BT to expand India hub, develop premium 5G use-cases: CDIO Harmeen Mehta

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Mint in an exclusive conversation. Having doubled its headcount in India over the past three years, BT intends to scale up its presence in core engineering, data and AI. “We are looking at actually the digital part, helping the operations team accelerate both our efficacy and efficiency in the ops part using AI as well," Mehta said.

Given that both the digital and the operations teams sit in India, the country is a very valuable hub for BT, she said. With new quality-of-service norms for mobile and broadband usage on the anvil, Mehta said India should focus more on ensuring better broadband services because the segment would drive growth in the coming years as more homes get connected with fibre and the nation becomes more digital even though it’s a mobile-first country. “It's one of the fastest-growing nations in the world and as it becomes much more of a digital nation, the need for ultrahigh speed broadband is going to be far more so.

I think for telcos to accelerate that would be very much in their interest," she said. Mehta added that with rising convergence of services, networks will be needed increasingly for creating seamless connectivity inside and outside the home. Monetisation of 5G investments continues to be a challenge the world over.

Telcos have spent billions on building 5G networks but have been unable to recoup these investments for lack of premium use-cases. With 5G becoming the default network globally, use-cases that can be charged a premium may begin to come about. According to Mehta, unless you have the big use-cases, you can't really sell them at a premium.