TelecomLive April-2020

Covid-19 www.telecomlive.com 23 Telecom LIVE April 2020 which consists of two parts. First, a user-facing public dashboard which is built to provide reliable information pooled from official sources for citizens at large. The second is an administrative dashboard with more advanced features like location tracking, geofencing and predictive analyt- ics. A Bengaluru based startup BlinkIn's remote technology helped the Huoshenshan Field Hospital in Wuhan fight Coronavirus. As Wuhan was hit by Covid-19, authorities set up temporary hospitals to specifically cater to the flooding cases of the virus. In these centres, ventilators were vital and many came from a German manufacturer, Huber & Ranner. However, their installa- tion had become difficult as technicians could not go to Wuhan. In such a situation, BlinkIn helped in the installation of ventilators as Huber & Ranner used its Augmented Reality (AR) product Scotty to provide visual guidance from Pocking in Ger- many. With the use of BlinkIn's product, hospital staff just had to click on a link to get tech support. All they needed was to point a phone at the ventilator and installation point, and AR markers helped indicate what needed to be done as a technician talked them through the process. Scotty is different from other AR apps, which are bandwidth- heavy and hard to deploy, as it uses WebGL, a JavaScript API, to render graphics on a compatible browser. WebGL lets the user access a mobile phone's graphics processing unit (GPU) to run computer vision algorithms. “That's how we bring AR experi- ences through the Web rather than a mobile app,” Kumar said. A lightweight product like Scotty is to provide just enough AR for tech support to get the job done then and there. In short, BlinkIn is a Remote Support Platform to boost customer support. With AR and AI it reduces onsite visits and allows customer self-service. Telcos gain The telecom operators are getting higher revenue from increase in the internet consump- tion and bandwidth. But, there are almost no new buyers of SIM. Operators said net subscriber additions may fall by at least 2 million in March alone and may dip further if the social isolation advisories are kept in place for a longer duration. Revenue from international roaming is also expected to fall sharply for telecom operators due to global travel restrictions. However, COAI said that the revenue impact of 2 million dip will be offset by increased data usage by people who are now working from home or staying indoors. Along with the impact of tariff increase in December and data volume growth during this period, ARPU will go up by 5-10 per cent for March. International SIM card pro- vider Matrix Cellular Interna- tional Services also said business had come to a standstill. The company used to sell an average of 60,000-70,000 cards every month, now it has become zero. Smartphone loss According to Counterpoint Research, supplies of smartphone components from China to other countries may hit at least till the second quarter of this year. The research report suggests that Q1 PRC (People's Republic of China) sales to be down by around 25 pc, compared to original forecast. This is 18 pc lower than Q1 last year. But this can worsen if the virus is not contained. Global sales will also go down 7 pc compared to same period last year. Overall, Q1 and Q2 will show negative growth both globally and in PRC before rebounding. Echoing the same concerns, IDC said that prolonged shutdown of factories in China and a consequent disruption of supplies that needs different regulations. Think for a few hours, get together the team (maximum 10 members) or play solo and join the hackathon.” There is no application fee. One can register idea on: http://www.hackacause.in or www.garage48.org. Out of them, top 300 entries will be chosen by the event managers for competi- tion. All the teams that enter the competition will be announced one day before the 48-hour prototyping marathon begins. They will receive an e-mail with complete instructions on how the hackathon will look like, and need to get ready for the 48-hour online hacking. Top teams will enter the global Hack the Crisis hackathon, which will gather together the best teams from similar competitions all around the world! Technology Start-ups Gurugram based DronaMaps has developed a live dashboard to track Covid-19 patients and their activities, and is working with Haryana and Punjab govern- ments. The start-up also offers an administrative dashboard with advanced features like location tracking, geofencing and predic- tive analytics. To flatten the curve of the number of cases with the disease, it is important to track the positive cases, suspected cases, quaran- tined individuals, hospitalised cases etc. To give an example, all suspected cases are constantly monitored through social media or call records. This ensures officials are aware of the places those people could have visited and by detecting the mobile phones close to the patient's phone, the people who have been in close physical proximity with the patient. In addition, predictive spatial analysis based on granular spatial and temporal data can be used to estimate which areas would need additional resources. In line with this, the start-up made a Covid-19 tracking system