellery and apparel. Snapchat users can photograph an outfit with the app and find a resembling product. These are still early days for social commerce.

Short videos lasting for a few seconds such as TikTok can feature models wearing outfits in real time to motivate the buyers.