During the past one year, the Indian telecom industry witnessed several partnerships and collaborations am­ong­st various stakeholders. While most of the operators continued to award contracts to leading vendors for upgrading, modernising and expanding their networks, several operators entered into intra-circle roaming agreements to increase their footprint and service coverage.

As the Digital India initiative gained momentum, public Wi-Fi services took centre stage. Many state governments collaborated with leading Wi-Fi providers to establish and augment their infrastructure. Government agencies in Haryana and Daman & Diu remained at the forefront in this regard. The year also saw partnerships for the development of communication infrastructure for smart cities. Vendors such as Sterlite Technolo­gies and Cisco were awarded contracts for deploying smart city infrastructure in Telangana, Gujarat and Jaipur.

Towards end-2016, the government’s demonetisation drive paved the way for several operator-run mobile wallets. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), which does not have its own wallet, collaborated with banks such as the State Bank of India and Corporation Bank to launch its own mobile wallet, MobiCash, and a payment mechanism, SpeedPay.

In addition, the year saw collabor­ations for the provision of a suite of applications to enterprise customers and the development of internet of things (IoT) solutions. Cloud-based network expansions were also taken up.

Going forward, companies will continue to focus on 4G and emerging enterprise technology solutions such as machine-to-machine and IoT through these partnerships, while further collaborations can be expected around the Digital India initiative. Industry stakeholders are also likely to explore more opportunities in the Wi-Fi, digital payments and smart cities spaces.

A look at the key telecom partnership deals during 2016