Li-Fi

It’s impossible to avoid Wi-Fi in today’s world. It’s everywhere; your neighbors have it, it’s free in coffee shops, and essential for smartphones. We all know Wi-Fi, but what is Li-Fi? Li-Fi, like Wi-Fi, enables electronic devices like computers, laptops and smartphones to wirelessly connect to the Internet. Even though Wi-Fi was also originally intended for such devices, it is widely used today to connect all sorts of things: printers, televisions, speakers, headphones, and even running shoes! In simple terms, Li-Fi is equivalent to Wi-Fi, but using light waves instead of radio signals. Li-Fi uses the light waves from LED light bulbs – that are rapidly replacing incandescent light bulbs for their energy saving and safety - to transmit data so it provides illumination and wireless data communications. Imagine a modern LED light bulb – fitted with Li-Fi technology – in your living room, or office, or in a lamp on your desk, or by your bedside. Anywhere that is illuminated by the Li-Fi enabled LED, can also communicate via Li-Fi.

What Is LiFi?

The term LiFi was coined by Professor Harald Haas, and is recognized by the IEEE standardization committee for Optical Wireless Communications. LiFi is high-speed, bidirectional, networked and mobile wireless communications using light (as opposed to traditional radio frequencies). With LiFi technology, data travels in the visible light spectrum through LEDs.  This makes it possible to provide wireless internet access at speeds of over 100 Gbps, although this is still in the Lab. Although Li-Fi can be used to off-load data from existing Wi-Fi networks, implementations may be used to provide capacity for the greater downlink demand such that existing wireless or wired network infrastructure may be used in a complementary fashion.

LiFi is the use of the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to transmit information at very high speeds. This is in contrast to established forms of wireless communication such as Wi-Fi which use traditional radio frequency (RF) signals to transmit data.

With LiFi, data is transmitted by modulating the intensity of the light, which is then received by a photo-sensitive detector, and the light signal is demodulated into electronic form. This modulation is performed in such a way that it is not perceptible to the human eye.

LiFi is a category of Optical Wireless Communications (OWC). OWC includes infra-red and ultra-violet communications as well as visible light. However, LiFi is unique in that the same visible light energy used for illumination may also be used for communication.

How Does Li-Fi Work?

When a constant current is applied to an LED light bulb a constant stream of photons are emitted from the bulb which is observed as visible light. If the current is varied slowly the output intensity of the light dims up and down. Because LED bulbs are semi-conductor devices, the current, and hence the optical output, can be modulated at extremely high speeds which can be detected by a photo-detector device and converted back to electrical current. The intensity modulation is imperceptible to the human eye, and thus communication is just as seamless as RF. Using this technique, high speed information can be transmitted from an LED light bulb.

Radio frequency communication requires radio circuits, antennas and complex receivers, whereas Li-Fi is much simpler and uses direct modulation methods similar to those used in low-cost infra-red communications devices such as remote control units. Infra-red communication is limited in power due to eye safety requirements, whereas LED light bulbs have high intensities and can achieve very large data rates.

Ranjan Tyagi

Batch 2015-17

Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management

SPECTRUM TRADING AND ITS IMPACT ON THE TELECOM SECTOR

Spectrum trading refers to trading of rights and obligations of a spectrum, which could be used for various communication needs including broadcasting, mobile telecom and emergency services. Spectrum trading will make telecom sector stronger. It allows the trading of unutilized spectrum. The major players of telecom sector Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Idea Cellular will have spectrum in all areas whereas other small players may only have a regional presence. Hence they are getting the opportunity to exit the sector by selling their spectrum to bigger players.

Spectrum trading also helps the operator to choose their target area, by maintaining their presence, they can grow their market share there. It also leads to the disclosure of unutilized spectrum, which can be further used to grow infrastructure in their targeted areas of strategic importance. Considering spectrum as a natural resource, spectrum trading can lead us to efficient allocation of it compared to spectrum auction. As in spectrum auction there is high variance in price and also soaring prices is making remaining spectrum more expensive.

Telecom operators are trading unused spectrum to the operators who are facing spectrum congestion. In India, spectrum is considered a natural resource but it is relatively small which makes it a scarce resource. Hence spectrum trading will improve quality of service (QOS) and help the issue of call drops. It will also allow better spectrum usage. Hence customer satisfaction and service from the operators will improve. For instance, 800 MHz band, which uses CDMA technology can also have 4G services. So with the rise of 4G services in India one can trade a part of their 800 MHz band at a high price for 4G services. This escalates their revenue also.

Spectrum trading is considered as economically efficient because trade will only take place if spectrum is worth more to the new operator than the old one. As liberalization brings in new technologies and innovations to the market, trading allows better spectrum utilization. Hence trading is only effective when merged with liberalization. This factors provides customer with more choice. Moreover, spectrum trading uses natural resource of our country that is spectrum more effectively and with proper measures.

Devanshi Jhaveri

Batch 2016-18

Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management

Should Social Media Monitoring be a part of Smart cities

In the present world, the lifetime of a company depends on how well it adapts to the changing requirements of their customers. Thus companies across various industries use a variety of methods to get information about the changing requirements of the customers and what people think about their brand. Social Media Monitoring is one such method that is being used by companies to get the necessary information.

Social Media Monitoring also known as Social Media Measurement involves monitoring of various social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, online forums etc. for getting information about a brand and governing the volume and opinions of people about the brand online. As tons of conversations, articles and reviews are available online, monitoring social media provides the companies insight of the public’s opinion for their products/services and they will be able to anticipate the people’s expectation.

With the capability to reflect public opinions on various topics, social media monitoring finds its application in many places. Should smart cities be one such platform that make use of it?

Smart cities are urban regions that have advanced infrastructure, assured electricity supply and efficient transportation facilities. Multiple information and communication technology (ICT) solutions are integrated into a smart city to manage different organizations and their services in the city.

One of the major goals of a smart city is to involve the citizens in governance. Social media comes into the picture here. As most of the communications and discussions are happening over the social media platforms, using these platforms for involving the citizens in governance is a viable solution. Using this, cities can involve their citizens in several governing decisions like building and planning process, efficient urban mobility, health and education etc. The citizens can be involved in taking decisions that influence them.

The cities can also make use of social media monitoring to know whether their policies are generating a positive or negative response among the common mass, they can get feedback from the citizens on various issues and act accordingly.

The impact of social media monitoring in smart cities can best be explained by the experiment called Smart Santander. Santander is a city on Spain’s north coast with a population of 0.18 million. The Santander testbed is composed of several devices and sensors deployed at various locations. Through the deployed testbed, many services have been implemented. Some of them include:

Outdoor parking area management: Around 400 parking sensors were deployed at the main parking areas in the city. As a result, available parking sites were detected and citizens were given the information of them from time to time.

Santander City Brain: It enabled the people to share their ideas with other citizens. The citizens were also able to report about accidents, potholes or broken streetlights directly to the city hall.

Santander city experiment demonstrated the advantages of the IoT and social media monitoring by providing the residents with real time information about bus delays, parking availability etc. The citizens were made a part of the city’s governance using the social media as a platform. For better management and organising in the city and to make citizens involved in governance, social media monitoring could be made a part of smart cities.

Dereddy SabrinathReddy

Batch 2016-2018

Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management

SMAC

                       

            

  

             SMAC is a powerful tool in giving insights about the business world and helping them know about the customer preferences .SMAC has 4 main parts S- SOCIAL, M- MOBILE, A-ANALYTICS and C-CLOUD.

Social networking:-Social data means information taken from the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in order to know what the customers are basically talking about, their needs and demands from the current market. And all this can be gleaned with the help of tools like data shift which is basically human data intelligence that helps in translating data into action.

Mobile devices:-As we all know that today the world lives on smart phones and due to high internet penetration people are connecting with each other. Mobile devices allow users to update profile, catch new deals, promotions, track locations, etc.

            

Analytics:-Humongous databases have come into existence which has the capability to handle millions of records in a short time; analytics is used to make intelligent predictions about the customer’s reaction based on information derived from social networking. Analytics can also be a classified predictor of customer behaviour which tends to give accurate results and helps to analyse the pattern of customers.

Cloud computing:-Cloud is one of the best upcoming elements in the SMAC, it refers to a vast storage capacity available for which the business has to pay by the minute or hour. Hence companies do not need to spend millions of dollars on building a data warehouse and maintaining it, instead they can simply rent the space on the cloud whenever they require it. Whenever they require more space they can pay a few hundred dollars and continue on their merry way building what they want, according to their requirements.

Taking decisions without knowing the facts is like a shot in the dark, it can lead to the collapse of your organization, loss of customers and unsatisfied employees. Overall it can decrease the name or credibility of your company. Such a step can result in collapse of the whole business and shutting down of the company or firm. Enterprises today take customer data from multiple sources, it is necessary to use the data in an intelligent and indigenous way.

Makers of the decision have relied on their decision support systems to take crucial decisions, but often the ROI expectations are not exact because the available data is scattered throughout the company. Businesses now realise combining or integrating multiple sources of data is not possible without a platform, thus creating a platform leads to effective decision making.

There was a time when companies were pushed against the wall having just two choices, either Evolve or Perish. This is when the Social-Mobile-Analytics-Cloud (SMAC) framework came into the market. It provided increasingly promising solutions to the global industries to succeed in the highly competitive market and the rapidly moving world of technology.

SMAC is a useful blend of multiple technologies with unique functionalities combined into a single platform. Using these technologies has brought a significant improvement in the business. But merging of these technologies into a single platform was a breakthrough in technology waiting to happen. This methodology when implemented brings greater value and acts as a force multiplier to marketing efforts for the business. The majority of industries now a days are putting the efforts in SMAC technology to experiment and see how it can help to enhance the customer experience, also adding more value to their company or business.

Experiments carried out by various companies have made it clear that SMAC has a lot of potential, it can be a game changer for its implementers. SMAC is finding a wider acceptance with a steady rise in the number of clients and many of them moving from trail implementation to full scale implementation. The SMAC demand is going to increase as global firms are ready to spend a  major part of their assets on it. SMAC guarantees enhanced customer satisfaction, unparalleled competitive advantage and notable value to the business. It also acts as a confidence reviver for all technology users.

SMAC enabled applications and infrastructure needs to focus on three key areas:

i)        Core skills around new working style of customers and employees need to be developed.

ii)      To learn how to analyse and asses the business

iii)    Keeping in mind the inflection point of information.

IT departments shall have to become experts of these 3 key elements.

To accomplish this last objective they need to focus on machine learning capabilities and intellectual analytics to make clever decisions with this information, in addition to routine processing and not only deal with sheer scale and velocity of their data.

How to deliver positive benefits to business? What is your business plan? Have you implemented SMAC? These are the questions asked by customers now a days to the business and hence this makes the SMAC strategy important as it is growing stronger and smarter. With increased automation and platform-based services that can be replicated across segments and non-linear schemes, analysts confer that SMAC shall give IT companies extra edge offerings for clients. And hence big multinationals like Infosys, Cognizant, and Tech Mahindra are inclined towards implementation of SMAC in their Ecosystem to get a better hold on their customers and to grow their business.

Shreya Gupta 

Batch 2017

Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management

                                     

Economic logic behind Goods and Services tax

The goods and services tax proposed by the government of India is going to replace all the other taxes and it will be the destination tax that is paid at the end. The discussion of GST was started by BJP government in 2000 by forming an empowered committee headed by Asim Dasgupta, former finance minister of West Bengal. Why is the central government desperate to pass the bill of GST? To understand this, we need to go and study the past, when we got independence in 1947.

At the time of independence, our federal structure needed to be strong enough and there was a need for robust power in the hands of central government. If it was not like that, today there might have been a Kashmir separated from our boundary and a Khalistan (state of Punjab) as our bordering nation. The monetary policy of the country is also controlled by the central government and once in every five years, an economic body called the finance commission is formed, that recommends on how much power can be given to the state governments in levying the taxes.

The 14^th Finance Commission gave more power to the state government in tax devolution. It decentralized the power, which gave the individual states an authority to levy taxes. For example, vehicle from Karnataka needs to pay road tax if it is roaming in Maharashtra even though both the states are under one central government. Now, central government came up with goods and services tax which will replace all the existing indirect taxes. Indian government had proposed GST rate of 27% which is the highest in the world.

In order to facilitate one country - one market, GST came into picture. It’s not about the autonomous position of state but treat India as one. Several state governments are opposing and fearing about GST because they will lose the power to levy the taxes and suffer revenue losses. For example, the government in the state of Maharashtra is ruled by same political party that rules the center but still it is opposing the bill. Implementing GST will be the country’s benefit and government of India is telling the state governments that center will collect the final tax and give the state more than that what the state currently gets from individual taxes.

                                                                                                        

Sunil Subrahmanyam

Batch 2017
Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) offers ways to design build and manage dynamic, cost-effective and adaptable networks, making it ideal for the high - bandwidth, dynamic nature of the applications.

The basic concept of SDN is to separate control & data plane, centralization of control and programmability of network.

Why SDN?

·         Networks are hard to manage and evolve

·         Computation and storage have been virtualized

·         Creating a more flexible and manageable infrastructure

·         Ongoing innovation in systems software.

SDN gives far greater flexibility and efficiency to organizations so they can tailor networking to suit a particular application at any time.

SDN will help the CSP’s to virtualize their packet core technologies, reduce CAPEX & OPEX and usher in service innovation.

Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and others have invested heavily in Software Defined Networking.

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) differs from SDN by decoupling the network functions like DNS, Caching etc. from proprietary hardware applications.

NFV is able to support SDN by providing the infrastructure upon which the SDN software can be run.

NFV is applicable to any data plane packet processing and control plane function in mobile and fixed networks.

Benefits of SDN and NFV:

·         Reduced Capex and Opex

·         Delivering Agility and Flexibility

·         Reducing Time to market

Challenges Faced:

While SDN and NFV technologies have the potential to realize the benefits mentioned, there are technical challenges they need to address before realizing the full potential.

Although customer demand for SDN and NFV is high, they also face organizational challenges, lack of skills and a clear business case.

Portability/Interoperability, Management, Automation, Network stability are some of the other challenges faced.

Market Growth

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Market is forecast to grow at 86% CAGR from $2 Billion in 2015 to USD 45 Billion+ in 2020 NFV represents the lion's share of the combined SDN - NFV market. VC investment in SDN related technologies has grown manifold from $10M in 2007 to $454M in 2012. SDN acquisitions till date are more than $1.5Billion.

Dennis Marcel
Batch 2016
Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management

Security Threats in IoT

Internet of Things is the latest buzzword in today’s world of ICT. IoT is a new wave in the market which is all set to sensationalize our lives with no obscurity. There is an estimate that over the next decade or two about 26-100 billion IoT based devices will evolve surpassing the entire human population of the world. [Source: Gartner].
Now interconnected devices on such a large scale will bring forth the issues of privacy and security. Mulling over the solutions for such concerns is indispensable now. Devices under the umbrella of IoT will be interconnected with the help of IP addresses based out of IPV6 where each device will be identified with an IP address assigned to it. When you build a network using uniform standards, it becomes more vulnerable. Hence in a way the use of IP addresses will invite major security issues.

Following are the top five areas of security concerns with respect to Internet of Things:

Privacy Concerns: Majority of the IoT devices will indulge in collecting personal information like name, date of birth, address, health, credit card information and much more. Most devices would transmit this information across interconnected networks. If unknowingly users somehow misconfigure their home network, then it is very likely that their personal information can be exposed via wireless networks. The situation can even be fatal; imagine what can happen if someone hacks into a cardiac pacemaker or a car being driven on the road!

Insufficient Authorization /Authentication: A huge number of devices per single user would eventually end up with users keeping weak and simple passwords and sometimes common passwords. Many such users would also use the same password in the cloud for cloud products. This issue can be mitigated by defining strong password policies which may even fail if there are common passwords everywhere.

Transport Encryption: When information that is being transferred from one device to another device is encrypted; it is called Transport encryption. Transport encryption is crucial and failing to do so might also create a backdoor for hackers to extract information from the devices or the cloud itself.

User Interface: IoT devices will bring in security concerns with their user interfaces. These issues would include: persistent cross-site scripting, weak default credentials and poor session management. Hackers can identify valid user accounts and take over control using features like password reset etc.

Device Constraints: IoT would work if only if the end devices use as little energy as possible. This means that the devices will have comparatively low processing power. Hence devices cannot run a complicated security software else it would hamper its processing speed. Developing specialized security software for such devices will be another issue. Also many current firewall systems may not control the traffic flows into these devices which is another security concern.

Therefore security threats for IoT should be addressed throughout the device lifecycle i.e. from its initial design to its operational environment. This will include: Secure Booting, Access Control, Device Authentication, Firewall and IPS, Updates and Patches etc.
Simultaneously security at both the device and network levels is crucial for the successful operations of IoT. Fortunately, this need not require a revolutionary approach, but rather an evolution of steps and controls similar to those which have proven successful to a greater extent in IT networks. Instead of searching for an exclusively revolutionary solution that as of now does not exist, one can focus on delivering the current IT security controls and measures adapted and optimized to an extent to address security threats for the new and complex embedded applications and  systems driving Internet of Things.


Deepika Dave
Batch 2017
Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management