Dear Students,
1. This morning we heard from the General Manager and former CFO of Tyco about how his firm can add value to building of smart cities. Please share your key takeaways and discuss which offerings are integral to the smart cities.
2. This afternoon we visited Airtel. Please discuss the business model of the firm and how it could be extended in building of smart cities and why?
During today’s meeting at AIMA, we were able to start consolidating all of the information we have gained from our speakers and start thinking about how we would like to apply their ideas for Bay Area cities. After splitting into groups and selecting cities of interest, we began to brainstorm how we would like to present a smart city framework that will help us approach the issues we have observed. Within my group, we discussed how we would like to approach smart city implementations for San Francisco, and drew out a new flow chart that we agreed would better incorporate social issues into our development of technology for SF. This took awhile, as we began to realize how truly difficult it is to address multiple issues and aspects within a city into a cohesive plan of action. Our first speaker today from Tyco gave us insight into the company’s products and services and how they contribute to the development of smart cities, such as the RFID systems in addition to fire and security offerings. Tyco’s integration aspects offer many technologies in a more efficient manner, and these models, along with allowing certain technologies and data to be open and accessible, will be leading forces in determining the technological building locks of the smart cities of the future.
After a lunch of Dominos pizza, we headed to Gurgaon to see the main office of Aritel, where we heard how the telecom giant is contributing and playing a role in the development of smart cities across India. Airtel’s business model and approach to smart cities focuses not only on the local administration and municipality level, but also includes a look into the physical, institutional, and economic infrastructure, as well as the education and transportation aspects of connectivity within a city. From what we have learned throughout this trip, this holistic view from a corporate standpoint is extremely important for the development of a city, as it takes into account many important issues that ultimately contribute to the sustainability of the city. This perspective was extremely interesting, as it allowed us to see what how other corporate entities are aiding in the process of developing and implementing smart city frameworks from a holistic viewpoint.
We started today with a two-hour working session where we reassessed the lessons we have learned in India and how we can best apply them to the Bay Area. Understanding that cities are intertwined, we ultimately decided to focus on four cities – San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley. As part of team San Francisco, we began the first step of our project by developing a framework for smart cities. Our framework for developing “smart” cities is derived from the social, political, environmental, and economic issues and needs of individual cities to better quality of life for all city stakeholders. We then integrate human-centric design in the technology, city planning, infrastructure, and user participation models of the city.
Equipped with a more conceptual understanding of smart cities, we better engaged with the General Manager of Tyco, Divyendu Pundhir, on the ability to apply Tyco sensors to different parts of “smart” cities. Mr. Pundhir reviewed our framework and emphasized the development and integration of infrastructure as key to becoming a smarter city.With infrastructure in mind, we traveled to AirTel headquarters. We met with the heads of AirTel’s business-to-business and business-to-government teams. AirTel’s business model is integrated with the development of India. The penetration of cellphones and smart phones is central to AirTel’s continued growth. In regards to smart cities, AirTel focuses on integrated its products with the social, physical, institutional, and economic infrastructure of the city – in line with what Mr. Pundhir underscored.
We ended the day with a dinner at IndiJoe restaurant with our sponsors from Tyco wherein each team sat with a Tyco executive. Team San Francisco sat with Deepak who provided us insight into the cost of Tyco smart sensors ($3 – $20 per square foot depending on quality and extent) and the returns generated. I am grateful to our sponsors at Tyco for affording us this opportunity to begin the process of cross-cultural collaboration to make cities in India and the United States “smarter.”
Today we got to hear from one of our sponsors at Tyco. We learned about the world of identity management and fire safety via sensor integration. I think that these sensor integration aspects directly tie into the internet of things, as sensors will allow us to collect massive amounts of data. One of my biggest takeaways from this discussion was about the integration of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. Mr. Subash facilitated a conversation on what types of mediums RFID would work. For instance, moving forward, mobile technology is more likely to be adopted versus using another card or physical object. Most people have smartphones, and so Bluetooth technology is a strong candidate for incorporating data collection sensors. One of my thoughts on this though is that Bluetooth is not a one-size-fits-all. Although Bluetooth is a very viable option for Bay Area cities where there is an abundance of smartphones, it may not be as applicable in more rural areas. This just reinforces that we must look at each city in perspective of the citizens’ needs and capabilities.
We then visited the Bharti Airtel office, India’s largest telecommunications services provider. We learned about Airtel’s approach to smart cities that is focused on sustainable, growth-oriented development. Airtel’s business model emphasizes a B2B model, where Airtel would build the infrastructure to get contracted for smart city implementation. For Airtel, this specifically means building the network of services they want to provide in public safety, education, transportation, e-governance, etc. Thus, Airtel’s diverse portfolio of services allows them to work in different aspects of the smart city. This idea can be applied to smart cities in that multiple private organizations can provide a variety of services to the government and other enterprises to be directly involved in the smart city development. Over time, these organizations could even consider specializing into certain areas (energy efficiency, safety, etc).
Tyco is a multi-national corporation that develops sophisticated technology around fire and security products. They are the brains behind everyday protective measurements that we take for granted, like retail security monitors, parking gate sensors, and smoke detectors. However, I was most intrigued by their automatic vehicle RFID tag technology. Within the context of “smart” cities, I believe this technology has the greatest flexibility to integrate with other technologies. For example, the RFID technology can connect with mobile payments technology to allow vehicles to pay for tolls and parking seamlessly by leveraging digital payments software that connects to credit card information to vehicles. Especially in the U.S. where some households have 3-4 cars, there is a lot of opportunity for cars to become not only vehicles of transportation, but also vehicles of payment, communication, and data.
After Tyco, we had a corporate visit with Airtel—India’s multinational telecommunication services company. Airtel is an important partner for governments when it comes to smart cities because without telecommunications, IoT is impossible because a network is needed for connectivity. Throughout our travel study, we have been trying to understand how we can incentivize corporations to work with governments to develop smart cities. When we asked Airtel how they evaluate the many RFP’s that they receive from customers, they responded “revenue, margins, and profitability.” I appreciated their honesty because the bottom line is, if the investment does not make business sense, then corporations will not be on board even if the investment contributes to public good. Thus, our smart city framework must include an “ROI framework” or “algorithm” where we are able to calculate the tangible and intangible benefits that come from smart technologies and smart urban planning. This is absolutely critical and necessary in order to persuade the private sector to participate in smart city development.
Present in virtually every vertical in India, Tyco produces products in the following sectors: retail, commercial, industrial, and infrastructure. While it holds 60% of the global market share of security technologies, Tyco’s involvement in these other sectors prove to be promising areas for growth and innovation. In particular, its implementation of identity management systems provides a link to efforts being undertaken throughout India to create the world’s largest citizenship program—UIDAI. With India’s growing population, implementing an identity program becomes more and more arduous; however, companies such as Tyco and HCL are working towards utilizing biometric information and RFID technologies to create active authentication. Through such technologies, opportunities arise for integrated systems to extend beyond identification.
Similarly, Airtel—India’s largest telecommunication service provider—extends the scope of its services beyond telecommunications. It provides its services in areas such as public safety, education, transportation, healthcare, and local administration and municipality. Within the context of a smart city, Airtel’s telecommunications services are vital as a backbone to other implementable technologies. Therefore, in incentivizing private companies such as Airtel to provide their services, it is imperative for governments to construct frameworks that attract these companies. Based on Airtel’s business model of providing return for its shareholders, I would suggest a loan system where corporations make the initial investment, but can make a positive return by charging a reasonable interest rate over time. A case study of this includes the Delhi Metro. To fund this initiative, the Japanese government bore the capital expenditure of constructing the metro charging a 1.5% interest rate. Although the Japanese government had to pay heavy up front costs, they are now reaping monetary AND non-monetary benefits. The Delhi Metro is one of the few public transit systems that make an operating profit, which means the Japanese government is reaping a positive ROI. Non-monetary benefits include PR and international recognition of Japan as an advanced nation leading the way for tomorrow’s public transport.
We began our day hearing from our sponsor, Tyco, and their plans for helping make cities “smart.” Tyco touches virtually every part of our lives in the U.S. with safety and fire sensors in airports, retail stores, malls, office buildings. Their systems have only grown more advance in recent years with centrally integrated systems that allow tracking of all sensors. However, my main takeaway came when asking the representative of Tyco if there are plans to make the systems more open to new technologies. Many times, companies or governing bodies will fail to break even before the technology comes outdated. These technologies are typically looked at on 5 to 10 year life spans — so in our smart city plans we must make sure that the technologies we suggest can be paid off (or preferably profitable) before the technology becomes obsolete. By using any technologies from companies like Tyco, HCL, CISCO, IBM, or any other city involved in the “smart city” space we must realize that their goal is not to create open source technology, rather to maximize profit for shareholders and provide social utility Tyco’s fire/security sensors.
Second, we heard from Airtel, India’s largest telecommunications company, to find out how they are getting involved in the smart city space. Airtel’s offerings for smart cities were actually so comprehensive that they touch Healthcare, Education, Government, Transportation, and Safety. Their main service is providing the SIM card and/or connectivity for smart sensors or applications in these areas. However, what Airtel does differently than IBM, CISCO, or even AT&T in the U.S. is that it takes responsibility for the management of its technologies. One of our speakers alluded to the typical practice of IBM or CISCO consulting companies, making recommendations, and stepping back. But Airtel prides itself on being a “one stop” solution for smart technology and connectivity solution. Moreover, I was very surprised that Airtel took vertical integration a step further by having an in-house development team to create platforms and apps for its smart technologies. Through this vertical integration, Airtel puts itself as the name brand in smart connectivity for India as well as an innovator in Telecommunications by providing services that its U.S. counterpart, AT&T, has not yet offered.
The first key takeaway that I learned from the Genera Manager and former CFO of Tyco was that sensors are the nervous system of a city. I love this image because it exemplifies the importance of sensors in a city. Tyco will be vital in the development of smart cities because they will literally be the ones connecting transportation to fire security to other important elements of a smart city. I also found the new video surveillance technology interesting. This technology utilizes biometric identification to send information to a database to ensure that people are who they say they are. This technology could also be used in smart cities in creative ways, such as entering your home, instead of a key, it could just use a face recognition software to allow you into your home- saving time and allowing for people to do more with their time. This face recognition could also be used to ensure that only certain people are allowed into a high level security building to elevate security. Another way of putting this is intrusion detection which protects businesses and people 24/7 around the clock to make sure that people and property remain safe. This is vital when creating and framing smart cities because people must feel safe and free to create businesses thanks to Tyco. The last key takeaway I got from the Tyco presentation is the importance of partitioning what is private and what is public is a great challenge when framing smart cities.
2. This afternoon we visited Airtel. Please discuss the business model of the firm and how it could be extended in building of smart cities and why?
The framework that Airtel discussed was very interesting and I think we can learn a lot from it. First, it is most important to build a network when beginning to think about building and growing smart cities. After building a network, the next step in the process is building on top of that. Basically, Airtel is explaining that just putting in sensors randomly or the best technology is not always the need of a city first, it is important to lay the framework and groundwork for a city and then to add on top of that the necessary technology that the citizens of a city need. Airtel also discussed how India needs quick growth because the number of people graduating from top universities in India need to find jobs. To find educated people these jobs, smart cities should grow at certain percentages and quickly. The way that Airtel defines its smart city, it requires the following main pillars: social infrastructure, physical infrastructure, institutional infrastructure, economic infrastructure, public safety and security, education, transportation, health care, and local admin and municipality. I believe that these pillars will be extremely important in building smart cities especially because we will be building improving on cities like Oakland, San Jose. We will analyze these different pillars in the cities we will be working with and see which ones in particular have greater needs.
Yesterday we had a jam-packed day on our trip to Agra, so today we had a lot of catching up to do! In the beginning we worked on our frameworks (which can probably be found on my day 6 comment, there is still a lot of work to be done). Afterwards, we heard a presentation from Tyco – as mentioned before there are two approaches to a smart city there is the more grassroots approach and then the tech approach. Tyco is obviously going to be more on the tech side. They gave a comprehensive presentation on their various products and services like fire protection, life safety, security, video surveillance, and installation. I think the most compelling part of the presentation leaving aside the technicalities for a moment, is that the various bits of integrated technology really comes together for one to see how sensors can become the nervous system of smart cities. However, I think the other question is that this “nervous system” has to reach every customer segment including the 99%. And of course, with the current cities – key questions to look at is how to deploy technology given the importance of a corporate system working in tandem with government initiatives? And more over, the big question is how scalable is this technology?
Today’s discussion with Tyco left us with a better understanding of 1) a business case approach to smart city development and 2) inflection points in relation to product and service adoption. Many different technologies are available to address widespread city issues such as congestion resulting from parking, but the costs are too high initially and breakeven is only possible on a larger scale. For example, mobile technology similar to FastTrack could be used to automate parking and toll payments, and this is currently in use in Singapore. The mobile technology is very costly and will be paid for by revenue generated from taxes, tolls, and other government revenue sources, so a business case can only be made by identifying the inflection point through measuring the cost savings and social and environmental benefits of the technology. The Tyco presentation revealed that while technology may be expensive, it is important to put all systems on the network and then add modules later through the cost savings from the initial investments. Therefore, many of Tyco’s offerings are integral for smart cities—such as parking sensors, security systems, and a variety of software for big data analytics—and can be added to the network over time.
In our visit to Airtel, we learned that its core business model involves connectivity and platforms, and in the last 3 years it started entering into public-private partnerships. Aside from providing basic telecommunications services such as phone connectivity, Airtel offers connectivity and platforms for public safety and security, education, transportation, healthcare, and governance. For example, in the education space, Airtel offers a platform that enables content broadcasting for eEducation. In private-public partnerships, Airtel speaks with various state governments to understand pain points and operational challenges, and then the company assesses whether it can provide any solutions. The challenge with this business model is that it is very costly, but Airtel now earns 10-15% of its revenue from these partnerships. This model can be extended into building smart cities since companies like Airtel play an essential role in creating the integrated network and offer unique, high-tech solutions to address many widespread issues within urban areas. The public-private partnership model also has many benefits, such as the shared information that helps Airtel recognize challenges and business opportunities within different states.
Tyco’s presentation was extremely informative as we had the opportunity to learn about its complex business model and diverse product offerings, covering virtually every industry sector from retail to healthcare. One particular area I found to be very interesting is its current investment and expansion of building surveillance and identity management technology in India. For example, fingerprint readers, facial recognition, hand geometry, iris and retinal scanning, and so much more. I believe that this is an area of technology that is integral to smart cities and needs to be carefully managed by the right company. Especially with the rising security threats faced across the globe, many countries have already invested an abundance of resources to ensure that their identity management systems are at minimal risk. Given India is such a highly populated country with complex issues, having an experienced firm like Tyco would be a huge asset in its current stage of rapid growth. While entering India, I personally noticed a lack of an organized and careful system when it came to immigration checks (guards would briefly sweep over passports compared to America which refers to a complex database of information technology), intrusion detection, and much more. I noticed that while Tyco possesses an extremely wide depth of technical knowledge across these different industries, it is great that it still emphasizes a commitment of zero harm to people and the environment. At the end of the day, the construction of an effective smart city needs to revolve around the people and their basic needs, and Tyco is directly addressing all of these issues from a technical standpoint.
After that, it was interesting to see a different standpoint from the telecommunications perspective at Airtel’s office. I noticed that in the world of companies within specific industries, they have a very corporate viewpoint regarding their concept and approach of smart cities. When it comes to Airtel, their main lesson was this: ‘first map out the telecommunications services, and then you build the smart city on top of it’. The pillars of a Smart City incorporate four different kinds of infrastructure – social, physical, institutional, and economic. I definitely agree that one of the main objectives of a smart city is to create and attract jobs, which causes a shift from the rural to the urban (economic infrastructure). When it comes down to it, there is a common point that all of these executives that we have met thus far, and that is education. Airtel believes that education leads to the highest margins, and this leads to a profitable relationship for both the business and the community. Building smart cities should be about educating the community and giving them the opportunity to capture jobs, so that they can support themselves and contribute to the overall well being of the economy. Smart cities should support a high quality of life for communities so that they are encouraged to maximize their skills and abilities at an optimal level and work together to promote growth as a whole.
Today’s presentations were particularly important, because they were conducted by two major private businesses involved in smart city development, Tyco and Airtel, and provided insight into private sector incentives and initiatives in the smart city space. As we learned, corporations are a fundamental building block for successful smart cities and helped significantly advance our discussion. There were 4 primary offerings by Tyco that I felt were particularly integral to smart cities: 1) security solutions for the retail and commercial industries, 2) surveillance and intrusion detection for residential homes, 3) government assistance in vehicle identification, and 4) Tyco’s commitment to zero harm to people and the environment. Firstly, security solutions for retailers and commercial businesses are important, because they increase incentives for people to do business and also increase their probability of staying in business, which ultimately drives economic growth. Secondly, building surveillance and intrusion detection is critical in increasing public and private safety for citizens, thereby elevating their quality of life. Thirdly, government-used software such as vehicle identification improves traffic management, increases road safety, decreases congestion, and ultimately increases citizen mobility. This offering also adds a supplemental benefit that helps government increase tax revenue by aiding the tax collection process.
Beyond the offerings Tyco outlined, my largest personal takeaway is that the private sector needs to be financially incentivized to get involved in improving city social, economic, institutional, and environmental infrastructure. I believe that the stakeholders involved in smart city creation need to first identify the inflection point needed (usually measured by a price point) high enough to encourage businesses to want to provide the public service, but also low enough to encourage people to switch over to these more sustainable habits from previous norms. Identifying the optimal inflection point is at the heart of the conflict in private-public partnerships.
On this note, I posed a question during the meeting about how businesses can be incentivized to take part in social issues. Although there was no concrete model, I believe that there are two main conditions that need to take place: 1) the service requires that businesses sell products to customers that enable them to earn a profit, or 2) the government subsidizes the installation and maintenance of the service in order to help generate cost savings. My hypothesis that one or both of these conditions need to exist for businesses to feel that smart cities are worthy of their investment. I hope to further improve my framework by studying other incentive models of financing public projects with private dollars.
Furthermore, Airtel representatives also view smart cities as “a necessity, not a nice-to-have.” As they are a telecommunications company, they first map out the telecommunications services and then build smart cities on top of it. Interestingly enough, they ranked their business lines in order of importance and priority, not only based on societal necessity, but also by their profit margin. For instance, their primary focuses are public safety and security, education, transportation, and health care. They explained that their highest margins lie in the education and health care product lines, and the highest potential for future margins lies in public safety and security. Secondly, their business model also builds upon existing technological platforms available. They noted that mobile phones have the highest potential of being the first mass IoT device and the fastest way to ensure that all citizens receive adequate mobile connectivity to the Internet of Things.
Based on these findings, we can see that Airtel and many similar businesses must be primarily driven by the triple bottom line—which makes profitability of public projects incredibly important for private sector engagement. Ultimately, I believe that businesses dominantly care about profits earned by the service and cost savings generated by using existing technology, not reinventing the wheel. These are incentives important to even Airtel, a thought leader in the discussions on smart cities with already 100+ partnerships in smart city development even prior to Modi’s vision, and a business model that needs to be extended into the future development of smart cities.
TYCO
As the world’s largest fire and security company, Tyco prides itself with its diverse product and service offerings including traffic cameras, life safety products, and installation services. I found it interesting that Tyco prefers working with other companies to working with governments because private partnerships get work done faster. I know Tyco is just one company, but I could sense that other large corporations prefer working with other companies because of large profits and quick returns. Working with the government on projects like laying out water and electricity infrastructure requires heavy upfront investment and yields little returns over a long period of time with not much guarantee. Such risk might be one of the factors in the lack of infrastructure in India, which further prevents digitalization of cities. At the end of our discussion, I hypothesized that once a city is developed at a level where citizens are able to sustain themselves, the private enterprises are in charge of innovating, not the government. The government would rather allocate its budget on more pressing issues like homelessness, education, and safety.
AIRTEL
Airtel has three core businesses are the 1) retail business, which produces and sells SIM cards, and 2) enterprise business, which focuses on B2B systems. As one of the biggest telecommunications companies in India, Airtel monetizes by connecting people to the cellular network, enabling them to communicate wirelessly, and access internet through the network.
A foundational part of building a smart city is the setting up of a network infrastructure. In order for a city to be smart or intelligent in generating energy, transporting people, or making any type of decision, it needs to record and store data. For example, if a city knows how much energy its citizens consume, where its public transit vehicles are, and which intersections are congested, it enables the city to store energy at non-peak hours, inform passengers when the vehicles will arrive, and redirect traffic to less congested areas. Airtel’s technology and network capacity makes the above scenario possible. By partnering with the government and other private enterprises, Airtel can connect existing systems to an online or cloud network so institutions can solve everyday congestion or waste by making information-powered decisions.
On Day 8, our UGBA 193i class had the privilege to speak to some of the executives of the company who gave us a brief introduction to the Tyco’s products, current developments, and the firm’s overall vision. One area that I found particularly interesting was Tyco’s involvement in safety and identity protection. Essentially, Tyco has created a plethora of identity theft solutions including biometric identification systems, fingerprint readers, hand geometry, iris and retinal scanning, and automatic vehicle identification. In the long run, according to the executives, Tyco has plans to integrate its security solutions as one of the fundamental building blocks of future smart cities. I was extremely impressed by the creative and sophisticated product offerings Tyco has created to address safety issues. However, more importantly, I was surprised by just how much potential the technology has in helping build Smart Cities. When I first came to India, as I mentioned in my earlier blogs, the concept around Smart Cities revolved around hyper efficient cities designed to utilize cutting edge systems to increase convenience and monitor city activities such as carbon emission levels. Admittedly, I overlooked the importance of safety in a smart city. Safety should be a number one priority because without it, a city cannot run efficiently. As the world grows moves towards urbanization, and cities become more populated, it is important to create environments to avoid issues such as violence. I truly believe that Tyco is a perfect candidate in integrating safety measures into the city. For example, biometric identification system can be used for protecting buildings with high-worth assets. With its wide range of products, its creativity, and its dedication to formulating customized solution, I believe that Tyco can use its abilities for good to create places in which people feel comfortable living.
After speaking to the executives at Tyco, we took a bus ride to the Airtel office. Airtel is one of the largest telecommunications companies in India that offers surveillance, education, transportation, and health-related products to its clients. Airtel, itself, is heavily interested participating in the smart cities initiatives by providing a source of connectivity for those cities. During the meeting, Airtel exectuvies shared with us what they believed was the best framework to go about building Smart cities. They believed that there are two major layers to building a smart city. The first layer is determining the needsand how the city should ideally look. Next, necessary technologies should be added in order to achieve those desired results. I thought that this was a very reasonable and wise approach to take because often times, as I’ve seen from smart cities initiatives, there is an overemphasis on using the latest technologies without understanding how it will support the foundation of the city. I believe that this is something we can take into consideration when consulting our own cities in the US. We must remember to understand the city’s visions before determining which technologies to use to achieve those goals.
We began our day discussing how we can further develop and improve upon our existing understanding of a smart city framework. Honing in on the four specific bay area cities of San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley, each team began to create their own individual frameworks to apply to their respective cities.
We were then able to better recognize how Tyco International can contribute to the technological infrastructure of future smart cities. The General Manager of Tyco, Divyendu Pundhir, reviewed Tyco’s various fire safety and security products. While fire safety products will inevitably play a role in creating sustainable smart cities, I found that the security and identity management systems were the most relevant to implementation in smart cities. The use of RFIDs, sensors, biometric identification, and automatic vehicle identification will certainly be integral products in adding value to the creation of future smart cities.
In the afternoon, we went to Airtel headquarters where we learned that the Airtel business model extends into many focus areas including public safety and security, education, transportation, healthcare, and local government. This business model will easily align with the building of a smart cities as it delves into all “pillars” of a smart city: social infrastructure, physical infrastructure, institutional infrastructure, and economic infrastructure.
Our smart city conversations continued into the evening and throughout dinner. Accompanied by Tyco sponsors, we carried on our discussions comparing smart city development in India with that in the United States. In all, it was yet another productive day in which we furthered our understanding about the potential for smart cities in the Bay Area
Tyco is developing technology to create smart infrastructure for cities, not just basic infrastructure. The firm developed a RFID tag with a vehicle ID system so that when a car is driven across the country, the national highway authority can track its movements. This can greatly assist police in finding stolen vehicles, which will increase security in India. Data from this system would also be useful to create a traffic management system to map out the flow of traffic. The roads of many Indian cities, especially Jaipur, are jam-packed with cars that move slowly because of lack of traffic lights. Such a traffic management system will provide crucial information for city planners to determine the infrastructure needed to expand cities and efficiently manage the movement of people in the world’s most populous democracy. But Tyco isn’t stopping there: there is ample opportunity to add more products and seamlessly integrate all these solutions together. For example, since an RFID tag is already installed in the vehicle, might as well add a feature to the tag so that all of the car’s parking fees, toll payments, and verification of documentation required at border checkpoints can be automated, which will eliminate the need for manual processing and further make traffic flow more smoothly. Because the initial cost to implement such an infrastructure is very high, the government will need to step in and bear the burden of this cost and then gradually utilize cost savings to further improve the system and add additional functions.
Airtel’s business model involves ranking their business lines in order of importance, not only on profit, but also by benefit to society. They know that this benefit to society will drive demand for their products and services. They offer improved connectivity for public safety, healthcare, administration, transportation and education which were very costly for them to create, but now provides 10-15% of the firm’s revenue. Identifying and providing solutions for government problems has led Airtel to identify profitable opportunities for public-private partnerships.