From AnandParthasarathy, recently in Goa
July 2 2018: Consider these numbers: India is now the world's leader in consuming data on mobile phones -- 1.5 billion GB per month. And we like to watch movies on our handsets:  Over 60% of all Internet traffic  here consists of video....in 3 years  we'll  be consuming some 84 billion video-minutes per month.  
Last year we were thrilled if a service provider let us use up 1 GB in a month. Today we demand -- and get -- 1GB/day.  
No wonder Indian data networks are grappling with some of the densest traffic in the world. And no wonder, the hotbed for the world's top tech companies to launch their futuristic technologies is right here in India, that is Bharat.
Just a year after it announced  the creation of  "Network of the Future", Cisco a global networking giant, is seeing the widest, fastest adaptation of the new technology, in India.  It's called Intent-based networking; that is,  the network doesn't wait to be told what  you want it to do.  It second guesses  -- and  gets on with the job. Like that movie title, it's all about the 'Need for Speed'. 

• |How does this touch you and me? It enabled  HDFC bank to offer the "10 second loan":   Make your application on line and the system assesses your  need, your payment capacity, credit history -- and comes to a decision in that many seconds.  
• It enabled   the six campuses of NMIMS University to  implement  mobile phone selfie-based auto attendance for every class, saving a precious 10% of  teaching time. 
• It helped India's biggest  logistics player, SafeExpress to shift 80 million packages a day with 99% accuracy 
• And  it helped  Bangalore-based Narayana Health to offer remote consultations in thousands of rural locations, country-wide
• And an all-data network like Reliance Jio,  uses local caches of video content with a Content Delivery Network (CDN)  so that movie clips play without stutter even in a Rs 4000 feature phone.

Indian  tech biggies are in the vanguard: Wipro is the first organisation to implement  Intent-based networking anywhere in the world  and TCS is rolling  out its largest implementation.  |
Networks used to be  dull bits  of hardware, moving data from here to there. But the new intent-savvy network has  pushed these wires to ask,  not just 'where to',  but 'why' and 'what'. The carriers have become clever and networking  has morphed from  so-boring  to sexy.
And it is all happening  right here: "India is shaking mass scale networks and reinventing it for the world", said Sanjay Kaul, Cisco's  Managing Director for global service providers, last week, speaking at  the company's annual  tech summit in Goa.  
And in a larger context, Cisco President for IT,  V C Gopalratnam  admitted: "We're falling in love with the network -- all over again!"