Centre for Internet and Society

5G Technologies Workshop by IEEE

rohini — 2015-08-29T14:10:03Z

The workshop was organized by IEEE Communications Society, Bangalore Chapter, at Bangalore on May 22 and 23, 2015. Rohini Lakshané attended the workshop.

Download the programme schedule

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/news/5-g-technologies-workshop

TRAI and the Disclosure of Personal Information

Nehaa Chaudhari and Vidushi Marda — 2015-05-10T09:16:28Z

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), in March 2015 invited comments on its Consultation Paper for the regulation of over-the-top (OTT) services. In an unprecedented wave of public participation, TRAI received over a million e-mails in support of net neutrality.

This note sets out the law in relation to the unauthorized disclosure of personal information. Many thanks to Bhairav Acharya for his inputs on this.

Subsequently, on April 27, 2015, TRAI made all responses received by it public, including personal information like email addresses along with any information contained in email signatures, which invariably include a phone number or address. While disclosure of names was needed to ensure transparency in the consultation process, disclosure of personal information gave rise to criticism and questions around the legality of such disclosure.

This note sets out the law in relation to the unauthorized disclosure of personal information:
Section 43A of the IT Act provides for subordinate legislation to govern the manner in which sensitive personal data is collected and processed. The governance of personal information is dealt with under the Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 (“2011 Rules”). The 2011 Rules are made to give effect to Section 43A of the IT Act.

TRAI is a body corporate as per Section 3(2) of the TRAI Act. Hence, TRAI’s collection, storage, and disclosure of personal information is governed by the 2011 Rules. Rule 5(8) requires personal information collected to be held securely. TRAIs publishing of email addresses is a violation of Rule 5(8).

Rule 4 of the 2011 rules requires a body corporate to have a privacy policy. On its website, TRAI publishes a Privacy Policy. However, the Policy speaks of information gathered from the TRAI- Website. Even the wording on the Home Page of the TRAI website (that links to these policies) says “Website Policies”. It is unclear therefore, whether the Privacy Policy applies ONLY to the collection of information over the TRAI- Website or whether the Privacy Policy applies to TRAI overall.

Either way there is an argument to be made. TRAI has failed to draft and publicize a privacy policy for the personal information it collects directly. Without prejudice to the above, if the privacy policy on the TRAI website governs this collection of email addresses, then its unauthorized disclosure is a contravention of its own Privacy Policy, specifically paragraph 2.

Since the IT Act does not enact a specific penalty for contravention of section 43A in respect of personal information, TRAI’s unauthorized disclosure will be penalized through the residuary penalty contained in section 45 of the IT Act.

Hence TRAI is liable under Section 45 of the IT Act read with Rules 4 and 5(8) of the 2011 Rules. Section 45 provides a “residuary penalty”; for those provisions under the IT Act or Rules for whose contravention no other penalty has been prescribed. For this contravention, TRAI would have to pay a compensation of 25,000/- to the affected persons or a penalty of 25,000/- rupees.

TRAI may argue that it disclosed that personal information would be disclosed/published. However, the Call for Comments Press Release says that Comments will be published. Email addresses are not comments, and therefore TRAI did not issue a prior disclaimer for the publication of this personal information – hence the disclosure of e-mail addresses is still a violation.

The remedy for violation of Section 43A of the IT Act is the Adjudicating Authority appointed under Section 46(1), which requires a person not below the rank of Director in the appropriate government to receive complaints. Since TRAI is a body corporate as per the Act, it is unclear as to who the adjudicating officer in the present case should be; and is the matter of a separate research question.

The Appellate authority is the Cyber Appellate Tribunal constituted under Section 48 of the IT Act . It is not known if the tribunal has been constituted, and if it has; it is unknown whether it is staffed.

In the absence of clarity with regard to statutory authorities, a citizen whose personal information has been disclosed by TRAI without authorization may file a writ petition in the Delhi High Court under Article 226, or in the Supreme Court under Article 32 for issue of a writ of mandamus or prohibition, for appointment of the first adjudicating officer and also for issuance of directions in lieu of such an officer.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/trai-and-the-disclosure-of-personal-information

Stranded Capacities & Greater Expectations

Shyam Ponappa — 2015-06-22T01:56:34Z

India's infrastructure is in a shambles because of stranded capacities that don't connect with unmet needs. Every aspect of infrastructure, such as electricity or broadband for communications, needs to be designed and executed to flow through from end to end.

The post was published in Organizing India Blogspot on May 8, 2015. It was earlier published on May 6 in the Business Standard.

The remarkable change in expectations from last May that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government achieved appears to be giving way to closer scrutiny based on actual performance. Meanwhile, the wait for significant economic reforms is excruciating.

A couple of indicators of uneasiness: foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have turned watchful, with investments in equity and debt slowing after sustained inflows. (See Chart 1).

Also, while some leading businessmen have been saying everything is on track, industry credit growth is slowing relentlessly, as is to be expected when demand is muted, infrastructure is dysfunctional and credit is expensive. (See Chart 2).

The flurry of claims, accusations, rebuttals and counter-claims about earlier growth rates dwell on reclaiming the past, with little evidence of seeking clues to generate momentum and confidence. This may be attributable partly to the curse of our times: a penchant for headline-grabbing or headline-making. There is scarce interest in less flamboyant, fact-based presentation - whether it is politicians, TV and print media, or the audience, the general public. This may also be partly attributable to inept communication, a malady that seems to plague this regime despite its vaunted communication skills as much as it did the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) before it. Perhaps the Web can be better used to not only organise and coordinate within and across ministries, but also to disclose information while building convergence and confidence.

Consider some points that stand out from the clamour. One is that insufficient attention is directed towards cohesive policies, processes and institutions. On the face of it, there do appear to be several efforts at policy reform, for instance, in land and labour legislation, as well as in judicial reforms. There are critiques, however, suggesting that these stand-alone efforts suffer from insufficient resource allocation and ineffective implementation. The implication is that there is an absence of overarching vision and flowing from that, a lack of direction and integration.

Are constructive alternatives possible?

Last week's observations by former NDA minister Arun Shourie highlighted this apparent lack of vision, and how the government seemed to be dealing with the many problems like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without an appreciation of the big picture. For example, the government's actions relating to coal and spectrum auctions are merely in line with court orders. There is no apparent effort to develop constructive alternatives in the public interest.

From a societal perspective, surely the government, the courts and the public need to ask: for whose benefit and at what cost? For instance, how are upfront government revenues from auctions beneficial to the public if they result in non-delivery or a slowdown of requisite services, compared with much larger collections over time from enterprises that deliver services after criteria-based allocations?

Note: revenue sharing can also be transparent. For transparent allocations, one alternative is to draw up technical and financial shortlists with integrity, followed by a lottery (with equal integrity). Another possibility is merit-based, open criteria judged by individuals with understanding and integrity - as was done to affect a breakthrough for land acquisition for the Calcutta Metro in 1982 and for part of the Bengaluru Metro in 2006. Both were achieved effectively without controversy by officials (or, to use the customary pejorative, "bureaucrats") entrusted with the responsibility. These individuals could be consulted.

Cohesive Leadership

An elephant in the room is the NDA's socially divisive stance. If the goal is high achievement, the need for convergent effort from our diverse, vast population is a no-brainer. Strong leadership resulting in cohesive effort is essential. The misgivings created so far must be addressed and reversed. If not attempted now, it will be a tremendous opportunity squandered.

There will be, of course, many impediments to achieving convergent efforts. And the dissonant legacy structures - such as realigning the judiciary and executive to constructive engagement, a constructive welfare net in place of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, formulating truly beneficial policies for our needs instead of aping detrimental auction models - will be difficult to replace.

It is likely that we will continue in our shambolic ways, depriving ourselves of the gains of organisation and productivity. Yet there is the tantalising possibility of great gains if we were to have the right leadership, and if we could ourselves rise to the occasion.

Infrastructure

Another elephant in the room is our atrocious infrastructure. Successive governments and all parties have foundered on this. Empty talk of "second-round" reforms and so on betray a complete lack of understanding of the elements of essential, enabling infrastructure. At the most basic level, electricity, communications, transport and logistics, water and sewerage/waste disposal are fundamental requirements for productive living. These must be the relentless focus of end-to-end delivery systems.

The reforms in power and communications since 1991 were encapsulated sub-processes, as in Chart 3. Each of the boxes is a complex process in itself, and each has its position in the process flow as shown. Electricity reforms relate to fuel, generation, transmission, distribution and cash collection. Unless all steps in the chain are completed, we will be left with stranded capacities in one or more of these "boxes", like stranded generation plants, as we have been so far.

For broadband communications, the areas are the access, aggregation and the core or backbone networks. The most difficult are the last-mile links in access networks. Elements like the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) backbone are stranded unless they are connected with aggregation networks that lead to last-mile access, which could be a wireless, cable, telephone wire, or an electricity link. The system must be designed in its entirety to deliver.

What began the information technology services revolution was facilitating every link in the chain from one end to the other, with permissions, incentives and tax cuts, even if it was only a "thin pipe", 64 kbps link that bypassed initial hurdles for a start. The government could consider variants that could work for each infrastructure sector.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-op-ed-may-6-2015-shyam-ponappa-stranded-capacities-and-greater-expectations

Response to TRAI Consultation Paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-Top (OTT) Services

pranesh — 2015-05-09T11:27:15Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) sent a joint response to the TRAI Consultation Paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) Services with scholars from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. The response was sent on March 27, 2015.

Executive Summary

The principle objective of net neutrality is that “all the Internet traffic has to be treated equally without any discrimination”; but this has had different interpretations over varied contexts. While the discourse in India has often treated net neutrality as a singular policy construct, we break down net neutrality to its various components. We then individually contextualise each component to the unique characteristics of the Indian telecommunications industry such as dependence on wireless internet access, the fragmented and non-contiguous distribution of spectrum, high competition between TEL-SPs and low digital literacy. The evolving nature of markets and networks are also considered while taking into account various public policy perspectives.

In this submission, we also argue for the need to introduce reasonable regulatory parity between functionally equivalent communications services provided by OTT-SPs and TEL-SPs. We compare the regulations for OTT-SPs under the Information Technology Act 2000 (as amended) with the regulations for TEL-SPs under the Telegraph Act 1885 (as amended), the license agreements (UL, UASL, ISP-L) and TRAI Regulations. Based on an analysis of the current laws and regulations, we suggest how TRAI needs to intervene to create this regulatory parity (for example in areas such as privacy, spam/UCC, interception etc.).

Through the above analysis, we recommend an overall regulatory framework that should be adopted by the Government. The framework takes a nuanced approach to various components of net neutrality, contextualised to India, and also attempts to bring reasonable regulatory parity. Instead of compartmentalising TEL-SPs and OTT-SPs as two distinct actors, the recommended framework considers a two-layered approach which recognises that there is an overlap between TEL-SPs and OTT-SPs. The first layer comprises of network and infrastructure (collectively called the network layer) and the second layer comprises of services and applications (collectively called the service layer).

The framework further divides the service layer into “Non-IP Services”, “Specialised Services” and “Internet Based Services”. The concept of “Specialised Services”, which is borrowed from the European Union, refers to traditional services that have migrated to an IP architecture such as facilities-based VoIP calls to PSTN and IPTV, and are either logically distinct from the Internet or have special needs which the “best efforts” delivery of the general Internet cannot satisfy. This concept helps in applying different evaluation criteria to functionally equivalent “Non-IP Services”, “Specialised Services” and “Internet Based Services”. In the framework, “Specialised Services” are also recognised as an exception to net neutrality. The concept of “Specialised Services” also helps to create an incentive for continued investment in underlying infrastructure by TEL-SPs.

This framework has helped us to bring a more balanced approach from the perspective of both TEL-SPs and OTT-SPs, while also taking into account technological convergence. It has also helped us to bring a more nuanced approach to various issues comprising net neutrality such as zero rating, paid prioritisation etc. We have considered best practices from different international regimes and the pros and cons during implementation in order to determine the exceptions and boundaries of net neutrality that should be adopted in India.

Download the full text of the Response

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/joint-response-to-trai-consultation-paper-on-regulatory-framework-for-over-the-top-services

Net neutrality: Trai receives over 2 lakh mails

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T02:11:15Z

The idea of an open internet can bring together not just worried netizens but politicians of all hues.

The article by Sandhya Soman and Jayanta Deka was published in the Times of India on April 14, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

On a day when the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India got more than 2 lakh emails by Monday afternoon from Indian netizens annoyed by possible efforts to make internet an unequal space, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and DMK leader MK Stalin also defended net neutrality.

While Kejriwal tweeted that "India MUST debate #NetNeutrality. I support #Saveinternet campaign www.savetheinternet.in", Stalin in his statement said that any move to allow telecom companies to give preferential access to websites would go against the concept of equality.

Telecom minister Ravishankar Prasad, meanwhile, told media that a special DoT panel will come out with its report on net neutrality in May.

The latest fight for net neutrality — the idea that all traffic is treated equally by internet service providers — gained momentum after Trai put up a consultation paper on the topic asking users to give their views before April 24. The paper was in response to demands from telecom companies seeking to splice up internet into various packages so they could charge users based on what websites and services they were using. The companies' specific grouse is against services like Skype, Whatsapp and Viber, which they claim are eating into their profits.

"Net neutrality is about ensuring that ISPs don't end up harming universal access, effective competition and consumer benefit," says Pranesh Prakash, policy director, Centre for Internet and Society. This means that what Airtel was trying to do in December by preventing its customers from accessing WhatsApp, Skype and Viber without paying extra shouldn't be permitted, Prakash says.

One of the worst case scenarios could be the murder of innovation, says Srinivasan Ramani, 'director, National Centre for Software Technology (now, part of C-DAC).

"New ways of doing things are disruptive — Voice over Internet Protocol demonstrated how inexpensive voice calls could be. Video calls over the internet demonstrate what the old telephone technology could not do in a cost-effective manner, can now be done with ease," Ramani says. If ISPs get greater control over the internet they may end up killing the golden goose, he says.

Neutrality of the internet is essential to a wide variety of users, from bloggers, entrepreneurs and to students. "A non-neutral internet is like offering a separate driving lane to people who own a Ferrari, Mercedes or any other luxury vehicle," says Harsh Agrawal, a professional blogger atshoutmeloud.com. He is clear that he can't pay telecom operators to offer better speeds to his blog. "But what if one of my competitors can afford to pay for preferential treatment for his website? It could be a huge loss to me," Agrawal says.

E-commerce startup-founder Catherine Dohling has the same fear. "We want our website to be accessed by anyone who is interested in our products and this should not be governed by which telecom provider a person buys data from," says Dohling, co-founder of TheNorthEastStore.com.

Activists like Lobsang Tseten, who relies on digital media to reach out to people, fear that if there is no net neutrality, it could mean that a huge chunk of the NGO's grassroots base could be taken away unless users pay. "This is a very underhand way of stopping people from accessing certain websites and products," says Tseten, Asia regional coordinator of International Tibet Network.

With many biggies like Flipkart considering Airtel's Zero plan, which aims to offer free consumer browsing for such companies that sign up with the telco, start-up enthusiasts are also troubled. "An internet that is non-neutral would be a huge set-back for people like me who want to create a tech start-up. We would have to factor in a good sum of money for tie-ups with ISPs," says Rahul Kumar, an IIT-Kanpur student.

However, some activists say that some nuances of what is net neutrality are getting lost as the campaign gathers steam. On Monday, several angry netizens tweeted about uninstalling Flipkart's app and actively working to get it down voted. "What we need are regulations that ensure access, competition and benefit consumers instead of proposing specific outcomes or solutions," says Prakash.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-april-14-2015-sandhya-soman-and-jayanta-deka-net-neutrality-trai-receives-over-two-lakh-mails

Railway Takeaways for Digital India

Shyam Ponappa — 2015-04-10T13:37:45Z

Extending the approach of the Railway Budget to telecommunications and broadband. For the first time since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) formed the government last year, we have something more than grand aspirational statements to go by.

The Op-ed was published in the Business Standard on March 4, 2015 and mirrored on Organizing India Blogspot on March 5, 2015.

Last week's Railway Budget is the first indicator of possibly better days, after all the rhetoric. Perhaps the reservations of some former railway ministers and excoriating comments such as "dreams without substance" have a basis. But in my reckoning, there's a sense of coming to grips with reality based on a rational evaluation, and a systematic approach through problem solving. This was backstopped by a finely balanced Union Budget that supports infrastructure and growth.

Going forward, we need more explicit articulation of detailed steps for execution and inter-sectoral linkages, which would be highly beneficial for the overall economy as well as for the Railways. For example, on how aspects of the Budget relate to stalled and stranded power generation, how these relate to electricity transmission and distribution, and the resolution of non-performing assets (NPAs) of banks. Additionally, the financial discipline of cash flows could be extended to substantially benefit other sectors. As for the financing relating to the Railways, the expectation that the details will be worked out needs to be met soon to establish credibility.

Setting aside all normative criticism, however, what's most important now is that the Railways delivers on this Budget. This will require more resolute coordination and emphasis on implementation than in the past, for example, in contrast to the poor implementation of the Electricity Act of 2003, a good piece of legislation that's unfulfilled.

Extending the approach of realistic goals with explicit action plans and execution could benefit other areas of the economy and infrastructure. The elements include:

Toning down the rhetoric, avoiding grandiose statements and instead, defining realistic objectives. It may be argued that realism and understatement are difficult, even counterproductive, when political rivals indulge in a race to the bottom in terms of giveaways. This is true of state elections, as in Delhi, and at the national level, in the confusing if not irresponsible allocation of substantial funds to the debatable benefits of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The difficulty is that it needs responsible voters to act against opportunistic populism to discourage such gaming strategies in favour of better governance, but it will also need credible candidates with sound party positions and sustainable policies.
A willingness to depart radically from past practices for better results. For instance, no new trains were announced in this year's Railway Budget, a major, responsible departure from an otherwise pernicious customary indulgence.
An effort to develop a user-centric, outward-oriented strategy for improving services. This is the opposite of a department- or ministry-centric approach, emphasising the "scheme"-driven perspective of the department/agency for limited, piece-meal targets, as against an overall system in the interests of users.

Extending these principles to Digital India

Consider how these might apply to another flagship concept - Digital India - in telecommunications and broadband. Networks and their elements, including projects like the National Optic Fibre Network, would be treated as integral components - stepping stones or links in a chain, and not the ends in themselves - of a systemic delivery process for what users need: a broadband connection to the internet, which becomes the goal. In addition to the access to general information, telecommuting, entertainment and e-commerce through the internet, additional content relating to government, educational and health services would also need to be made available over time. Viewed from this perspective, the requirement changes from achieving targets for the installation of "x" km of fibre or "y" pieces of customer equipment, or the auction of "z" megahertz of spectrum, some of which may be stranded or not working, to achieving targets for end-to-end connectivity with high-speed access to the internet at reasonable prices for the population of users. A classic example of dysfunctional targets was the subscriber-based spectrum allocation rule, which sought to cram the most users on the least spectrum - akin to stuffing a highway with vehicles, instead of getting them to their destination.

From this vantage, it becomes clear that policies should facilitate users' access and connectivity to the internet. Therefore, systems and methods for access through elements that provide connectivity - spectrum, fibre-optic cable, coaxial cable, or "twisted-pairs" for ADSL - must be devised in an integrated manner and made available at low cost.

Networks are useful only if they are accessible to end-users. Here's where the analogy of no new trains applies: for broadband, it could mean giving up spectrum auctions that fragment delivery capacity while draining away potential capital that could be invested instead in networks. Bundling spectrum and other last-mile access technologies with stranded backbone networks seems the obvious way to reach end-users. Where fibre can't be laid and maintained economically, the intermediate linkage over several kilometres could be through reasonably priced wireless, with technologies such as microwave links in the six-gigahertz, 11-GHz, 18-GHz bands and so on, local multipoint distribution systems in the 28-32-GHz bands, TV white space (unused broadcast spectrum, for example, in the 600-MHz band), satellites, or 4G (LTE). For India with its present state of infrastructure, governments must choose to favour delivery to end-users, collecting tolls and taxes at the back end, after the revenues and profits are made. This is how mobile telephony succeeded in India. Broadband can succeed in the same way.

Another concept applicable from the Railways (and roads) is common-carrier access: all trains have access to common rail networks, just as all licensed vehicles have access to road networks, with additional tariffs for high-speed links like expressways or for captive rail. This is the way to achieve Digital India quickly, by adopting common-carrier principles on payment, whereby people in cities as well as the countryside can study, telecommute and conference for work anywhere, get health care, information and entertainment, sell their produce and artefacts, vote, and access government services.

The wisdom of the Railway Budget approach needs to extend to Digital India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-opinion-article-shyam-ponappa-march-4-2015-railway-takeaways-for-digital-india

TRAI-ing Times: The Story So Far

tarun — 2015-03-30T13:32:13Z

24th December, 2014 marked a pivotal moment in the Indian experience with network neutrality. On this date, one of India’s largest telecom players, Bharti Airtel, announced the introduction of a new ‘VoIP’ usage policy for its mobile users.

Under this policy, usage of VoIP services would henceforth be excluded from standard data usage packs and would instead be charged at standard data rates (of 4p / 10KB on 3G and 10p / 10KB on 2G).^{^[1]} Alongside this modification to 2G and 3G packs, a separate data pack exclusively for VoIP services was to be introduced. ^{^[2]}

The flurry of activity the announcement precipitated included widespread consumer and civil society outrage^{^[3]}, a statement by the Union Minister for Telecom^{^[4]}, a justificatory counter-statement by Airtel itself^{^[5]} and ultimately, a statement by TRAI. ^{^[6]} While it remains to be seen whether this was a calculated move by Airtel to kick-start the neutrality discussion in India (as some suspect^{^[7]}), the implementation of the new policy/pack was deferred pending TRAI's proposed consultation paper on OTT services. ^{^[8]}

In the context of the impending (though seemingly delayed^{^[9]}) release this paper, we take this opportunity to study TRAI-linked output on network neutrality in the past. This study was carried out using RTI requests [Part I] and targeted keyword searches of the TRAI website [Part II].

Information received through RTI requests

We had filed the following request under the Right to Information Act, 2005 on the subject and net neutrality and any material available with them generated in the course of internal or other discussions:

Request for Information under the Right to Information Act, 2005 To Shri V.K.Saxena Dy. Advisor (GA.) & Central Public Information Officer-LO Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Mahanagar Doorsanchar Bhawan, Jawaharlal Nehru Marg, Old Minto Road, New Delhi-110 002 Date of application : 08-10-2014 Subject: Documents relating to Network Neutrality 1. Please provide a list of all the consultations/discussions/meetings that have taken place with respect to network neutrality by TRAI. 2. Please provide a list of all responses received by TRAI which concern network neutrality. 3. Please provide a list of other documents/memos/minutes regarding network neutrality available with TRAI. 4. Does TRAI possess power to punish ISPs for violating principles of network neutrality? If so, please mention the provision of law which permits this. 5. What measures are taken by TRAI to monitor network neutrality violations by ISPs? For example, throttling of internet content/protocols. 6. What is the procedure for a consumer to file a complaint with TRAI regarding network neutrality violations? 7. Please provide copies of any documents regarding complaints received / action taken with respect to network neutrality violations in the past three years. It is certified that I am a citizen of India and that I do not fall within the BPL category. I am enclosing Rupees thirty (Rs. 10) towards the application fee and photocopying costs under the RTI Act for the information and documents requested. Kindly inform me at the address stated below if any further fees are required to be paid. Applicant : Signature of the Applicant Tarun Krishnakumar Centre for Internet and Society 194, 2nd C Cross Road, Domlur II Stage, Bangalore - 560071

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In response to the same, we received the following reply which smacked of non-application of mind by the concerned officer to the request:

To, Shri Tarun Krishnakumar Centre for Internet and Society 194, 2nd C Cross Road, Domlur II Stage Bangalore (Karnataka) - 560071. SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR SUPPLY OF INFORMATION UNDER THE PROVISIONS OF THE RIGHT TO INFORMATION ACT, 2005. Sir, Please refer to your application dated 08.10.2014 , seeking information under the provisions of the Right to Information Act, 2005 regarding Network Neutrality related matter. It is informed that the information sought by you vide the above referred application is not available in TRAI. The Appellate Authority in TRAl under section 19 (1) of the "Right to Information Act, 2005" is Shri Suresh Kumar Gupta, Pr. Advisor (CA&QOS), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Mahanagar Doorsanchar Bhawan, Jawaharlai Nehru Marg, Old Minto Road, New Delhi-110 002, Tele:011- 23216930, Fax : 011- 23235270. Yours faithfully, (V.K. Saxena) Central Public Information Officer (LO) Tele: 011-23211622

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In reply, we filed the following appeal with the designated Appellate Authority:

Appeal under the Right to Information Act, 2005 To : Appellate Authority Shri. Suresh Kumar Gupta, Pr. Advisor (CA and QoS), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Mahanagar Doorsanchar Bhawan, Jawaharlal Nehru Marg, Old Minto Road, New Delhi - 110002 Date: 23.11.2014 Subject: Appeal under Section 19(1) of the Right to Information Act, 2005 with reference to your reply No. 1(658)/2014-RTI dated 10.11.2014 Dear Sir, I write to you with reference to my RTI Application dated 08.10.2014 for information relating to 'network neutrality' held by TRAI. The CPIO, Shri. V.K. Saxena, rejected my request vide letter no. 1(658)/2014-RTI dated 10.11.2014 stating that " the information sought by you vide the above referred application is not available in TRAI." (enclosed herewith). As the applicant, I am unsatisfied and aggrieved by the above decision and hereby appeal against the same. Circumstances and Grounds of Appeal : By way of my application (enclosed herewith), I sought any and all information held by TRAI in relation to 'network neutrality'. For example, questions 1 - 3 queried the list of consultations etc. that have taken place involving network neutrality and sought copies of all documentation pertaining to the same. The other questions sought information pertaining to the powers of TRAI in relation to internet service providers and complaints received by it in relation to network neutrality. I submit that the failure of the CPIO to provide any answer to my queries is erroneous and therefore liable to be set aside on appeal to you. It is well-documented that there is at least one consultation connected with the subject-matter of my application i.e. 'network neutrality' released by TRAI in December 2006 (Paper No. 19/2006). In fact, the paper is currently available on the TRAI website at the following URL: http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReaddata/ConsultationPaper/Document/consultation27dec06.pdf (Please see heading 3.6 and 3.7). Therefore, if nothing else at least all information pertaining to this paper including the responses received to the question under Heading 3.7 must be supplied to me. You may also take note of TRAI's "Recommendations on Application Services" (available at URL: http://www.trai.gov.in/writereaddata/recommendation/documents/as140512.pdf ) dated 14.05.2014 where paras 1.29 - 1.31 pertain to net neutrality. This is another document that the CPIO failed to take notice of. The failure of the CPIO to even acknowledge the existence of TRAI's own papers as cited above shows that there has been no application of mind to my application and a mechanical denial has been issued. Prayer : In light of the grounds advanced above, I request that: i. My application for all information pertaining to 'network neutrality' be allowed and the relevant documents be released to me. ii. I receive a question-by-question response to each of my queries. List of Enclosures: 1. Original Application dated 08.10.2014 2. Reply of CPIO No. 1(658)/2014-RTI dated 10-11-2014 Name of Appellant/Applicant and Address : Tarun Krishnakumar Centre for Internet and Society 194, 2nd C Cross Road, Domlur II Stage, Bangalore - 560071

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The appellate authority vide dated decision 12-01-2015 replied as follows:

BEFORE THE APPELLATE AUTHORITY UNDER THE RTI ACT, 2005 F. No. 1(658)/2014-RTI Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Mahanagar Door Sanchar Bhawan, Jawaharlal Nehru Marg (Old Minto Road), New Delhi-110002. APPEAL in terms of Section 19(1) of RTI Act, 2005 Date of Decision: 12th January, 2015 In the Matter of: SHRI TARUN KRISHNAKUMAR, CENTRE FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY, 194, 2nd C CROSS ROAD, DOMLUR ll STAGE, BANGALORE (KARNATAKA)-560071 vs CPIO, TRAI. Shri Tarun Krishnakumar has preferred the present appeal dated 23.11.2014 against the reply of CPIO, TRAI, communicated to him vide letter No. 1(658)/2014-RTI dated 10.11.2014 in response to his application dated 08.10.2014 under the RTI Act. I have gone through the appellant's application dated 08.10.2014 addressed to the Central Public Information Officer, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the reply dated 10.11.2014 given to the appellant by the CPIO and the present appeal. The appellant had requested for information regarding Network Neutrality and related matter. Since the said information was not available with the Public Authority, TRAI, the CPIO. TRAI informed this to the appellant. The appellant, however, not being satisfied with the reply has filed this appeal. Upon examination, it was noticed that the consultation paper on "Review of Internet Services" issued on 27'" December, 2006 has a reference to Net Neutrality in Chapter 3-Emerging Trends. Therefore, the concerned division has uploaded the comments received in response to the 2006 consultation paper for the information of stake holders, the same is available in TRAI website under the link http://www.trai.gov.in/content/consultation_ViewCommentDescription/144_11_ViewCommentDescription.aspx . Further, the "Recommendations on Application Services" was issued on 14.05.2012 and is available on TRAI website. There is no additional information which can be provided to the appellant at this stage. In view of the above, the appeal is accordingly disposed. Let a copy of this order be sent to the appellant. Sd/- (Suresh Kumar Gupta) Appellate Authority, TRAI Under RTI Act, 2005

This reveals the extent of TRAI-produced output on the issue of 'net neutrality'. Besides a reference to Neutrality in 2006 paper TRAI did not disclose any other instance where it had discussed the issue.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Targeted Keyword Searches of the trai.gov.in website

This leg of the survey consisted of conducting targeted keyword searches of the trai.gov.in website to gauge the engagement with the subject of Network Neutrality either in the form of TRAI Output, Submissions to TRAI or other outputs (from seminar, conferences etc.). The results - aggregated using Google and Bing - have been tabulated.

Note: The results do not include the OTT Consultation Paper of 27-03-2015.

Methodology : Keyword searches of specific website using the advanced search / site-search search operator ("KEYWORD + site:<URL>"); Repeated Hits were not tabulated.

i. Keyword: "Net Neutrality"

Total No. of search results returned = 10 (Google), 6 (Bing)

Relevant Hits: 8

	Hit URL		Name of Document	Date	Relevant Page		Remarks
1.	http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReaddata/ConsultationPaper/Document/consultation27dec06.pdf		Consultation Paper on "Review of Internet Services" (No. 19/2006)	26-12-2006	References at Pg. 27-28.		Views were sought in relation to emerging trends one of which outlined was 'Net Neutrality.' Selected Extracts: " 3.6.2 The situation may also rise in India as Internet access providers may use their market power to discriminate against competing applications and/or contents. " " 3.6.3 The issue of net neutrality in the long term can threaten popularity of Public Internet based Internet telephony and similar 28 other applications as all the intermediate Internet providers may start asking commercial agreements in absence of which they may refuse to carry the content and provide desired quality of service. The future developments are likely to have new applications and contents. The business models of ISPs are concentrated around useful application. In this background views of stake holders are required whether regulatory intervention is needed to ensure net neutrality in India in times to come or it may be left to market forces. "
2.	http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/ConsultationPaper/Document/201410221229242471860Vodafone_Delivering%20Broadband%20quickly_Counter_21Oct2014.pdf		Vodafone's counter-response to TRAI's Consultation paper on 'Delivering Broadband Quickly'	22-10-2014	References at Pg. 3-4.		Here, Vodafone pledges support for an 'open internet' for all however comments " net neutrality has long been a solution in search of a problem" and criticises EU framework.
3.	http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/ConsultationPaper/Document/20120730022807389860713.Etisalat[1].pdf		Response of Etisalat DB to Pre-consultation paper on "IMT-Advanced (4G) Mobile wireless broadband services"	15-04-2010	References at Pg. 2 (Paragraph 12).		Etisalat notes that net neutrality is a topic that requires deliberation in reference to the proposed consultation paper on 4G. It defines neutrality as "Avoiding blockage of any specific web site on a particular network".
4.	http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Recommendation/Documents/recom18aug08.pdf		TRAI Recommendations on "Issues relating to Internet Telephony"	18-08-2008	References at Pg. 46 and 78		At Pg. 46: " The very popularity and success of the Internet is due to Net neutrality, i.e packets of all services and applications shall be processed and delivered without any discrimination by the intermediate service providers." At Pg. 78: " Regulation in Argentina considers IP as a mere way to offer telecommunication services, such as telephony in the form of VoIP, thus there are no legal barriers that impede market access or any plans to regulate different types of the service. Any provider is free to offer telecommunication services with different technologies and network architectures, based on the network neutrality principle…"…" The foreign investment policy is liberal and there are no distinctions between local and foreign companies. According to the network neutrality principle, there are no regulated technological standards or protocols for VoIP "
5.	http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/ConsultationPaper/Document/201412300449107784040Dr%20Rohit%20Prasad.pdf		Response to the Consultation Paper (No: 13/2014) on "Interconnect Usage Charges" filed by (i) Dr. Rohit Prasad, Professor, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon (ii) Mansi Kedia, Researcher, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) (iii) Dr. V. Sridhar, Professor, International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore		Reference at Pg.7		Raises the question of Net Neutrality with reference to OTT services. At Pg. 7: "… Since an Internet Telephony call is a partial OTT service (i.e. from the origin until it hits the IP-Telco gateway), should Net Neutrality principles (as and when drafted) should be applicable for this as well. The above question, can be taken up when the Net Neutrality rules or OTT regulation rules are framed by the regulator. "
6.	http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/ConsultationPaper/Document/2.Infotel_Broadband..pdf		Response of Infotel Broadband Services Ltd to Consultation Paper on "Mobile Value Added Services" (CP 05/ 2011)	11-08-2011	Reference at Pg. 3		Opposition to Licensing regime for Internet Content and Application Providers: At Pg. 3: " 3. Internet/ Data Applications do not depend on Telecom Operator, and are not licenced in open mature countries The need to exercise restraint on regulation is stronger in the case of data/ internet services. In the case of VAS on data/ internet services, VASPs have no technical dependence on Telecom/ Internet Service Provider for providing the service, as the data connection is generally a dumb pipe. For some services, VASPs choose to partner Telecom Operators for billing convenience (as in the case with currently provided Games-on-Demand service and Anti-virus services over Broadband). Globally, Internet Application Companies and Regulators mostly operate on a net neutrality approach, wherein a broadband application is accessible across Telecom/ Internet Service Providers. Thus, especially in the case of data services, there is no case to govern a relationship/ arrangement that has no technical necessity. Licencing Regime for Internet Content and Application providers, like portals, e-commerce, etc is not in practice in any of the open countries and should not be introduced in India too."
7.	http://trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/ConsultationPaper/Document/201308221249488827971vodafone-final3.pdf		Response to Vodafone to Consultation Paper on "Valuation and Reserve Price of Spectrum"	21-08-2013	Reference at Pg. 11		Reference irrelevant / not-substantive.
8.	http://www.trai.gov.in/writereaddata/recommendation/documents/as140512.pdf		TRAI Recommendations on "Application Services"	14-05-2012	References at Pg.18 and 19.		At Pg. 18: " 1.29 Net neutrality advocates no restrictions by Service Providers on content, sites, platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and no restrictions on the modes of communication allowed. Issue of net neutrality started in early 2007 when it was revealed that Comcast, a provider of broadband Internet access over cable lines intentionally blocked the traffic of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications and gave other Internet traffic preferential treatment. " At Pg.19:" 1.31 The issue of net neutrality for ASPs providing services on OTT model will be dealt as and when required."
ii. Keyword: "Network Neutrality" Total No. of search results returned = 16 (Google), 8 (Bing) Relevant Hits: 11.
S.No.		Hit URL	Name of Document	Date		Relevant Page		Remarks
1.		http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Events/Presentation/PPT/201111291232282048929Matthias_Ehrler_Migration_NGN.pdf	Presentation titled "Regulatory implications of migrating to NGN" made at the TRAI - Seminar on Next Generation Networks by Matthias Ehrler	25-08-2011		Pgs. 6 and 15		Presentation by expert covers neutrality implications of migrating to next generation networks.
2.		http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Events/Presentation/PPT/201111291229152361429Scott_Marcus_QoS.pdf	Presentation titled "Management of QoS" made at the TRAI- Seminar on Next Generation Networks by J. Scott Marcus of wik consult.	25-08-2011		Pgs. 10, 11, 15 etc.		Presentation by expert covers neutrality in the context of QoS.
3.		http://www.trai.gov.in/writereaddata/consultationpaper/document/3agust.pdf	Response of Microsoft to Consultation Paper on "National Broadband Plan"	27-07-2010		Pgs. 1-2		Extract: " 2. Network Neutrality Openness has been the key to the ever-expanding nature of the Internet. We would urge that the Authority adopt a light-touch regulatory approach to network neutrality that appropriately balances the needs of consumers, network operators, and those of content/ application / service providers as well as those of device vendors. Some respondents have called out the Authority's attention towards this aspect and it is important for the Authority to chart a course that harmonizes the interdependent values of innovation and continued evolution of a robust network infrastructure while promoting consumer choice and freedom online. e suggest that the Authority undertake the following three steps in this regard: a. First, adopt the widely-accepted principles that consumers have the right to access and use the content, applications, services and devices of their choosing and to receive reasonable information about their Internet access provider's practices; b. Second, adopt a behavioral standard intended to prohibit Access Provider discrimination that is anticompetitive or harms consumers, and bar Access Provider conduct that violates the other core, open Internet principles, such as allowing access to lawful content, applications, and services of the user's choosing; and c. Third, implement an expert and efficient enforcement mechanism to identify and prohibit unlawful forms of discrimination. This framework would achieve a sensible balance by allowing Access Providers the flexibility to not only appropriately manage their networks by distinguishing, if necessary, among different types of traffic but also enter into business arrangements with content providers that are transparent and do not discriminate in a manner that is anticompetitive or harms consumers ."
4.		http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Events/Presentation/PPT/201301080620033272892NGN-Migration-Session6-Licensing-Issues-NGN_rev.pdf	Presentation titled "Migration to Next Generation Networks" made at the Workshop on Migration to NGN by Martin Lundborg, Stephan Wirsing Martin Lundborg, Stephan Wirsing	29-11-2012		Pgs. 30-36.		Presentation by expert covers Network Neutrality in the context of content and licensing.
5.		http://trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Events/Presentation/PPT/201111291222335017679NGN_Dr.pdf	Presentation titled "NGN: UK and European Frameworks" made at the TRAI Seminar on NGN by Rekha Jain.	25-08-2011		Pg.18		Presentation by expert covers network neutrality as implemented by European authorities.
6.		http://trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Events/Presentation/PPT/201111291226086423929NGN_Interconnection.pdf	Presentation titled "NGN Interconnection" made at the TRAI- Seminar on Next Generation Networks by J. Scott Marcus of wik consult.	25-08-2011		Pg. 41, 43 and 46		Presentation by expert covers neutrality in the context of QoS.
7.		http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Events/Presentation/PPT/201301080612503134332NGN-Migration-Session1-Introduction-to-NGN_rev.pdf	Presentation titled "Migration to Next Generation Networks" (Introduction to NGN) made at the Workshop on Migration to NGN by Martin Lundborg, Stephan Wirsing Martin Lundborg, Stephan Wirsing	29-11-2012		Pg. 25		Cursory reference to important regulatory aspects of NGN Migration
8.		http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Events/Presentation/PPT/201111291221446111429NGN_Case_Studies%20-%20Scott%20marcus.pdf	Presentation titled "Migration Studies Challenges and Migration Studies, Challenges, and Implementation Case Studies" made at the TRAI- Seminar on Next Generation Networks by J. Scott Marcus of wik consult.	25-08-2011		Pg. 6.		Cursory reference to public policy challenges in NGN Migration
9.		http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/ConsultationPaper/Document/Auspi.pdf	AUSPI's Response to the TRAI Consultation Paper No. 6/2011 on "IMT Advanced Mobile Wireless Broadband Services"			Pg.10		At Pg.10: " In an effort to encourage network neutrality, Google asked that the spectrum be free to lease wholesale and the devices operating under the spectrum be open. Google's specific requests were the adoption of certain policies such as open applications, open devices, open services and open networks. Currently many providers such as Verizon and AT&T use technological measures to block external applications. In return, Google guaranteed a minimum bid of $4.6 billion. However, this model of broader eco-system players playing a part in spectrum auctions has not seen significant success, with Google in this instance not winning any licenses. Even if regulator wants to keep the market open for non-telecom players, broader eco-system players can participate through M&As which are likely to be permitted under the new telecom policy. "
10.		http://www.trai.gov.in/writereaddata/consultationpaper/document/201304090446122006799casbaa.pdf	Response of the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia to TRAI Consultation Paper on "Issues relating to Media Ownership"	8-04-2013		Pg.30		At Pg.30: " Convergence: Despite convergence, there remains fragmentation in the approaches adopted by regulators towards intervention in telecoms and other sectors. However, issues of access, network neutrality, non-discrimination and protection of intellectual property rights ("IPR") are recurrent themes. These are issues that are familiar to competition authorities. Moreover, technological changes may break down these demarcations further. However the real challenge that convergence poses is increased uncertainty in respect of the speed of technical change and its effects in the short and longer runs. Regulators/competition authorities run the risk of 'getting it wrong' either by applying old style/stringent regulations and/or mistaking transitory profitability for abuse. A cautious and flexible approach is required. The application of old style regulations to such evolving markets is not recommended; it may stifle investment and innovation. Regulation should be flexible enough to take account of the evolving market dynamic and be informed by the best assessment of how markets are likely to evolve. TRAI's proposed intervention does not even come close to this dynamic approach since it is predicated on an assessment which is four years out of date. It does not take account of the increased diversity and competition currently prevailing and likely to develop in India over the next 3 to 5 years and beyond. "
11.		http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/ConsultationPaper/Document/201306240358500637086RCOM_CC.pdf	Counter Comments of Reliance Communications to TRAI Consultation Paper on "Interconnection Usage Charges"	25-05-2011		Pgs. 230 (Internal Pg. 41 of appended document)		Appended ERG DRAFT Common Position on Next Generation Networks Future Charging Mechanisms / Long Term Termination Issue document analyses questions in relation to QoS and Network Neutrality in the US and other jurisdictions.

[1] See http://telecomtalk.info/airtel-starts-charging-for-voip-data-viber-skype-charges/128118/ (Last visited on 08-03-15).

[2] See http://telecomtalk.info/airtel-voip-rs75-75mb-with-a-validity-of-28-days/128216/ (Last visited on 08-03-15);

[3] See http://www.medianama.com/2014/12/223-net-neutrality-violation-airtel-introduces-differential-pricing-for-type-of-mobile-internet-usage (Last visited on 08-03-15); http://yourstory.com/2015/01/net-neutrality-startups-in-india-airtels-voip-charges/ (Last visited on 08-03-15)

[4] See http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-01-15/news/58109002_1_net-neutrality-internet-governance-model (Last visited on 08-03-15); http://gadgets.ndtv.com/telecom/news/government-to-look-into-airtels-plan-to-charge-for-internet-calls-ravi-shankar-prasad-639713 (Last visited on 08-03-15)

[5] See http://www.medianama.com/2014/12/223-a-response-to-airtels-statement-justifying-net-neutrality-violation/

[6] See http://indianexpress.com/article/business/companies/airtel-move-to-charge-voip-calls-not-illegal-khullar/ (Last visited on 09-03-15); For a video of the interview, see http://youtu.be/d6QyapRBPXA (Last visited on 09-03-15).

[7] See http://www.medianama.com/2014/12/223-airtel-withdraws-voip-charges-for-now-after-forcing-trais-hand-on-net-neutrality-consultation/ (Last visited on 08-03-15).

[8] See http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/companies/airtel-to-roll-back-higher-voip-charges/24057/ (Last visited on 08-03-15)

[9] See NDTV report dated 16-02-15 at http://gadgets.ndtv.com/telecom/news/trais-paper-on-ott-players-to-also-cover-voip-calls-net-neutrality-in-india-661111 (Last visited on 09-03-15).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/trai-ing-times-the-story-so-far

December 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-01-12T16:56:54Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) wishes you a very happy new year and welcomes you to the twelfth issue of the newsletter (December 2014).

Highlights

CIS prepared a policy brief that identifies the problem areas with the current work flow being used to publish documents and proposes suitable modifications to make them easy to locate, authentic and accessible.
NVDA team conducted two workshops. The first one was held at the Hyderabad Central University for reading and writing in Telugu. The second one was held at the Blind Empowerment Foundation in Kolkata for reading and writing in Bangla.

Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the 29^th WIPO-SCCR held in Geneva from December 8 to 12, 2014 and on behalf of CIS gave statements on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations , Limitations and Exceptions for Education, Teaching, Research Institutions and Persons with Disabilities , made a brief pointed intervention on the Broadcast Treaty , and briefly interviewed Prof. Crews on his Updated Study on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives .
Nehaa Chaudhari analyses the broadening of definitions/concepts in the Proposed Broadcast Treaty versus those in pre-existing international instruments.
Maggie Huang, an intern at CIS as part of the Pervasive Technologies projects conducted interviews with fabless semiconductor industry professionals in Taiwan. The findings are highlighted in two separate blog entries. The first one explores some of their views on the current intellectual property system and the second explores the tension between market forces and governmental intervention in providing access to mobile technology .
Tejaswini Niranjana, a distinguished fellow at CIS wrote an op-ed in the Hindu telling readers to see the ongoing Sanskrit versus German controversy as a welcome opportunity to discuss the real and persistent problems of our education system.
Vidushi Marda and Bhairav Acharya have co-authored a white paper that seeks to identify aspects of privacy in Islamic Law and demonstrate that the notion of privacy was recognized and protected in traditional Islamic law.
Ashna Ashesh and Bhairav Acharya have produced a white paper seeks to locate privacy in Classical Hindu Law, and by doing so, displace the notion that privacy is an inherently 'Western' concept that is the product of a modernist legal system.
Vipul Kharbanda authored a white paper establishing the relationship between privacy and confidentiality.
Geetha Hariharan in a blog entry examines the constitutional validity of Section 69A and the Blocking Rules.
Shyam Ponappa in an article published by the Business Standard writes that India's current policies for telecommunications don't serve our interests and tells readers what must change.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

December 2014 Report (Suman Dogra; December 30, 2014).

Events Organized

Telugu eSpeak Training with NVDA (Organized by NVDA team; Hyderabad Central University, Hyderabad; December 1-2, 2014).
Bangla eSpeak training with NVDA (Organized by NVDA team; Blind Empowerment Foundation, Kolkata; December 19-20, 2014).

Upcoming Event

Training in Use of eSpeak with Malayalam (Co-organized by CIS, DAISY Forum of India and Chakshumathi Assistive Technology Centre; Trivandrum; January 24 - 25, 2015, Trivandrum).

►Other

Blog Entry

Availability and Accessibility of Government Information in Public Domain (Sunil Abraham, Nirmita Narasimhan, Beliappa, and Anandhi Viswanathan; December 9, 2014).

Participation in Event

First meeting of the high level committee on National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility (Organized by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology; December 30, 2014; New Delhi). Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting.

Media Coverage

When technology is able but the mindset is not (Governance Now; December 1-15 issue). Sunil Abraham and Nirmita Narasimhan gave their inputs.

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies

As part of the Pervasive Technologies project, Maggie Huang conducted interviews with fabless semiconductor industry professionals in Taiwan. The findings from the samples are highlighted in four part series. The third and fourth parts have been published:

Blog Entries

[Open] Innovation and Expertise > Patent Protection & Trolls in a Broken Patent Regime (Maggie Huang; December 26, 2014).
"Copyright Management in the Age of Mobile Music" - Living Methodology Document (Maggie Huang; December 26, 2014).

►Other

Blog Entries

Nehaa Chaudhari attended the 29^th WIPO-SCCR held in Geneva from December 8 to 12. The following are the outputs:

29th Session of the WIPO SCCR: CIS Intervention on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 9, 2014).
29th Session of the WIPO SCCR: CIS- 2nd (brief) Intervention on the Broadcast Treaty (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 11, 2014).
The Broadening of Definitions in the Proposed Broadcast Treaty Compared to Other International Conventions (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 11, 2014).
29th Session of the WIPO SCCR: CIS Intervention: Questions to Prof. Kenneth Crews on his Updated Study on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 14, 2014).
29th Session of the WIPO SCCR: Statement on the Limitations and Exceptions for Education, Teaching, Research Institutions and Persons with Disabilities (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 20, 2014).
Protection of Broadcasting Organisations under the Proposed Treaty as Compared to Other International Conventions (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 21, 2014).

Participation in Event

Save the Date - 10 December 2014: The Broadcasting Treaty: A Solution in Search of a Problem? (Organized at WIPO; December 10, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari was a speaker at this side event. The details were originally published by Knowledge Ecology International.

Media Coverage

SCCR 29: Public Interest Organizations Statements regarding the Broadcasting Treaty (Knowledge Ecology International; December 9, 2014).
SCCR 29 Libraries, Archives and Public Interest NGOs in Q&A with Dr. Crews (Knowledge Ecology International; December 11, 2014).
At WIPO, Study On Copyright Exceptions Stimulates Broad Discussion With Author (Catherine Saez; December 18, 2014).
WIPO Delegates Hear Concerns of NGOs on Exceptions for Libraries (Catherine Saez; IP Watch ; December 19, 2014).

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Newspaper Article

Beyond the Language Tussle (Tejaswini Niranjana; The Samaja, November 17, 2014).

Blog Entries

Odia Wikisource campus project at Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (Subhashish Panigrahi; December 3, 2014).
Several Publications Now Available under Creative Commons License (Subhashish Panigrahi; December 28, 2014).
Odia Wikisource workshop at New Delhi (Subhashish Panigrahi; December 30, 2014). The event was organized by CIS in collaboration with "The Intellects" on December 14.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Odia Wikipedia (Dhatri; December 1, 2014).
Odia Wikipedia (Odiapua; December 1, 2014).
Access to Rare Books Made Easy (Diana Sahu; Indian Express; December 5, 2014).
Tulu Wikipedia gets some push (Hindu Businessline; December 13, 2014).
Tulu Wikipedia (Kannada Prabha; December 14, 2014).
Tulu Wikipedia (Vijaya Karnataka; December 15, 2014).
Tulu Wikipedia (VijayaVani; December 27, 2014).
Works of Veerasalingam Pantulu on web (Hans India; December 31, 2014).
Wiki Winter Camp - Coverage in Sakshi (Sakshi; December 31, 2014).
Wiki Winter Camp - Coverage in Eenadu (Eenadu; December 31, 2014).

Event Co-organized

Odia Wikisource Sabha 2014 (Co-organized by CIS-A2K and Odia Wikimedia Community; November 28, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Participation in Events

ICT for Development (Organized by Christ University; December 3, 2014). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was a speaker at this event.
Swatantra 2014: Fifth International Free Software Conference, Kerala (Organized by ICFOSS, Govt. of Kerala; Hotel Hycinth by Sparsa, Trivandrum; December 18 - 20, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan chaired a session on Wikimedia and Access to Knowledge in India and Rahimanuddin Shaik co-presented on Making DLI Accessible.

►Openness

Blog Entry

Department of Science and Technology & Department of Biotechnology adopt Open Access Policy (Anubha Sinha; December 29, 2014).

Participation in Events

Tech for Citizen Engagement 2014 (Organized by Omidyar Network; New Delhi; December 11, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker in the session "Rules of Engagement: Emerging Trends in Citizen Outreach".
Swatantra 2014: Fifth International Free Software Conference, Kerala (Organized by ICFOSS, Govt. of Kerala; Hotel Hycinth by Sparsa, Trivandrum; December 18 - 20, 2014). Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam was a speaker and made a presentation on Open Science.

Internet Governance

►Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. During the month we published the following blog entries:

White Papers

Locating Constructs of Privacy within Classical Hindu Law (Ashna Ashesh and Bhairav Acharya; December 29, 2014).
Relationship between Privacy and Confidentiality (Vipul Kharbanda; December 30, 2014).

Blog Entry

Identifying Aspects of Privacy in Islamic Law (Vidushi Marda and Bhairav Acharya; December 14, 2014).

Upcoming Events

Security, Governments, and Data: Technology and Policy (Co-organized by CIS and the Observer Research Foundation; January 8, 2015; New Delhi).
CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

Event Organized

Security and Surveillance: A public discussion on Optimizing Security while Safeguarding Human Rights (CIS; December 19, 2014).

►Free Speech

Under a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, CIS is doing research on the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute studies, reports and policy briefs to feed into the ongoing debates at the national as well as international level. As part of the project we bring you the following outputs:

Blog Entries

ICANN reveals hitherto undisclosed details of domain names revenues (Geetha Hariharan; December 8, 2014).
Revolving Door Analysis: IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (Lakshmi Venkataraman; December 10, 2014).
Is India's website-blocking law constitutional? - I. Law & procedure (Geetha Hariharan; December 11, 2014).

►Other

Participation in Event

National Seminar on Cyber Security & Cyber Laws - Issues and Concerns (Organized by the Advanced Centre for Research, Development & Training in Cyber Laws & Forensics; National Law School of India University, Bangalore; December 27 - 28, 2014). Sharath Chandra Ram was part of a plenary session on "Multi-Disciplinary Challenges in Ensuring Cyber Security".

Blog Entries

Overview of the Constitutional Challenges to the IT Act (Pranesh Prakash; December 15, 2014).
Reply to RTI filed with BSNL regarding Network Neutrality and Throttling (Tarun Krishnakumar; December 22, 2014).

---------------------------------
News & Media Coverage
---------------------------------
CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

India sees biggest improvement in Internet freedom, says report (Moulishree Srivastava; Livemint; December 5, 2014).
Are Cab Apps safe? (IBN Live; December 8, 2014).
FrndiNeed; an app for passengers' safety (Athira A. Nair; Economic Times; December 10, 2014).
Thank You To Our 2014 Sponsors (Medianama; December 22, 2014).
Why did India fail to discover the ISIS Twitter handle? (Anita Babu; Business Standard; December 26, 2014).
Targeting surveillance (Ajai Sreevatsan; The Hindu; December 28, 2014).
Centre blocks 32 websites for security reasons, restores some later (S. Ronendra Singh; Hindu Businessline; December 31, 2014).
DoT Reportedly Orders Blocking of 32 Websites Including GitHub, Archive.org, SourceForge (NDTV; December 31, 2014).
Govt blocks 32 websites, including Vimeo and Github (Moulishree Srivastava; Livemint; December 31, 2014).
Vimeo, DailyMotion, Pastebin Among Sites Blocked In India For 'Anti-India' Content From ISIS (Jeff Stone; IB Times; December 31, 2014).
Pastebin, Dailymotion, Github blocked after DoT order: Report (Anupam Saxena; The Times of India; December 31, 2014).

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Newspaper Column

A Road Map for Digital India (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; December 3, 2014 and Organizing India Blogspot; December 4, 2014).

Digital Humanities

CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Blog Entry

The Spaces of Digital (P.P.Sneha; December 30, 2014).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration:

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2014-bulletin

A Road Map for Digital India

Shyam Ponappa — 2014-12-28T01:25:32Z

India's current policies for telecommunications don't serve our interests. Here's what must change.

The article by Shyam Ponappa was initially published in the Business Standard on December 3, 2014 and mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot on December 4, 2014.

Comprehensive, Integrated Strategy & Execution

India has been coasting along on a post-feudal-colonial mélange of currents and tides, with the brigandage of opportunistic politics fed by our (the voters’) greed for short-term benefits. The result is grotesque populism and corruption in lieu of the deferred gratification of pleasing cities and countryside with the appurtenances of proper governance: sidewalks and drains, toilets, transport, administration and order, hospitals and schools.

We have to organize and manage ourselves, “engineer” our way ahead, taking active steps to build and develop our solutions, building systems and processes, and not just wait for things to happen. We need a comprehensive and integrated, systemic, silo-busting, problem-solving approach.

This applies across the board in the broadest “spatial planning” sense that integrates housing and land use at all levels with commercial, industrial, cultural, scientific and educational activity, transportation, and all governance and infrastructure: water, sewerage, energy, communications, basic health and education. Infrastructure being the first level of enablement is the essential starting point.

The 2014 Election - National Democratic Alliance II (NDA II)

Until the sweeping change resulting from the general election in 2014. The Modi-led BJP-dominated NDA government swept away the previous Congress government decisively, and seems set on making development the centrepiece of this stint in governing India.

Previously, India’s leaders acknowledged repeatedly that infrastructure is India’s great need. Yet, they took no steps [Addendum: see below for the exception: NTP-2011 in October, 2011] to marshal forces to draw up a credible strategy and execution plan. This is what needed doing. Only good intentions and/or money won’t do, because delivery systems and processes have to be developed, i.e., planned, then built from scratch.

It looks like the NDA II will seriously address the development of enabling infrastructure. A beginning on a long way ahead.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-shyam-ponappa-december-4-2014-a-roadmap-for-digital-india

Times Group wants TRAI to save the Internet from greedy telcos via Net Neutrality

praskrishna — 2014-12-05T00:52:23Z

In an especially strong attack against perceived threats to its Internet-based business, the Times of India group has sought regulatory intervention to ensure what is popularly called Net Neutrality, or the concept that internet service providers must charge only from the end consumer.

The article was published in Real Time News on November 10, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

In other words, the Times of India group wants TRAI to ensure that internet service providers and telecom companies do not take payments from certain websites to give favorable treatment to those websites on their networks.

Such a situation already exists in India’s cable business, where channels who do not pay cable operators are often simply blocked out by the cable operator and the consumer is not able to watch those channels.

The Times Group, which operates a host of websites under its Times Internet subsidiary, believes that rules should be put in place so that telecom operators and other Internet companies do not block out websites who do not pay money to them as has happened in the cable industry. This will prevent small websites and blogs from reaching their customers without paying money to telecom operators, it warned.

In a letter to the TRAI, the Times Group said there are certain trends in the Indian market in which some operators are already giving favorable treatment to certain websites.

“Given the lack of formal rules, the danger is that ISPs in India will violate the principal of Net Neutrality,” it said in a letter.

“There have already been some incidents where Indian ISPs have ignored net neutrality. This sets a precedent that broadband providers can choose the content you want to access, by making it easier or harder to get that content. On the Net, ISPs can use differential bandwidth caps, speed limits and pricing on broadband consumption.”

In recent months, operators like telecom operators have been pushing the regulator to allow them to charge websites and Internet-based services like WhatsApp. They argue that these services take up bandwidth on their networks and that they must be compensated for the bandwidth used by consumers for services like WhatsApp, Facebook etc..

“Telecom Operators in India are gearing up to push for a regulation to get websites to pay to allow consumers to access them. The telecom industry’s lobbying arm, the Cellular Operators Association of India, has listed “revenue sharing agreements” with telecom operators one of the five items on their wishlist for the new government,” Times Group said.

The debate around net neutrality started in the US where internet service providers started promoting their own websites and services by giving lower rates for accessing them.

“Services like Netflix and Hulu have revolutionized digital content consumption and given users enormous flexibility, but they are coming under pressure by copycat services developed by cable companies, such as Comcast Xfinity. These services take advantage of owning the cable connection by offering better, unlimited connectivity when using their service, while offering limited or capped connectivity when accessing Hulu or Netflix. This is an anti-competitive move that stifles innovation and competition,” Times Group said.

Other excerpts from Times Group’s submissions follow –

“Net Neutrality is the principle that the internet users should be able to access web content, download or upload files and communicate in methods of their choice without restrictions or limitations imposed by their Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Net Neutrality means an Internet that enables and protects free speech1 and equal opportunities. This means that Internet service providers should not block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks, and should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication or different speeds for different kinds of content.

“Underlying this, is the principle of whether or not India has enough safeguards to ensure that the ecosystem for content is a healthy and thriving one, and is not abused by distributors or last-mile operators aiming to create anti-competitive practices. This is a very real threat indeed, because while content may be king, distribution is God – and thousands of content owners are at the mercy of a few last mile owners who have become far more powerful than any media conglomerate could ever dream to be.

“It is hence critical that the government and regulators wake up to the fact that the only way to ensure a competitive media landscape with equal opportunities for all content-owners and their customers on Net and Mobile, is to ensure there are enough rules whereby customer connectivity is neutral to the content that rides on it. How net neutrality has shaped the internet : Net neutrality has shaped the internet in two fundamental ways: One, web users are free to connect to whatever website or service they want. ISPs do not bother with what kind of content is flowing from their servers.

“This has allowed the internet to grow into a truly global network and has allowed people to freely express themselves. For example, you can criticize your ISP on a blog post and the ISP will not restrict access to that post for its other subscribers, even though the post may harm its business. But more importantly, net neutrality has enabled a level playing field on the internet. To start a website, you don’t need lot of money or connections. Just host your website and you are good to go. If your service is good, it will find favour with web users.

“Unlike the cable TV where you have to forge alliances with cable connection providers to make sure that your channel reaches viewers, on the internet you don’t have to talk to ISPs to put your website online. This has led to the creation of Google, Facebook, Twitter and countless other services, all of which had very humble beginnings. They started as basic websites with modest resources. But they succeeded because net neutrality allowed web users to access these websites in an easy and unhindered manner. What will happen if there is no net neutrality : If there is no net neutrality, ISPs will have the power (and inclination) to shape internet traffic so that they can derive extra benefit from it.

“For example, several ISPs believe that they should be allowed to charge companies for services like YouTube and Netflix because these services consume more bandwidth compared to a normal website. Basically, these ISPs want a share in the money that YouTube or Netflix make. Without net neutrality, the internet as we know it, will not exist. Instead of free access, there could be “package plans” for consumers.

“For example, if you pay Rs 500, you will only be able to access websites based in India. To access international websites, you may have to pay more. Or there could be different connection speeds for different types of content, depending on how much you are paying for the service and what “add-on package” you have bought. This would clearly be a discriminatory practice between different websites and different kinds of content –and would men abuse of near-monopolistic powers of ISPs. Lack of net neutrality, would also spell doom for innovation on the web.

“It is possible that ISPs will charge web companies to enable faster access to their websites. Those who don’t pay, may see that their websites opening slowly. This means bigger companies like Google would be able to pay more to make access to Youtube or Google+ faster for web users but a startup that wants to create a different and better video hosting site, may not be able to do that and lose its business. Instead of an open and free internet, without net neutrality we are likely to get a web that has silos in it and to enter each silo, you will have to pay some “tax” to ISPs.

“The bottom line is that lack of net neutrality is an anti-consumer practice that will stifle competition and innovation in the digital economy, leaving power in the hands of telecom operators and broadband providers, rather than the thousands of emerging entrepreneurs in India. How Internet Neutrality may be jeopardized by ISPs, Telecom providers or other players in collusion: The case of Net and Mobile ISPs or Telecom players offering internet may try to get Internet companies to pay tolls and threaten to block or delay them if they don’t. They may do exclusive deals or other arrangements which may result in Internet blackouts or smaller websites being caught in the crossfire –, or websites, tweets, emails and texts may be mysteriously delayed or dropped, Videos would load slowly, if at all or the websites may end up working fine one minute, and time out another.

“More dangerously, this would enable a company to slow down its competitors or block political opinions it disagrees with. ISP would claim it is not their fault, and users would have no idea whom to blame –especially as there are currently no protections for Internet users. Further there is no competition in broadband, and even if there is, all ISPs may end up playing this game. On the Net, ISPs can use differential bandwidth caps, speed limits and pricing on broadband consumption. But on mobile, telecom operators can offer further favouritism towards preferred services, with additional benefits like selective billing integration and marketing/promotion.

“And since bandwidth on mobile is more limited than over broadband, restrictions or favouritism in bandwidth consumption offer telecom operators an even stronger, anti-competitive advantage. Worse, it sets a precedent that broadband providers can choose the content you want to access, by making it easier or harder to get that content. Further if freed from any legal restraints, ISPs can monitor everything users do and say online — and sell the information to the highest bidder. ISPs will have something that companies like Facebook and Google don’t: direct control over users’ connections to the Internet and the devices user use to connect to it. What is at stake is innovation and creativity, market competition, information availability and freedom of expression –and it is essential to protect thews ehard won freedoms only via Net Neutrality. International Scenario: Net neutrality has become a very heated issue in US and Europe, with significant momentum across civic groups, regulators and governments….

“While the internet only has 50-60 million users, its users can access vast amounts of content even as industries like e- commerce and travel have blossomed, creating economic value and real utility to consumers. Compare it to the MVAS world, where despite over 900 million users, the most common consumer sentiment is that they are being unfairly billed for irrelevant services. So what is the difference? On the internet, anyone can start a company and compete fairly for the consumers’ attention, spurring innovation and value. But in the mobile VAS world, only five major telecom operators control the services and choose the MVAS companies they want to patronize –even as they pay them rock bottom rates in revenue shares. The result is much less competition, and operators selling the same services (like caller ringback tones) increasingly aggressively to their customers, but with little or no innovation…

“As connectivity grows across the internet and mobiles, it is crucial that the government allows the same flourishing, open liberal ecosystem that has currently existed on the Web to continue across devices. India’s huge population and strong technical talent have the potential for global scale entrepreneurship and innovation, and can create a new dynamic India in the way IT had done in the 1990s. But it requires an infrastructure and atmosphere that is not controlled by last-mile connectivity providers who abuse their dominance.

“One should not confuse this with cross-media ownership –which is a non-issue, prompted by political motivations that fear a strong media. The real issue is whether or not we have enough safeguards to ensure that the ecosystem for content is a healthy and thriving one, and is not abused by distributors or last-mile operators aiming to create anti-competitive practices by expanding into content. This is a very real threat indeed, because while content may be king, distribution is God – and the thousands of content owners are at the mercy of a few last mile owners who have become far more powerful than any media conglomerate could ever be.

“It is high time, then, that the government and regulators wake up to the fact that the only way to ensure a competitive media landscape with equal voice for all content, is to ensure there are enough rules whereby customer connectivity is neutral to the content that rides on it. Survival of Net Neutrality : Net neutrality was earlier being implemented as a sort of a gentlemen’s agreement. It has survived so far because few people realized the potential of internet when it took off around 30 years ago. But now when the internet is not just an integral part of the society but an incredibly powerful –and disruptive— force as well,, ISPs across the world are trying to get the power to shape and control the traffic.

“But there are ways to keep net neutrality alive. Consumers should demand that ISPs continue their hands-off approach from the internet traffic. If consumers see a violation of net neutrality, they ought to take a proactive approach and register their displeasure with the ISP. They should also reward ISPs that uphold the net neutrality. At the same time, it is crucial to ensure that TRAI comes out with a set of clear and precise rules that protect the net neutrality.

“‘We have started seeing ISPs trying to take control of the traffic that flows from their servers but TRAI can regulate them. It can keep the internet open and consumer-friendly by forming rules that protect net neutrality. These are early days so it is easy to do. If ISPs manage to change the system, it may become too late,’ Sunil Abraham, director of Centre for internet and Society in Bangalore says.

“Conclusion: Internet has thrived because of its freedom of competition and ability for anyone with an internet connection to change the world. It is necessary to have safeguards – laws and checks and balances on the last mile of the consumer – to ensure last mile neutrality, which has now become the global movement across mediums. Taking advantage of last mile ownership throttles such innovation and competition.”

RTN's Take

We believe telecom operators and internet service providers should be allowed to offer ‘special offerings’ such as ‘Free Facebook’ by tying up with Facebook if companies like Facebook want to pay the internet access charges on behalf of the consumer.

However, such services should not be marketed as ‘Internet’ or ‘Web Access’ and must be clearly marketed as ‘Facebook Access’ or ‘Walled Garden Access’. Conversely, any consumer who pays for ‘Internet’ access should get neutral and unmanipulated access to all websites on an equal footing. There should be no behind-the-scenes tinkering with the traffic in such cases.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/news/rtn-asia-november-10-2014-times-group-wants-trai-to-save-internet-from-greedy-telcos-via-net-neutrality

September 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T01:26:03Z

Welcome you to the ninth issue of the newsletter (September 2014).

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the ninth issue of the newsletter (September 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

Nishant Shah was part of a working group writing a white paper on big data and social change, over the last six months. This white paper produced by a group of activists, researchers and data experts was published by Oxford.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies project Maggie Huang interviewed Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan on the trends and changes in technology and understanding mobile chip manufacturing.

CIS entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Andhra Loyola College for a period of 5 years to enhance Telugu Wikipedia through increased contributions to Wikipedia and make it available under free license.
CIS-A2K signed a memorandum of understanding with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.
Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan wrote a report on the workshop Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages for which CIS-A2K was one of the organizers.

CIS joined the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility towards creating due diligence recommendations for online platforms.
CIS organized a workshop on an evidence-based framework for intermediary liability at the IGF held in Istanbul on September 3, 2014. Jyoti Panday coordinated the workshop in collaboration with Stanford Centre for Internet & Society.
Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance in the GISWatch Report.
The Supreme Court of India revised the law on electronic evidence in the case of Anvar v. P. K. Basheer. Bhairav Acharya has done an analysis on this. It was published by Law and Policy in India and subsequently mirrored on our website.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The updated draft is being reviewed by the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

Work Report for September (Suman Dogra; August 31, 2014).

Blog Entry

Study on Budget Allocation and Expenditure by States on Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (Anandhi Viswanathan; September 29, 2014).

Access to Knowledge

Pervasive Technologies

Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Trends and Changes in Technology (Maggie Huang; September 26, 2014).
Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Understanding Mobile Chip Manufacturing (Maggie Huang; September 30, 2014).

Wikipedia

Event Report

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages (Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan; September 30, 2014). The workshop was organized by Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune (KSPWSC), Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CIS-A2K.

Blog Entries

NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia (T. Vishnu Vardhan; September 6, 2014).
Expanding the World of Telugu Wikipedia - CIS-A2K and ALC join hands (T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik; September 17, 2014).

The following were published in August and mirrored on our website in September:

OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014 (Subhashish Panigrahi; OpenGLAM; August 27, 2014).
We are Wikipedia (By Subhashish Panigrahi; Wikimedia Deutschland; August 25, 2014). Wikimedia Deutchland has included a paragraph about WeAreWikipedia on their blog.

Event Organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop for Students (Tumkur University; Tumkur; September 27, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop. Fifty people participated in the event.

Event Co-organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (Organized by Basaveshwara Science College and CIS-A2K; September 20, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Implementation of IT in Kannada (Prajavani; September 21, 2014).
105 Kannada books released under Creative Commons (Shyam Prasad S; Bangalore Mirror; September 29, 2014).

Participation in Events

State Level Seminar on "Odia alphabet and order teaching in primary education" (Co-organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research and Odia Bhasa Pratisthan, Bhubaneswar; September 14, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event and discussed about the applied aspects of Odia language in the context of primary education and need for reforms in the total number and order in the character-set citing problems with computer and internet.
Publishing Next (Organized by CinnamonTeal Publishing; Goa; September 19 - 20, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan was a panelist at the 5th edition of Publishing Next the annual conference on the future of publishing. He spoke on Open Access, Copyright and Copyleft.

Internet Governance

Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month:

Note: The White Paper below is not a part of the SAFEGUARD project .

White Paper

Big Data and Positive Social Change in the Developing World: A White Paper for Practitioners and Researchers (Nishant Shah; Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute; September 30, 2014). Nishant Shah was part of a group of activists, researchers and data experts in producing this white paper.

Analysis

Anvar v. Basheer and the New (Old) Law of Electronic Evidence (Bhairav Acharya; September 30, 2014).

Announcement

CIS joins the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility (Jyoti Panday; September 23, 2014).

Blog Entries

The Aadhaar Case (Vipul Kharbanda; September 5, 2014).
UID: A Data Subject's Registration Tale (Mukta Batra; September 11, 2014).
Biometrics: An 'Angootha Chaap' nation? (Mukta Batra; September 19, 2014).
UID and NPR: Towards Common Ground (September 19, 2014): This is an anonymous post.

CIS @ IGF

The ninth Internet Governance Forum ("IGF2014") was hosted by Turkey in Istanbul from September 2 to 5, 2014. A BestBits pre-event, which saw robust discussions on renewal of the IGF mandate, the NETmundial Initiative and other live Internet governance processes, flagged off a week of many meetings and sessions. CIS participated in multiple workshops and panels:

WS112: Implications of post-Snowden Internet localization proposals (Organized by Center for Democracy and Technology, Istanbul, September 2, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS63: Preserving a universal Internet: Costs of fragmentation (Organized by OECD and Centre for International Governance Innovation; September 3, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS2 Mobile, Trust and Privacy (Organized by GSM Association; September 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.
Transparency reporting as a tool for Internet governance (Organized by Global Network Initiative; September 3, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
WS149: Aligning ICANN policy with the privacy rights of users (Organized by Yale ISP; September 5, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a moderator.

Other Participation

Launch of the GISWatch Report (Association for Progressive Communications and the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos). Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance to this report.

Participation in Events

Re-Wiring Women's Rights Debates in the Digital Age (Organized by IT for Change in partnership with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan and ANANDI; September 13 - 14, 2014). Rohini Lakshane was a speaker.
Workshop on Enabling Information Systems for Local Governance (Organized by Jamia Milla Islamia, Tagore Hall; New Delhi; September 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a participant.
National Consultation on Media Law (Organized by Law Commission of India and the National University, Delhi; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; September 27 - 28, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari, Jyoti Panday and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

Upcoming Event

CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Fighting battles online (Nikhil Varma; The Hindu; September 2, 2014).
Colonial yoke or bureaucratic insouciance? (Vidya Venkat with additional reporting by K.T. Sangameswaran in Chennai; The Hindu; September 7, 2014).
Social Media Aids Rescue Efforts in Flood-Hit Kashmir (Anjana Pasricha, September 10, 2014).
Google aims to win 40% of India with Android One (Varun Aggarwal; Economic Times; September 11, 2014).

Digital Humanities

Event Organized

Consultation on New Figures of Learning in the Digital Context (CIS, Bangalore, September 22, 2014). P.P. Sneha wrote a report on the event.

About CIS

Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

Support Us

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, atsunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director - Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2014-bulletin

August 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-10-04T06:09:57Z

Eighth issue of the newsletter (August 2014) below:

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the eighth issue of the newsletter (August 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

CIS published a policy guide on Privacy in Healthcare that seeks to understand the legal regulations governing data flow in the health sector - particularly hospitals, and how these regulations are implemented.
Nehaa Chaudhari wrote two articles on the Karnataka Goondas Act in Spicy IP. The first one is an overview on the various provisions of the law and discusses the potential impact of the amendment . The second one is a note on legislative competence .

Andhra Loyola College and CIS entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to steward the growth of Telugu Wikipedia and to make available free knowledge in Telugu to all Telugus across the globe.
In July 2014, the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India released a draft Open Access Policy. CIS participated in discussions along with experts brought on board by the Drafting Committee to develop and review the open access policy. As a follow-up, CIS prepared comments to the draft Policy .

Anandini K. Rathore wrote a report on the second privacy and surveillance roundtable held in New Delhi at the India International Centre on July 4, 2014.
As part of its project on mapping cyber security experts in Asia with funding from Citizen's Lab, CIS interviewed Tibetan monkGyanak Tsering and Saumil Shah, security expert.

Published a white paper on content removal best practices and put it up for feedback. The draft paper has been created to frame the discussion towards the creation of a set of principles for intermediary liability in consultation with groups of Internet-focused NGOs and the academic community.
Shyam Ponappa's monthly column Transformation, or Drift? published in Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot was mirrored on the CIS website.
P.P. Sneha blogged on the emergence of the phenomenon of the alt-academy in the West and the nuances and possibilities of such a space in the Indian context .

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The updated draft is being reviewed by the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

Work Report for August (by Suman Dogra, August 31, 2014).

Blog Entry

Smartphones and the Return to Dependency (by Anandhi Viswanathan, August 30, 2014).

Participation in Event

Towards an Accessible Internet for People with Disabilities (organized by International Centre for Free and Open Source Software and ISOC Australia, Delhi, August 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this workshop organized as part of APrIGF.

Access to Knowledge

Blog Entries

Preventive Detention for Copyright Violation: Karnataka Amends the 'Goondas' Act (by Nehaa Chaudhari, August 13, 2014).

Karnataka Goondas Act - A note on Legislative Competence (by Nehaa Chaudhari, August 28, 2014).

Interviews with App Developers: [dis]regard towards IPR vs. Patent Hype - Part II (by Samantha Cassar, August 14, 2014).

Openness

Submission

Comments on the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science Open Access Policy (by Anubha Sinha, August 22, 2014).

Participation in Event

Connecting the Next Two Billion: The Role of FOSS (organized by ICFOSS, Noida, August 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this workshop held as part of the APrIGF.

Wikipedia

Announcement

Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for Better Net Access (by Rahmanuddin Shaik, August 19, 2014): Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ were released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0); For the first time an educational institution in the state of Andhra Pradesh is signing an MoU with CIS-A2K to work collaboratively to qualitatively improve Telugu Wikipedia; ALC faculty and students will create free e-content in Telugu on Telugu Wikipedia; Digital content from the fields of Botany, Physics, Chemistry, Telugu, Statistics, Ethics and Religion, Music and Dance will be produced on Telugu Wikipedia.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Now, Christ students will contribute to Wikipedia (by H.M.Shruthi, Deccan Herald, August 5, 2014).

CIS-A2K Signs MoU with Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada (Eenadu, August 15, 2014).

ALC signs MoU for better net access (The Hindu, August 15, 2014).

Participation in Event

Konkani Global Enclave (organized by Jagotik Konknni Songhotton, Kalaangann, Shaktinagar, August 24, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan participated in the event.

Internet Governance

Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month:

Policy Guide

Privacy in Healthcare: Policy Guide (by Tanvi Mani, August 26, 2014).

Event Report

Second Privacy and Surveillance Roundtable (by Anandini K Rathore, August 6, 2014).

Blog Entries

Surat's Massive Surveillance Network Should Cause Concern, Not Celebration (by Joe Sheehan, August 3, 2014).

Learning to Forget the ECJ's Decision on the Right to be Forgotten and its Implications (by Divij Joshi, August 14, 2014).

Participation in Events

Learning Event - The Internet and Economic, Cultural and Social Rights (organized by the International Development Research Centre and Association for Progressive Communications, August 8 - 10, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a remote participant.

Understanding Surveillance and Privacy in India (organized by Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, August 28, 2014). Bhairav Acharya delivered a lecture.

Free Speech

As part of our project on Freedom of Expression (funded through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation) to study the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute to the debates around Internet governance and freedom of expression at forums like ICANN, ITU, IGF, WSIS, etc., we bring you the following outputs:

White Paper

Zero Draft of Content Removal Best Practices White Paper (by Jyoti Panday, August 31, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

'I'm going to ruin you, dear' (by Prasun Chaudhuri with additional reporting by Varuna Verma in Bangalore, August 3, 2014).
We the goondas (by Shyam Prasad, Bangalore Mirror, August 4, 2014).
Sunil Abraham | The online warrior (by Anirban Sen, Livemint, August 9, 2014).
Dot Bharat domain to roll out on August 21 (originally published by IANS and mirrored in FirstPost, August 19, 2014).
The Uncertain Future of India's Plan to Biometrically Identify Everyone (by Jessica Mckenzie, TechPresident, August 28, 2014).
Will domain dot भारत spur the growth of Indian languages on the internet? (by Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, August 29, 2014).
SC seeks govt reply on PIL challenging powers of IT Act (by Shreeja Sen, Livemint, August 30, 2014).

Cyber Stewards

As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the International Development Research Centre, Canada, CIS conducted 2 new interviews. With this it has finished a total of 21 interviews:

Video Interviews

Saumil Shah (August 30, 2014).

Gyanak Tsering (August 31, 2014).

Telecom

Newspaper Column

Transformation, or Drift? (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, August 6, 2014 and Organizing India Blogspot, August 7, 2014).

Blog Entry

"OTTs Eating Into Our Revenue": Telcos in India (by Geetha Hariharan, August 7, 2014).

Digital Humanities

Blog Entry

Digital Humanities and the Alt-Academy (by P.P. Sneha, August 19, 2014).

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration:

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, atsunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director - Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2014-bulletin

Transformation, or Drift?

Shyam Ponappa — 2014-08-11T04:57:38Z

We need transformative policies and incentives with purpose, especially in solar power and digital infrastructure.

The article published in Organizing India Blogspot on August 7, 2014. It was earlier published in the Business Standard on August 6, 2014.

An uneasy sense of drift has set in after the anticipation that accompanied the swearing-in of the National Democratic Alliance government. Surely, the government understands that its real task is to build on hopes and expectations, to channel energies, to organise and coordinate for results, even perhaps try bipartisan teams? The opportunity is to overcome factionalism and harness people's energies, instead of floundering in disunity. We need transformative policies, programmes and incentiveswith purpose.

Resolute efforts in specific sectors can change this sense of the same old same-old. Two aspects of infrastructure that need early attention are: first, solar power, and second,digital infrastructure (see "A great start by Modi government", June 5, Business Standard).

Solar power, critically important in its own right, is essential for digital infrastructure because of the poor grid supply. Disappointingly, the steps taken are more of the same. For instance, the renewal of the national solar mission. for an increased 1,500 megawatts, is on the same lines as before - that is, a 30 per cent subsidy for solar farms, accelerated depreciation and renewable energy credits (RECs) that provide subsidies for a fixed period. While the target is higher, it is minuscule compared to the potential, and relative to other energy sources. For distributed user installations, interest-free loans seem ineffectual, because the high prices are unchanged, although payable in instalments - hardly ground-breaking.

Could the government try a more radical incentive of zero tax on equipment in addition to a 30 per cent subsidy, with immediate reimbursement and stiff penalties for misuse? Lower capital costs would probably induce much more extensive deployment, spurring manufacturing and innovation through sheer volume. This is likely for solar farms as well, and these incentives could be made available if such farms are really desirable. The government would lose upfront taxes on equipment, but avoid the cost and complexities of the RECs and accelerated depreciation, while gaining taxes downstream from increased productivity.

Similarly, in communications, we need countrywide access to broadband at reasonable prices. Users could benefit from applications such as education at all levels, from secondary school to college to continuing education for adults, healthcare; e-commerce; remote working/telecommuting; government services, information; and entertainment. Of course, once we have broadband, we'd need the range of useful, attractive content and services that result in improved user satisfaction, as well as productivity. These "supplementary effects" will undoubtedly take time to develop and play out, but the prerequisite is the access.

On this score, the much-awaited spectrum sharing recommendations are sorely disappointing. Their intent is puzzling because they are so restrictive, limiting sharing to two operators who have acquired frequencies in the same band in the same manner, with a cap of 50 per cent.

Build and Run Communications Networks Like Roads

Perhaps the telecom regulator's recommendations on spectrum sharing are an opening gambit to explore active network sharing. The logic for network and spectrum sharing is compelling. With India's self-created spectrum constraints and genuine deficiencies of capital and network coverage, the rational approach for our developing economy would be to optimise their use, as with roads. For this, active network sharing, including radio access networks and spectrum, is the most efficient solution, as is the case for roads.

Unfortunately, our policies are at the other extreme, of spectrum auctions and exclusive networks. This is least efficient for extending underdeveloped infrastructure services, as building and operating multiple exclusive networks requires the most resources, including capital. Auctions may be a reasonable alternative where there's existing infrastructure, and the issue is of allocating resources to whoever can make the best use of them. In our situation and given our needs, the way we build and operate roads may be a better alternative to achieve coverage.

To see why, compare the contrasting approaches of building communications networks with highways and roads. Road developers not only don't have to pay auction fees for the right to build roads, they are paid periodically for the construction of the assets. Ownership of the assets is then transferred to the state or other agency, and all road tax and toll payers may use the facilities. Similarly, all licensed operators could have access to communications networks on payment. While payback periods are often longer for roads, the nature of the financial flows are the same: capital must be invested in building the network before revenues are generated from users. People need to be informed and educated about this inescapable process.

Sparsely populated rural areas have lower revenue potential than urban areas. Hence, communications networks and services in rural areas lag because of commercial considerations. This deprivation is aggravated by front-loading auction fees for spectrum, which curtails investments in the networks and services in areas with lower potential. Also, unless operators pool resources, exclusive usage militates against full utilisation of the infrastructure. Our policies should reflect all this, instead of restricting spectrum access and sharing, including for 3G.

The real irony is that the pay-for-use principle is well accepted for roads; yet the opposite principle of auctions is used for communications networks. This is the unintended consequence of accepting auctions without thinking through what we need in our circumstances compared with advanced economies, and how to achieve those objectives.

Our spectrum policies have resulted in small bands of non-contiguous spectrum holdings that severely restrict capacity. Besides, operators have to invest heavily simply to protect the assets built. Yet countrywide broadband services need more spectrum to be used much more effectively to facilitate last-mile access. The kind of solution we need is for all remaining spectrum to be used for a common-access network, owned by a consortium of operators, including state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam as "anchors". Once integrated with existing networks, operators can commercially deploy services with enhanced capacity, for which they pay as they use, and get paid. Broadband can be revolutionised by setting this up and converting spectrum fees to pure revenue sharing, as happened for mobile telephony with licence fees years ago. With the benefit of hindsight, the fees can be set low from the start, with regulatory oversight to avoid predatory pricing, and growth will most likely explode.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-shyam-ponappa-august-7-2014-transformation-or-drift

“OTTs Eating Into Our Revenue”: Telcos in India

geetha — 2014-09-10T05:36:37Z

On August 5, 2014, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India organised a seminar on a regulatory framework for Over-The-Top services. This is a lay discussion of the Seminar and its focus on matters crucial to telecom, the Internet and the existing regulatory framework.

On Tuesday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) held a seminar to initiate discussion on potential regulation of “over the top” services (OTTs) in India. TRAI organized the seminar to “understand perspectives of all stakeholders involved”, following grievances of telcos that OTTs are eating into their revenues and free-riding on their networks. In fact, a letter from the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) to TRAI outlines these concerns excellently. The letter, which I had the opportunity to see in print, objects that telcos take the trouble of laying and maintaining networks, while rapidly mushrooming OTTs eat into their revenue. Whatsapp, Skype and alternatives to paid text-and-call find particular mention in the COAI’s letter, and the COAI President Vikram Tiwathia was vociferous in his iteration of operators’ concerns. With VOIP and other OTTs replacing telco services, telcos are rapidly losing large parts of their revenue, he said.

I don’t mean to brush their concerns aside, of course. However, there is a need to consider in depth certain questions with statistical, regulatory and principled exploration. As Dr. Rajat Kathuria of ICRIER said at the Seminar’s first session, we need to evaluate whether there’s a need for regulation in the first place. This includes exploring whether the answer lies in deregulation, as Suhaan Mukerji of PLR Chambers and Subho Ray of IAMAI emphasized separately. Our solution, as Mr. Ray said, should not be to chain the free OTTs just because we are in chains ourselves. Unchaining telcos from their stringent licensing and other regulations may be more appropriate.

The Seminar was attended by telcos, OTTs, civil society and other stakeholders, and the frank exchange of views at the PHD Chamber of Commerce was heartening. While telcos in the room were broadly open to OTT innovation upon their networks (Mr. T.V. Ramachandran of Vodafone was particularly vocal on this), there exists a broadly reactionary loss-of-footing and apprehension over their current and projected revenue loss. Mr. C.S. Rao of Reliance was spot on when he said that telcos are afraid that what’s worked for them so far may not work in the future.

We’ve seen examples of such fear of incumbent operators before. In the early 1990s, the invention and spread of the Internet displaced appliancized, bundled models of telco services, and telcos were similarly unwelcoming. Indeed, AT&T went to court to fight the introduction of the Carterfone. In India, the falling demand for VAS today, and OTT-response to consumer demand, fosters such fear.

But accounting for OTTs’ lack of consumer servicing or responsibility for monetization models, what was of chief concern at the TRAI Seminar was the predominant focus on revenue. Telco profitability and their incentives for investment are important. Increasing supply side costs, with the government seeking to maximize revenue from spectrum allocation and demands of lower consumer prices, might be throttling current telco business models. We’d need to analyse data usage charges and projected mobile broadband penetration, in comparison with voice penetration, to be clear about the extent of such strangulation. But if the answer to failing telco business lies in further regulation and potential strangling of innovation, that’s a concern.

That’s in two ways. First, it isn’t merely the NetFlix or Google or Apple that populate the app economy. Raman Chima (ironically of Google) offered the example of Slideshare in Okhla, Delhi as one of the many successful Indian micro-multinationals. There are many others across India. Second, India’s current telecom regulatory model is unfit for a data/Internet content model. There’s a need, Suhaan Mukerji and Mahesh Uppal of ComFirst pointed out, to rethink our strict telecom licensing regime. We should begin to think, at least, of a vertically integrated layered model of telecom regulation that regulates on the basis of function.

These layers are integral to Internet architecture: network, transport, application. OTTs lie at the application layer, while telcos operate at the network and transport layers. It may be inefficient to utilize failures at one layer to regulate or share revenue of companies at other layers – that would stunt competition and innovation. A reconfigured licensing regime, permitting telcos to innovate more (someone at the Seminar said security clearances take years, while OTTs need no such clearance) might be more efficient and beneficial for all stakeholders involved – not least the disempowered individual consumers.

That’s my sense of the Seminar. Profitability and incentives are crucial. But they are crucial insofar as they benefit consumers – with access, choice, freedom of speech, security and privacy. Revenue sharing or partnership models, which were mentioned far too many times by multiple speakers without sufficient justification or elaboration, may not be ideal for any of us in the long term. But these are issues we – and TRAI – should consider while debating a regulatory framework.

Underlying infrastructure has an impact on our fundamental freedoms such as speech – the Supreme Court’s decisions in Sakal Papers and Express Newspapers makes that clear. Fast-paced innovation and the boundary-less benefits of a single, interoperable Internet have pushed us to favour security against freedoms. But every model we consider today – ad-based monetization, big data analytics – have implications that the NSA’s mass, cross-border surveillance has highlighted. Since TRAI is rethinking our regulatory framework for telecom and the Internet – and I envisage this going into a constructive consultation in the near future – these issues must inform its analysis and conclusions.

For more, read Nikhil Pahwa’s report over at MediaNama.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/otts-eating-into-our-revenue-telcos-in-india

July 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-08-11T05:46:53Z

Seventh issue of the newsletter (July 2014) below:

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the seventh issue of the newsletter (July 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

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Highlights
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Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the 28^th session of the World Intellectual Property Organisation Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (WIPO-SCCR) held in Geneva from June 30 to July 4, 2014. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) gave its statements on the Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives and Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations.
India became the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty and the Accessible Books Consortium was launched. Nehaa Chaudhari who participated in the 28^th session of the WIPO-SCCR reports on this in a blog entry.
Vikrant Narayan Vasudeva produced a research paper on patent valuation and license fee determination as part of the Pervasive Technologies project.
Our grant application to the Wikimedia Foundation was approved. CIS has been awarded Rs. 12,000,000 for the next one year for the Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) project.
CIS and the University of Mysore organized the Open Knowledge day in Mysore on July 15, 2014. Six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha was re-released under the Creative Commons (CC license).
We helped the Ministry of Science and Technology draft the Open Access Policy for the DST/DBT.
The first of the seven proposed roundtable meetings on “Privacy and Surveillance” conducted by CIS in collaboration with the Cellular Operators Association of India and the Council for Fair Business Practices was held in Mumbai on June 28, 2014. Anandini K. Rathore has blogged on this.
Bedavyasa Mohanty has produced a blog entry that analyses the nuances of interception of communications under the Indian Telegraph Act and the Indian Post Office Act.
Vinayak Mithal has written a blog entry on the Constitutionality of Indian surveillance law that analyses ICANN's reactive transparency mechanism, comparing it with freedom of information best practices. He describes the DIDP and its relevance for the Internet community.
Nishant Shah speaks on the right to freedom of speech and expression in the latest interview conducted as part of the Cybersecurity series being done with a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa.
Nishant Shah’s peer reviewed article “Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore” was published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal, Volume 15, Issue 2, on July 3, 2014. Nishant gives a narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012.
CIS recruited two new staff members in its Bangalore office. Rohini Lakshane joined as a Program Officer in the Pervasive Technologies project and K.N. Medini joined as a Senior Accounts Officer. Their profiles can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/people/our-team.

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Accessibility and Inclusion
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Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. We compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). We will be publishing this soon. The draft chapters along with the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

Work Report for July (by Suman Dogra, July 31, 2014).

Blog Entry

India's Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty Celebrated; Accessible Books Consortium Launched (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 1, 2014): India became the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty.

Media Coverage

SpicyIP Tidbit: India ratifies the Marrakesh Treaty for the Visually Impaired (by Thomas J. Vallianeth, Spicy IP, July 1, 2014).

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Access to Knowledge
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As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►WIPO

Participation in Event and Statements
Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the 28^th session of WIPO-SCCR held in Geneva from June 30 to July 4, 2014. The following have been the outputs from the event:

Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations at WIPO SCCR 28 (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 2, 2014).
Opening Comments by India on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives at WIPO SCCR 28 (posted by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 7, 2014). This was the statement made by the Indian delegation at WIPO-SCCR 28^th session on July 2, 2014.
Statement on the Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives at WIPO SCCR 28 (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 3, 2014).
28th Session of the WIPO SCCR: Report on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 29, 2014).

► Pervasive Technologies

Research Papers

Patent Valuation and License Fee Determination in Context of Patent Pools (by Vikrant Narayan Vasudeva, July 9, 2014). Vikrant has produced research that examines patent valuation and license fee determination in detail.
Grounds for Compulsory Patent Licensing in United States, Canada, China, and India (by Maggie Huang, July 29, 2014). In her research paper Maggie tries to answer questions about the grounds of compulsory licensing in international treaties with specific examples from America and Asia.

►Wikipedia
As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Announcement
Our grant application to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) of the Wikimedia Foundation was approved by its board which met in Frankfurt from May 21 to 24, 2014. CIS had requested a grant of Rs. 18,406,454 and were awarded Rs. 12,000,000 for the next one year.

The following were done this month:

Articles / Blog Entries

Aircel & Wikimedia Foundation announce Wikipedia Zero (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, Prajavani, July 3, 2014). As per this, users of Aircel need not pay for data for accessing Wikipedia.
ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷରସଜ୍ଜା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Samaja, July 4, 2014).
State of Odia Language in Computing and Future Steps (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Sovereign, July 7, 2014).
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ବିକାଶର ରାସ୍ତା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, The Sambad, July 23, 2014).
University of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, July 24, 2014). Leading English and Kannada dailies like Andolana Kannada, City Today, Deccan Herald, Hosa Diganta, Kannada Jana Mana, Kannada Prabha, Rajya Dharma, Samyukta Karnataka, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Udayavani, Vijaya Karnataka, and Vijaya Vani published about this. Scanned versions of the published articles can be downloaded here.
Wiki Loves Pride 2014 and Adding Diversity to Wikipedia (by Dorothy Howard, Wikimedia Blog, July 25, 2014).
Doctors and Translators Are Working Together to Bridge Wikipedia's Medical Language Gap (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices, July 27, 2014). This was re-published on the Wikimedia Blog, July 30, 2014.
Classical Odia Language in the Digital Age (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odisha Review, posted on July 28, 2014). The essay was published in the magazine’s June edition.

Event Organized

Open Knowledge Day (co-organized by Mysore University and CIS-A2K, Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies, University of Mysore, July 15, 2014). The event coincided with the Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin from July 15 to 17. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the event. On this occasion Mysore University released six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under the Creative Commons (CC) license.

Participation in Events

National Level Seminar on Computer Application and Odia Language (organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research, July 6, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi was a panelist.
Open Knowledge Festival 2014 (organized by Google, Omidyar, et.al., Berlin, July 15 – 17, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi represented India as the India Ambassador of OpenGLAM local and made a presentation.
#NAMA: The Future of Indic Languages (organized by Medianama, The Oberoi Hotel, Bangalore, July 24, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

News and Media Coverage
CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Wikipedia edit-a-thons to add content on LGBTs (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 7, 2014).
Font problem hits Odia (by Bibhuti Barik, The Telegraph, July 7, 2014).
Four volumes of Kannada Encyclopaedia digitised (by R. Krishna Kumar, The Hindu, July 12, 2014).
‘ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ’ಕ್ಕೆ ಇನ್ನು ಲೈಸೆನ್ಸ್ ಹಂಗಿಲ್ಲ (Prajavani, July 14, 2014).
Soon, all 14 volumes of Kannada encyclopaedia to be online (by R. Krishna Kumar, The Hindu, July 15, 2014).
ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ (Kannada Prabha, July 15, 2014).
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶದ ಆರು ಸಂಪುಟ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗೆ (Udayavani, July 15, 2014).
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾದಲ್ಲಿ kannada ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ : ಈಗ ಆನ್ ಲೈನ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ 6 ಸಂಪುಟಗಳು ಮುಕ್ತ…ಮುಕ್ತ……( Just Kannada, July 15, 2014).
Six Kannada encyclopaedias released (Webindia 123, July 15, 2014).
150 Rare Books Get New Lease of Life Online, Courtesy Students (by Anila Backer, New Indian Express, July 15, 2014).
Open Access: Students help revive and digitize rare books for Malayalam Wiki Library (Spicy IP, July 15, 2014).
'Trolled' from US Congress, Wikipedia bans edits (by Narayan Lakshman, The Hindu, July 25, 2014).
Telugu Wikipedia struggles to stay afloat (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 27, 2014).
The joys of being a Wikipedian (by Svetlana Lasrado, New Indian Express, July 29, 2014).
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation (Vijayavani, July 30, 2014).
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation for Kannada Science Writers (Prajavani, July 31, 2014).

►Openness

Blog Entries

Mozilla brings Indian Communities together Twice in One Month (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Mozilla Website, July 8, 2014).
Mozilla Brings Indian Communities Together (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Opensource.com, July 13, 2014).
Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, release Open Access Policy (by Anubha Sinha, July 18, 2014). We have also been acknowledged in the policy.

HasGeek Event

The Fifth Elephant (NIMHANS Convention Centre, July 25-26, 2014). CIS was a community outreach partner.

Media Coverage

Plan for open access to science research (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 22, 2014).
Indian Govt looks to provide free access to publicly-funded research works (by Riddhi Mukherjee, Medianama, July 23, 2014).

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Internet Governance
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►Freedom of Expression

Blog Entries

ICANN’s Documentary Information Disclosure Policy – I: DIDP Basics (by Vinayak Mithal, July 1, 2014).
Reading the Fine Script: Service Providers, Terms and Conditions and Consumer Rights (by Jyoti Panday, July 2, 2014).
Facebook and its Aversion to Anonymous and Pseudonymous Speech (by Jessamine Mathew, July 4, 2014).
Free Speech and Surveillance (by Gautam Bhatia, July 7, 2014).
Delhi High Court Orders Blocking of Websites after Sony Complains Infringement of 2014 FIFA World Cup Telecast Rights (by Anubha Sinha, July 8, 2014).
GNI and IAMAI Launch Interactive Slideshow Exploring Impact of India's Internet Laws (by Jyoti Panday, July 17, 2014).

FOEX Live

We are also posting a selection of news from across India implicating online freedom of expression and use of digital technology: July 7, 2014.

►Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month:

Blog Entries

Models for Surveillance and Interception of Communications Worldwide (by Bedavyasa Mohanty, July 2, 2014).
The Constitutionality of Indian Surveillance Law: Public Emergency as a Condition Precedent for Intercepting Communications (by Bedavyasa Mohanty, July 4, 2014).
UK’s Interception of Communications Commissioner — A Model of Accountability (by Joe Sheehan, July 24, 2014).

Event Report

First Privacy and Surveillance Roundtable (by Anandini K Rathore, July 18, 2014).

Article

Private Censorship and the Right to Hear (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hoot, July 17, 2014). The article was also mirrored on the website of the Centre for Communication Governance.

Participation in Events

Information Influx Conference (organized by the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam, July 2 – 4, 2014). Malavika Jayaram was a speaker.
Consultation to Frame Rules under the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2011 (organized by National Campaign for People's Right to Information and Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, New Delhi, July 5, 2014). Bhairav Acharya participated in the event.
Best Practices Meet (organized by DSCI, Hotel Leela Palace, Bangalore, July 9, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.
Rethinking Privacy: The Link between Florida v. Jardines and the Surveillance of Nature Films (organized by Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, July 11, 2014). Bhairav Acharya gave a talk.
Region as Frame: Politics, Presence, Practice (organized by International Association for Media and Communication Research, Hyderabad, July 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker for these panels: Governing Digital Spaces: Issues of Access, Privacy and Freedom, UNESCO panel debate, and Special Session on Research Paths In and Outside of the Academy.
ICT Awareness Program for Myanmar Parliamentarians (organized by Myanmar ICT for Development Organization, July 26 – 27, 2014, Yangon). Sunil Abraham participated in the event as a speaker and presented on Innovation Ecosystem and Thinking about Internet Regulation.

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News & Media Coverage
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CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Cyber-crimes shoot up 52% in India over last year (by K.V.Kurmanath, Hindu Businessline, July 2, 2014).
COAI, Centre for Internet & Society to hold pan-India meetings on privacy issues (IANS, July 4, 2014). The news was mirrored in the Times of India , NDTV, Business Standard , Economic Times , and World News.
Living in a Fish Bowl (by Shuma Raha, The Telegraph, July 16, 2014).
Terror recruiters target Indians on internet (by Sandhya Soman, July 18, 2014).
The trouble with trolls (by Vishal Mathur, Livemint, July 22, 2014).
India’s dedicated Cryptology centre gets Rs. 115 crore funding (by Harichandan Arakali, SearchSecurity.in, July 28, 2014).

►Cyber Stewards
As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the International Development Research Centre, Canada, CIS conducted 2 new interviews. With this it has finished a total of 19 interviews:

Video Interviews

Lobsang Gyatso Sither (July 31, 2014).

Lobsang Sangay (July 31, 2014).

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Digital Humanities
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CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Peer Reviewed Article

Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore (by Nishant Shah, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal, Volume 15, Issue 2, July 3, 2014). This is the narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” which was hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012.

Blog Entry

Reading from a Distance — Data as Text (by P.P. Sneha, July 23, 2014).

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, atsunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2014-bulletin