Centre for Internet and Society

April 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-07T06:26:40Z

In this issue of our newsletter, we bring you updates of our latest research, event reports, videos, news and media coverage during the month of April 2012:

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:

Google Policy Fellowship

Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet
Rishabh Dara, Google Policy Fellow
CIS in partnership with Google India conducted the Google Policy Fellowship 2011. This was offered for the first time in Asia Pacific as well as in India. Rishabh Dara was selected as a fellow. He researched upon issues relating to freedom of expression. The results of the paper demonstrate that the ‘Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011’ notified by the Government of India on April 11, 2011 have a chilling effect on free expression.

Announcement

The Centre for Internet & Society Joins the Global Network Initiative
CIS officially joined the Global Network Initiative. CIS would bring to GNI in-depth expertise on global internet governance as well as online freedom of expression and privacy in India. GNI Executive Director Susan Morgan said “We are delighted to add our first member based in India and welcome CIS’s engagement in support of transparency and accountability in technology.”

Op-ed in the Hindu

Chilling Effects and Frozen Words (Lawrence Liang, Hindu, April 30, 2012): “What if the real danger is not that we lose our freedom of speech and expression but our sense of humour as a nation?...One hopes that our lawmakers, even if they are averse to reading the Indian Constitution, will be slightly more open to the poetic licence granted by Kautilya.”

Columns in the Indian Express

The Idea of the Book (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, April 8, 2012): “Its future lies in a trans-media format that is ever evolving... The form of the book is going to change as it has over the last 500 years. However, the idea of the book — a receptacle that contains and records collective wisdom, information, ideas, knowledge, experiences and imagination of humankind – is here to stay.”
India's Broken Internet Laws Need a Shot of Multi-stakeholderism by Pranesh Prakash. (An edited version of this article was published in the Indian Express as "Practise what you preach" on Thursday, April 26, 2012.)

Event Reports

The All India Privacy Symposium (India International Centre, New Delhi, February 4, 2012): The symposium was organised around five thematic panel discussions: privacy and transparency, privacy and e-governance initiatives, privacy and national security, privacy and banking and health privacy. Privacy India in partnership with CIS, International Development Research Centre, Privacy International, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Society in Action Group organised this event.
The High Level Privacy Conclave (Paharpur Business Centre, Nehru Place Greens, New Delhi, February 3, 2012): The conclave was organised around two panels: national Security and privacy and internet and privacy. Malavika Jayaram moderated the first panel discussion on national Security and privacy. Sunil Abraham moderated the second panel discussion on internet and privacy. Privacy India in partnership with CIS, International Development Research Centre, Privacy International, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Society in Action Group organised this event.

Events Organised

Resisting Internet Censorship: Strategies for Furthering Freedom of Expression in India (Bangalore International Centre, TERI Complex, Domlur, April 21, 2012): CIS co-organised this event with the Foundation for Media Professionals. Members of Parliament, P. Rajeeve and Rajeev Chandrashekar and Member of Legislative Council, Karnataka, V.R. Sudarshan participated in the event.
Konkan Corridor Project — A Lecture by Vasant Gangavane (Ashoka Innovators for the Public, Bangalore, April 16, 2012): Well known social worker Vasant Gangavane gave a lecture.
Braitenberg Cybernetic Vehicles: Workshop, Film Screening & Discussion (Metaculture Media Lab, CIS, Bangalore, April 14, 2012): There was a short presentation about Braitenberg vehicles.

Events Participated

GIGA International Conference Series - 1 (NALSAR University of Law, Justice City Campus, Shameerpet, Hyderabad, April 5 and 6, 2012): The Institute of Global Internet Governance and Advocacy and Department of Electronics and Information Technology organised the conference. Sunil Abraham gave a lecture on Digital Natives vs. Digital Naivety in the session on Internet Governance & Society.
Expert-Group on Privacy Issues (New Delhi, April 13 and 14, 2012): The Planning Commission constituted this expert group under the chairmanship of Justice AP Shah. Sunil Abraham participated in the first meeting of the sub-group on privacy issues.

Video

Privacy International's Trip to Asia (by Emma Draper in Privacy International blog): In February 2012, the Privacy International team travelled to India, Bangladesh and Hong Kong to meet with local partners in the region and speak at four conferences they had organized. The team got a chance to interview its partners in India and Bangladesh on the privacy issues facing them at the moment. This is captured in a video about contemporary privacy issues in India and Bangladesh.

Media Coverage

It’s mainstream vs social (Guest column by Mahima Kaul, Sunday Guardian, April 30, 2012): “If the video is judged to be 'obscene', then under s.67 of the Information Technology Act, 'causing [obscenity] to be transmitted', is also a crime,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in the Sunday Guardian.
From Cyber India to Censor India: Groups challenge didactic govt (by Satarupa Paul, Sunday Guardian, April 29, 2012): “Instead of a court deciding what makes content illegal, private intermediaries get to decide. And there is no penalty for anyone abusing the take-down notice system,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in the Sunday Guardian.
Social Media 1, Indian Government 0 (by Heather Timmons, New York Times, April 26, 2012): “Because India does not have a bilateral cyber-crime agreement with the United States (as the European Union does), getting American companies like Facebook and Google to take down or investigate the source of content that offends Indian government officials can be a slow and cumbersome process,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in the New York Times.
Private sector censors (by Salil Tripathi, LiveMint, April 25, 2012): “Companies which have no interest in free speech are now taking these decisions. They have the power to do so and they are using it without any sense of responsibility,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in LiveMint.
Views | Why the Left may for once be right (by Pramit Bhattacharya, LiveMint, April 23, 2012): “It has become much easier in India to ban an e-book than a book,”...Pranesh Prakash quoted in LiveMint.
Campaign against curbs on websites gathers steam (by Arpan Daniel Varghese, IBN Live, April 23, 2012): “If a company wants to target your organization’s social media network, they can keep sending fraudulent emails to you and you will have to keep deleting it unless you are ready to face litigation or government action...Sunil Abraham quoted in IBN Live.
Expect anti-net censorship echo in house (by Arpan Daniel Varghese, IBN Live, April 25, 2012): “why should freedom of speech and expression be any different on the Internet?”...Sunil Abraham quoted in IBN Live.
Mobilising support for freedom on the Web (by Deepa Kurup Hindu, April 22, 2012): Rishabh Dara’s research published as part of the Google Policy Fellowship is quoted.
MPs to be taught ‘draconian’ IT Act Rules as India.net support galvanises for annul motion (by Prachi Shrivastava, Legally India, April 23, 2012): Prachi has blogged about the Resisting Internet Censorship co-organised by CIS and the Foundation for Media Professionals in Bangalore.
India arrests professor over political cartoon (by Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, April 13, 2012): “The state’s new-found aversion to non-believers has gone a bit too far,”...Pranesh Prakash quoted in Washington Post.
A beauty’s blog creates furore (by Lakshmi Krupa, Deccan Chronicle, April 10, 2012).

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a research inquiry that looks at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Public Lecture

5 Challenges for the Future of Learning: Digital Natives and How We Shall Teach Them (Wyndham Parc 55 Hotel, San Francisco, California, March 1, 2012): Nishant Shah gave a ignite talk. The video is now online.

Book Review...a few excerpts

Immigrants not Natives: “‘To Be’, ‘To Think’, ‘To Act’ and ‘To Connect’ provides many fascinating and thought-provoking insights into the possibilities for reflection, action and interaction,”... Sally Wyatt, eHumanities Group, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences/Maastricht University.

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:

Event Report

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (India International Centre, New Delhi, March 14 – 15, 2012): CIS in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India organised a two-day tutorial on Audio-Visual Media Accessibility. Sunil Abraham was the Master of Ceremony on Day 1. Ravi Shanker, Administrator, Universal Service Obligation Fund, Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India, Swaran Lata, Director and Head of Department, TDIL Programme, DIT, R.N. Jha, Deputy Director General (International Relations), Department of Telecommunications and Archana Gulati, Financial Advisor, National Disaster Management Authority participated in this event.

New Fellow at CIS

Rahul Cherian joins CIS: Disability policy activist, lawyer and co-founder of Inclusive Planet, Rahul Cherian has joined CIS as a Fellow. Rahul will be working on disability policy reform and advocacy.

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:

New Event

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, December 15 – 17, 2012): We are pleased to announce the Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest. The theme for this year’s Congress will be “Setting the positive agenda in motion,” and will have a special focus on developments and opportunities in the so-called “BRICS” group of emerging economies. CIS is one of the six members of the Global Congress Planning Committee..

News & Media Coverage

Hacking, Modding & Making (by Brendan Shanahan): “If something has been made technologically possible, we cannot make it illegal and hope that everyone will now pretend that this is no longer technologically possible...We can't have the government checking everyone's iPod and laptop. The better move is to change the model,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in GQ.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Event Reports and Video

Arduino Workshop at CIS (CIS, Bangalore, March 3, 2012). Video is now online.
Hejje — Together with Kannada & Technology (Bangalore, January 22, 2012): The event marked the first step to bring everyone working in Kannada in the IT field to brainstorm the ideas for future steps, and create a space for technological collaboration in Kannada. CIS co-organised the event with Sanchaya.net, Vishwakannada.com and Chanda Pustaka.

Events Organised

Bangalore Meet-up for the Open Government Partnership Brasilia (CIS, Bangalore, April 17, 2012): Ananya Panda and Pranesh Prakash participated in the first annual meeting of Open Government Partnership remotely.
Design!PubliC – Event in Delhi (New Delhi, April 19 and 20, 2012): The event was co-organised by Centre for Knowledge Societies in partnership with IBM, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, HeadStart, India@75, LiveMint and CIS.
International Space Apps Challenge (CIS, Bangalore, April 21 and 22, 2012): An international codeathon-style event took place in seven continents, CIS organised the event in Bangalore.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:

Column in Business Standard

China 3: Build Comprehensive Ecosystems (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, April 5, 2012): “Failures in electricity, transport and broadband have common strands. China's approach offers a possible alternative.”

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. Over the last four years our policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with International Telecommunications Union, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos. With foreign governments we worked on National Enterprise Architecture and Government Interoperability Framework for Govt. of Iraq; Open Standards Policy for Govt. of Moldova; Free and Open Software Centre of Excellence project plan for Saudi Arabia; eGovernance Strategy Document for Govt. of Tajikistan. With the Government of India we have done policy research for Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, Interoperability Framework in eGovernance, Privacy Bill, NIA Bill, National Policy on Electronics and IT Act.

CIS is an accredited NGO at WIPO and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2012-bulletin

April 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T10:45:01Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India.

Workshops organised in Bangalore

Shadow Search Project (SSP) [CIS, April 18, 2011]
Facebook Resistance [CIS, April 2, 2011]

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

Columns on Digital Natives

A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. The following were published in the month of April:

Who the Hack? [Indian Express, April 24, 2011]
One for the avatar [Indian Express, April 3, 2011]

Digital Natives Newsletter

Links in the Chain is a bi-monthly publication which highlights the projects, ideas and news of the Digital Natives with a Cause? The first issue of volume IV is here:

links in the chain volume 4 Best Practices

New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entry:

Cyber Fears: What scares Digital Natives and those around them

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

Workshop organised in Hyderabad

Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: Conference Report

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Submission

Comments on Draft National Policy on ICT in School Education

New Blog Entry

Towards Open and Equitable Access to Research and Knowledge for Development [PLoS, March 29, 2011]

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Featured Research

Interview

An Interview with Activist Shubha Chacko: Privacy and Sex workers

Workshops organized in Ahmedabad and Bangalore

'Privacy Matters', Ahmedabad: Conference Report [Ahmedabad Management Association, Ahmedabad, March 26, 2011]
Privacy, By Design [CIS, April 16, 2011]

New Blog Entries

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Learning from Fukushima [published in the Business Standard on April 7, 2011]

News & Media Coverage

The Gary Chapman International School on Digital Transformation[International School on Digital Transformation, July 17-22, 2011]
Iraqi delegation in Bangalore to study e-governance projects [Economic Times, April 20, 2011]
Dark waders [Time Out Bengaluru, Vol. 3, Issue 20, April 15 - 28, 2011]
Beyond Clicktivism [Outlook, April 18, 2011]
Gone in a flash [Times of India, April 16, 2011]
How Web 2.0 responded to Hazare [Hindu, April 11, 2011]
EU Commissioner Hedegaard to deliver keynote address at consumer world congress
Net cracker [Time Out Bengaluru Vol. 3 Issue 19, April 1 - 14, 2011]
On the Path to Global Open Access: A Few More Miles to Go [PLoS, March 2011, Volume 8, Issue 3]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2011-bulletin

April 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-13T04:51:19Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! We bring you updates of our research, events and news for the month of April 2010.

News Updates

Worries voiced over ID Project
The Government of India's Unique Identification (UID) Project came under flak at a workshop organised jointly by the Citizen Action Forum (CAF), the People's Union of Civil Liberties - Karnataka, the Alternative Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society - An article in The Hindu - 17th April.
http://cis-india.org/news/worries-voiced-over-id-project

UID: A debate on the Fundamental Rights
UID: A debate on the Fundamental Rights - was jointly organized by the Citizen Action Forum, People's Union for Civil Liberties - Karnataka, Alternative Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society on April 16th at IAT, Queens Road, Bangalore - An article in the Prajavani news paper - April 17th.
http://cis-india.org/news/uid-a-debate-on-fundamental-rights

UID is an invasion of Privacy: Experts
The Nandan Nilekani headed Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) came in for much criricism at the first of a series of debates on the issue organised in the city on Friday - Deccan Chronicle, April 17th.
http://cis-india.org/news/uid-is-an-invasion-of-privacy-experts

Experts debate on UID and rights
Bangalore, Apr 16, DHNS: A debate on ‘UID and Fundamental Rights’ organised by several city-based organisations, discussed the social, ethical issues, economic and legal issues that accompanies the UID.
http://cis-india.org/news/experts-debate-on-uid-and-rights

Amendment to Copyright Act opposed
A report on the press conference held on 15th April, at the Press Club, Bangalore: The Hindu
http://cis-india.org/news/amendment-to-copyright-act-opposed

They fight for the visually challenged
Times News Network - A report on the press conference held at the Press Club, Bangalore on 15th April, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/news/they-fight-for-the-visually-challenged

Digital Natives Research Project Coordinator
The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, in collaboration with Hivos Netherlands, is looking for a Research Project Coordinator to help develop a knowledge network and coordinate international workshops for the project "Digital Natives with a Cause?"
http://cis-india.org/news/research-coordinator

Expel or not? That is the question
The decision of an international school to expel 14 students for their alleged ‘promiscuous’ behaviour has led to much debate and discussion.
http://cis-india.org/news/expel-or-not

Nokia eyes GeNext to tap mobile email mkt
Finnish handset giant banks on youth to be in the technology race
http://cis-india.org/news/nokia-eyes-genNext

Research

Critical Point of View: Videos
The Second event for the Critical Point of View reader on Wikipedia was held in Amsterdam, by the Institute of Network Cultures and the Centre for Internet and Society. A wide range of scholars, academics, researchers, practitioners, artists and users came together to discuss questions on design, analytics, access, education, theory, art, history and processes of knowledge production. The videos for the full event are now available for free viewing and dissemination.

Colour Me Political
What are the tools that Digital Natives use to mobilise groups towards a particular cause? How do they engage with crises in their immediate environments? Are they using their popular social networking sites and web 2.0 applications for merely entertainment? Or are these tools actually helping them to re-articulate the realm of the political? Nishant Shah looks at the recent Facebook Colour Meme to see how new forms of political participation and engagement are being initiated by young people across the world.
http://cis-india.org/research/dn/dn2

Meet the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine
Digital Natives live their lives differently. But sometimes, they also die their lives differently! What happens when we die online? Can the digital avatar die? What is digital life? The Web 2.0 Suicide machine that has now popularly been called the 'anti-social-networking' application brings some of these questions to the fore. As a part of the Hivos-CIS "Digital Natives with a Cause?" research programme, Nishant Shah writes about how Life on the Screen is much more than just a series of games.
http://cis-india.org/research/dn/dn1

Digital Natives with a Cause?
Digital Natives With A Cause? - a product of the Hivos-CIS collaboration charts the scholarship and practice of youth and technology with a specific attention for developing countries to create a framework that consolidates existing paradigms and informs further research and intervention within diverse contexts and cultures.
http://cis-india.org/research/dn/dnrep

Advocacy

Accessibility

e-Accessibility: A Wiki Project
Envisaged and funded by the National Internet Exchange of India, and executed by the Centre for Internet and Society, a Wiki site pertaining to issues of disability and e-accessibility has recently been launched.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/e-accessibility-a-wiki-project

Copyright Law as a tool for Inclusion
Can Copyright Law be used as a tool for Inclusion? Rahul Cherian examines this in his blog on copyright.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/copyright-law-as-tool-for-inclusion

Web Accessibility as a Government Mandate?
Is Web accessibility just a Government Mandate? Should private sites be ignored? Wesolowski examines this in light of the steps taken by ictQATAR to make its website accessible to W3C standards, and hopes that Qatar and eventually all other Arab nations will follow suit and make Web accessibility much more of a mandate.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/web-accessibility-government-mandate

Intellectual Property

When Copyright Goes Bad
A part of the Access to Knowledge Project, this short film by Consumers International is available on DVD and online at A2Knetwork.org/film.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/when-copyright-goes-bad

Openness

Research Project on Open Video in India
Open Video Alliance and the Centre for Internet and Society are calling for researchers for a project on open video in India, its potentials, limitations, and recommendations on policy interventions.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/open-video-research

Does the Social Web need a Googopoly?
While the utility of the new social tool Buzz is still under question, the bold move into social space taken last week by the Google Buzz team has Gmail users questioning privacy implications of the new feature. In this post, I posit that Buzz highlights two privacy challenges of the social web. First, the application has sidestepped the consensual and contextual qualities desirable of social spaces. Secondly, Google’s move highlights the increasingly competitive and convergent nature of the social media landscape.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/does-the-social-web-need-a-googopoly

The (in)Visible Subject: Power, Privacy and Social Networking
In this entry, I will argue that the interplay between privacy and power on social network sites works ultimately to subject individuals to the gaze of others, or to alternatively render them invisible. Individual choices concerning privacy preferences must, therefore, be informed by the intrinsic relationship which exists between publicness/privateness and subjectivity/obscurity.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking

Internet Governance

Does the Safe-Harbor Program Adequately Address Third Parties Online?
While many citizens outside of the US and EU benefit from the data privacy provisions the Safe Harbor Program, it remains unclear how successfully the program can govern privacy practices when third-parties continue to gain more rights over personal data. Using Facebook as a site of analysis, I will attempt to shed light on the deficiencies of the framework for addressing the complexity of data flows in the online ecosystem.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/does-the-safe-harbor-program-adequately-address-third-parties-online

Sense and censorship
Sunil Abraham examines Google's crusade against censorship in China in wake of the attacks on its servers in this article published in the Indian Express.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/sense-and-censorship

Report on the Fourth Internet Governance Forum for Commonwealth IGF
This report by Pranesh Prakash reflects on the question of how useful is the IGF in the light of meetings on the themes of intellectual property, freedom of speech and privacy.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/report-on-fourth-IGF

Telecom

The Right Ring Tone
Focus on improving service quality with a strong partner, and not on one-shot stake sales, says Shyam Ponappa in his article published in the Business Standard on April 1, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/ring-tone

Other Advocacy

Maps for Making Change Wiki Now Open to the Public
Since December 2009, CIS has been coordinating and nurturing the Maps for Making Change project, organised in collaboration with Tactical Tech. During the past four months, participants have been on a challenging yet fertile and inspiring journey that is now slowly coming to an end. Would you like to know more about what has happened in the time that has passed? The Maps for Making Change wiki is a good place to start.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/others/maps-for-making-change-wiki-now-open-to-the-public

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2010-bulletin

APC starts research into spectrum regulation in Brazil, India, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:56:04Z

Communication infrastructure is the foundation of the knowledge-based economy and while there has been a boom in the construction of undersea cables bringing potentially terabits of capacity to the African continent, the ability to deliver broadband to consumers is hampered by inefficient telecommunications markets and policies. Wireless connectivity offers tremendous potential to deliver affordable broadband to developing countries but inefficient spectrum policy and regulation means the opportunity to seize the advantages brought about by improvements in wireless broadband technologies are extremely limited.

Spectrum policy in a nutshell

Television, mobile phones, wireless networking and amateur radio all transmit their data using radio waves. Different parts of the radio spectrum are used for different radio transmission technologies and applications and ranges of allocated frequencies are often referred to by their provisioned use (for example, wireless spectrum or television spectrum). Spectrum policy around the world focuses on three factors – allocation, assignment and enforcement.

Allocation sets aside spectrum for specific uses such as cell phones at 1.9 GHz, and broadcast TV at 500 Mhz.
Assignment is most widely carried out through spectrum auctions. In a spectrum auction, those who make the highest bid secure use of the spectrum.
Enforcement (within nations) is usually split between two institutions – a governmental/ministerial one that overseas spectrum relating to and reserved for national security and a regulatory one for the enforcement of spectrum that fulfils commercial and/or socio-economic objectives.

We are seeing accelerated change in the capacity of wireless technologies to deliver affordable access. According to wireless pioneer Martin Cooper, “every 30 months the amount of information that can be transmitted over a given amount of radio spectrum doubles”. However, without forward-looking policy and regulation that can embrace the rapid change in wireless technologies, African, Asian and Latin American countries will miss the opportunity to allow affordable, pervasive wireless broadband infrastructure to develop in their countries.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest barriers to utilising this opportunity is simply a lack of awareness of global trends and of what policy and regulatory processes exist to manage spectrum.

APC’s new research: Understanding spectrum regulation
The overall goal of APC’s new research project is to provide an understanding of spectrum regulation in several countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, not just in terms of making information available, or how spectrum is assigned, but who deals with spectrum and what policy or regulatory framework is currently in use.

The procedures governing spectrum allocation and assignment are often opaque, highly technical and governed by an inner circle of technical experts in the regulators, operators and equipment suppliers in each country. An important dimension of the research will lie in decoding some of this complexity and making the information as transparent and accessible as possible. The research will also seek to examine arguments that proclaim the scarcity of spectrum1.

The research is timely as the rapid growth of wireless and mobile in Asia, Africa and Latin America is raising fresh questions about the use of spectrum and the policies that govern it. Civil society-based alliances such as the Open Spectrum Alliance in South Africa2 and the national broadband campaigns in South Africa3, Ghana and Nigeria are raising spectrum issues. Digital migration and the opportunity it creates to make use of white spaces in frequencies currently allocated for broadcasting for broadband wireless networks has renewed interest by governments in auctioning off blocks of spectrum as a revenue-generating mechanism. The research will feed into this dynamic context of debate and dialogue on spectrum regulation and wireless broadband.

Indians look beyond the present

In India the research will go beyond the current status of spectrum regulation and and also will look at the current and potential use of pooled spectrum and infrastructure sharing by mobile operators. Pooled spectrum is an alternative to the open spectrum approach with licensed network/facilities providers and regulated rates/tariffs (because of the rationale of network economies). The Indian study will also explore two additional areas which could also be of value in other parts of the world:

Whether spectrum rights can remain publicly owned/operated by the government, while usage rights are made available for a fee; and, the costs and benefits of larger bands of open spectrum versus the experience-curve benefits of legacy systems, with indicative time frames.

The APC open spectrum for development initiative will be implemented in partnership with the Open Society Institute (OSI), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Shuttleworth Foundation in South Africa and the Centre for Internet and Society in India. OSI is supporting the research in Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria and IDRC the research in Brazil and India.

Read more about the APC’s Open spectrum project

Click here for the original article in APC

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/research-into-spectrum-regulation

An Overview of Telecommunications Policy and Regulation Framework in India

abhishek — 2022-03-25T02:06:28Z

Abhishek Raj, a researcher at the Centre for Internet Society (CIS), has authored a document that provides an overview of the policy and regulatory environment surrounding telecommunications in India.

It summarises the legal and policy instruments that regulate telecom and internet service providers in the country. It covers following areas:

General overview of acts and associated policiesO
Operator licensing
Spectrum and associated fees
Backbone and backhaul infrastructure
Universal service/financial support
Gender and telecom

Read the full document here

The information from this document has also been added to the India’s country profile on the LocNet Wiki, which is regularly updated to keep abreast with developments in telecom policy.

The author is thankful to Divyansha Sehgal, Gurshabad Grover and Isha Suri for their review and suggestions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/an-overview-telecommunications-policy-and-regulation-framework-in-india

An Introduction to Spectrum Sharing

beli — 2014-03-20T09:34:06Z

We will look at how current technology – mainly GSM, but also CDMA and touching upon LTE - shares spectrum, how they might share spectrum, the trade-off between spectral (in this case, 'trunking') and 'economic' efficiency in the traditional, purely intra-operator shared scenario, and how it might be overcome by inter-operator sharing.

The Current Scenario – Wi-Fi, GSM and CDMA: A Primer from the Perspective of Spectrum Coordination

Sharing spectrum is not a radically new idea: it's probably being shared in many places in your living room. Your family's phones could be communicating with your laptops using Bluetooth; your Wi-Fi router is sharing Wi-Fi spectrum with your next door neighbor's. There is no central brain that tells each device how to share spectrum, but each device pair (phone+laptop, for example) has some unique identifier (a code) that enables them to hear each other over the “noise” created by the other devices, as though they were speaking different languages. Each device can access the same frequencies at the same time and place, but does not know in advance which other devices are going to use them, and as long as there aren't too many such devices close to each other, the scheme works well.

From a technological standpoint, this is one of two kinds of spectrum coordination that's currently in wide use: the second is where each device is given a narrow sliver of frequency to itself for a specified period of time.[1] This is what happens with GSM cellphone technology: the service provider's tower allocates frequency — from the pool of frequencies available — to users on a per-call basis: this is called Frequency Division Multiple Access, or FDMA. GSM further divides access between different users in the same frequency channel in the time domain with bursts of data of the order of milliseconds, something called Time Division Multiple Access or TDMA; you'd be sharing your frequency channel with up to seven other people[2] and your content would be sent in sub-millisecond bursts approximately every five milliseconds.

Code Division Multiplexing, or CDMA, Is concept that assigns a user a 'code' for the duration of her call that effectively makes interference from other users, with other codes, appear as noise. The following picture illustrates FDMA, TDMA and CDMA:[3]

The preceding discussion would suffice for a single cell tower, alone in a desert. In the real world, there's more than one tower, so we'll have to create a system so that no two adjacent towers end up allocating the same frequency at the same time. The simplest way to do that, and the only one currently used, is splitting the available spectrum such that the range of frequencies available to a tower does not intersect with that available to any of its neighbors, ever – that way, a tower can only allocate from its own set of frequencies, but it need not concern itself with what its neighbors are doing. If adjacent towers were to share spectrum, then the preceding condition only needs to apply at that exact moment in time – at that precise instant a tower should be aware of the frequencies being used by all towers that are close enough to interfere with it, and pick a frequency outside that set, which it can use for the duration of a call.

Frequency Reuse

When there weren't so many cellphones crowding up the spectrum, it did not make economic sense to invest in the extra infrastructure required to make neighboring towers 'talk' to each other with low latency, so the solution we have now, even within the towers of a single service provider, is that any tower's neighbors do not intrude upon the spectrum assigned to that particular tower — what a neighbour is in this statement is qualified below. To start with, let's look at how towers could ideally be placed. We want to place towers on the ground in some regular pattern that makes them end up equidistant from each other: there are as many ways of doing that as there are of tiling a plane, which you can think of as tiling a bathroom with regular shapes (called 'regular polygons' by the pedantic).

Starting from the simplest, we can do it with tiles shaped like triangles, squares or hexagons, and a little thought will convince you that these are the only choices. Since a tower's signal would be 'strong enough' only up to some maximum radius, we'd ideally like to tile our plane with circles, but if we settle for the next best thing, the closest shape to a circle with which to tile the plane is a hexagon, in a honeycomb pattern; if you're looking at it from above, the towers would be placed as in the diagram below.[4]

This is just a part of a much larger honeycomb on the ground; the towers go in the center of the hexagons, where the numbers are; why the numbers are as they are will become clear in a couple of lines. Let's focus at tower 1 in the center of the diagram for our example. If the signals decay slow enough — so that the signals radiated from the nearest neighbors (towers surrounding 1, i.e. 2 through 7) and the next-nearest neighbors (towers two steps away from 1, with numbers from 2 through 7), interfere significantly with tower 1 in the center, but the next-to-next-nearest neighbors (three steps away from 1) do not, then the frequency reuse pattern can be like what we see in the diagram above, with towers denoted by the same number (and only the same number) using same exclusive set of frequencies. In this example, the closest towers with the same frequency as the central tower are the 1's in the hexagons at the edge – the frequency reuse factor is 3 (see footnote). In this diagram, the ordering of the numbers makes no difference – the situation would be the same if we exchanged the position of every, say, 1 and 3.

In reality the grid of towers of a particular operator covering a city is rarely hexagonal, due to local constraints, so what needs to be taken care of is not to use the frequencies that the nearest neighbors, next-nearest neighbors and so on are using depending upon the frequency reuse factor.[5] It's clear that without the towers being able to communicate in near-real time, with and FDMA/TDMA system like GSM, this is the optimal — and, in fact, the only — way to go.

Neighbouring towers sharing spectrum

Everything changes, though, if the towers can communicate and coordinate fast enough — in theory, at least, all the service provider's towers could pick spectrum from a common pool.[6] In fact, every service providers could put their spectrum into a common pool from which frequencies can be allocated to users as before. This would increase trunking efficiency and thereby the maximum number of users per tower dictated by quality of service limits (both terms are defined in the next section), making more efficient use of the spectrum.

The Current Trade-off between Trunking and 'Economic' Efficiency: The Principal Argument for (Inter-operator) Shared Spectrum

Imagine the following scenario:

We have 5 MHz of spectrum split it into five channels of one MHz each;
Five thousand people own cell phones and each is assigned a channel so that there are a thousand cellphone users per channel;
People call infrequently: calls are randomly distributed but on average, in each channel, five people attempt to make a call every minute and each call is ten seconds long.

In this way, a lot of people can use a few channels with a reasonable hope that their calls will be connected, a phenomenon called 'trunking'. Chances are high, however, that at least one person's going to make a call before the previous caller on her channel is done, and end up being blocked. The probability that a call will go through is factored into the Quality of Service (QoS) through the Erlang B Formula; roughly speaking, the less chance there is of a caller being blocked, the higher your QoS. It's essentially a question of queuing: the same logic can be applied to beds at a hospital. The number of hospital beds in a town would be much fewer than the number of people, but it works because everyone's not sick all the time; if people are sick more often, or for longer durations, the chances that someone won't get a bed would be higher:[7]

Suppose someone own an Airtel phone and Airtel's channels are all in use, but Vodaphone has a channel free at the time. Let's look at two alternatives:

a) she's not allowed to switch, and cannot make her call;
b) she's allowed to switch to the empty channel, and her call goes through.

Clearly, the second choice is better — and it has greater trunking efficiency.

In the current scenario, service providers get exclusive rights to chunks of spectrum. Naively, the more competitors (in this case, service providers like Airtel and Vodaphone) you have in a market, the better the competition. This, unfortunately, leads to a decrease in trunking efficiency — it's inversely proportional to the number of players in the market because every chunk of frequencies split between two service providers (every successive split) increases the chances for an event such as the one described above happening. The question that logically follows is: what is the optimal number of service providers for the Indian market? This is hard to find, and differs depending on who you ask — incumbents, for instance, may quote a smaller number, whereas prospective new entrants may quote a larger one. The number is controversial within policy-making circles as well, and is being debated as this article is being written. We note in passing that the number of competitors — and thus fragmentation of spectrum — is higher in the Indian market than most others.

If spectrum were shared, however, all this would be moot. This, therefore, is the primary argument towards spectrum sharing: better trunking efficiency as well as more competition — you can , in this instance, have it both ways.

CDMA and Spectrum Sharing

GSM is a simple example, where both the difficulty and the benefits of intra-operator spectrum sharing are readily apparent. Things get more difficult conceptually if we talk about newer technologies, so we'll have to get a little deeper into the technicalities. Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA, allows phones to communicate using the same frequencies at the same time and place, but differentiated by codes — similar to WiFi but using different encoding schemes and technology. CDMA might look (from the analogy with Wifi) to require no central planning, but quality of service guarantees require that various phones in a 'cell' coordinate, and the coordinating agent happens to be that cell's tower. Two things need to happen: one, the code allocated to each phone needs to be sufficiently different,[8] at least with respect to other nearby phones, which means the tower has to allocate codes. Additionally, the distance involved between cellphone and tower (as against laptop and router) causes the near-far problem.[9]

For synchronous CDMA, the concept analogous to frequency reuse is code reuse — a tower needs to take into account the codes being used by its nearest neighbors, next-nearest neighbors and so on, which might be easier than coordinating timing in a TDMA system. For asynchronous CDMA (the most commonly used variant), even that is not required — the low cross-correlation pseudorandom codes that are used have so many possibilities that the likelihood of a collision would be small, though other users would appear as gaussian noise, so just like GSM, the number of users is limited by QoS limits. This makes intro-operator sharing of spectrum between adjacent towers easier and asynchronous CDMA ends up with a frequency reuse factor of 1, meaning that a tower can access the same set of frequencies as its (intra-operator) neighbor, hypothetically making it easier to use in a shared-spectrum system.

LTE

LTE uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, or OFDM, which can be – very roughly — thought of as combining ideas used in FDMA as well as CDMA, in that information is redundantly split between several frequencies ('subcarriers' in the literature) and each frequency can have more than one channel, using an orthogonal coding schemes like (synchronous) CDMA, where, as mentioned earlier, a mobile phone can distinguish its channel by its code. As it's an FDMA system, the benefits of frequency sharing for LTE can be inferred as above for GSM.

The Regulatory Perspective

The European Commission has this to say about shared spectrum:[10] “From a regulatory point of view, band sharing can be achieved in two ways: either by the Collective Use of Spectrum (CUS), allowing spectrum to be used by more than one user simultaneously without a license; or using Licensed Shared Access (LSA), under which users have individual rights to access a shared spectrum band”.

CUS is how unlicensed spectrum like Wi-Fi is currently used, which does not require a central 'brain' allocating spectrum to users. It requires no setup or organization before or during use. LSA is what shared spectrum would have to be like when used by service providers: it requires setup and organization but could offer better efficiency and quality of service because the central 'brain' — in this case the CPU at the cellphone tower — can figure out the most efficient way to allocate spectrum to users, just like a city's traffic lights coordinate the flow of traffic to prevent jams, and for that multiple towers — or multiple transmitters on a single tower — would have to coordinate somehow. In other words, you don't require approval before setting up your Wi-Fi router in your living room, but (depending upon the router, how many neighbors have routers, how close they are, and how far you are from your router) your connection might get dropped; this kind of thing is okay because there usually aren't that many people with routers living that close to each other, though that's fast changing. The 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band is further crowded in by other microwave radio technologies, like Bluetooth and microwave ovens. Cellphones are a different thing altogether, because you wouldn't want your cellphone to stop working in the middle of a crowded bus if you're late en route to meeting someone at a coffee shop, or if you're being mugged and need to call the police. Therefore it is the service providers' and regulatory agencies' responsibility to provide a high (minimum) quality of service. This classification is symbolized by the following diagram:[11]

CUS falls on the left, being contention-based – that is, different user devices (eg, laptops) could contend with each other for the attention of the base station (eg, Wi-Fi router — random access, CSMA), whereas LSA is conflict-free (which would be the case if the router decides, period). The potential for conflict exists in CUS, there being multiple devices asking for spectrum, whereas for LSA, a central authority decides which device to allocate spectrum to at any particular point in space and time. CUS isn't total chaos, however: it would now be appropriate — taking a leaf from ex-FCC chief technology officer Jon M. Peha – to introduce the concepts of coexistence and etiquette.

In our Wi-Fi example, the Wi-Fi routers merely coexist, and the technological standard allows them to try and use the codes/spectral bands that are in their best interests, to best communicate with their client devices (though actual Wi-Fi routers also follow some sort of etiquette with other routers). One could additionally introduce some sort of etiquette into the equation by requiring that one router should, for example, “wait in the cue” for another — and vice versa — as and when required, as well as other requirements for cooperation depending upon the technology used. This minimal cooperation would be enough for them to, in Mr Peha's words, “greatly improve efficiency if and only if designed appropriately for the applications in the band” - depending upon the technology used, being too 'polite' could cause longer wait times that decrease efficiency. The situation is complicated by the existence of multiple technologies at the same spot – for example, your Bluetooth receiver, two-way radio and Wifi router working in the same room. If there is potential for interference, common communication protocols could be implemented to enable all those devices to 'talk' to each other and effectively follow some form of wireless etiquette so that they can cooperate and not get in each others way. This is all the more important as Wi-Fi will become an essential part of the cellphone communication network for 4G.

To conclude, there are many ways shared spectrum technology could hypothetically work, and in practice the core technologies that are used would dictate the details of the spectrum sharing solution. Spectrum sharing would reduce the regulatory conundrum that is spectrum allocation, and make more efficient use of spectrum — most obviously through trunking efficiency, though there may be other technological benefits depending upon the core technology used. For maximum efficiency and robustness, there would have to be some kind of rules followed, so that devices apply for spectrum like people in a cafeteria queue as opposed to the scrum you might find trying to get into an Indian bus; the etiquette we were talking about earlier should be baked into the design of the communication infrastructure. Some services (like voice calling) by their nature, need a guaranteed high QoS — need to be conflict-free — and therefore need Licensed Shared Access. Others need a minimum of regulation — but with the movement of what used to be CUS-appropriate devices (In many plans for 4G LTE-Advanced, specifically Wi-Fi) towards LSA-appropriate applications, a careful optimization needs to be done in deciding where to draw the line.

The Big Question: Infrastructure Sharing

We've gone through a thought experiment on intra- and inter-operator sharing of spectrum for the particular case of mobile towers in adjacent cells, and come to the general conclusion that the solution is in principle a question of fast and efficient coordination between the geographically separated towers, toward which there are two driving forces at present: the demand for more efficient use of spectrum by a growing body of users with growing data needs, and the supply of low latency, cheaper and higher bandwidth communication options using fiber-optic cables.

There are essentially two parts to the big question we're going to ask: one, what happens when there are multiple operators serving the same geographical area, and two, is it necessary to have multiple towers standing right next to each other for multiple operators?

To answer the first question, one could have a 'roaming' agreement between multiple operators at the same spot: if all the channels of one operator are busy, the user just has to switch to a channel of an operator which isn't. For the second, a single tower (the physical tower structure as well as the transmitting equipment on it) could serve any operator, who could rent it's usage on a per-call basis. That, in fact, already seems to be the case: Airtel and Vodaphone, for instance, each own a 42% share in India's largest tower corporation Indus Towers, the remaining 16% belonging to Idea Cellular.

To answer the first question, one could have a 'roaming' agreement between multiple operators at the same spot: if all the channels of one operator are busy, the user just has to switch to a channel of an operator which isn't.

For the second, a single tower (the physical tower structure as well as the transmitting equipment on it) could serve any operator, who could rent it's usage on a per-call basis. That, in fact, already seems to be the case: Airtel and Vodaphone, for instance, each own a 42% share in India's largest tower corporation Indus Towers, the remaining 16% belonging to Idea Cellular.

Infrastructure sharing will be explored further in a forthcoming post.

Coarse-grained Spectrum Sharing

For completeness, we should point out that there are more course-grained (simpler but less efficient) means of sharing in time as well as geography: the appropriate thought experiment is to imagine a radio station at the base of a hill that only has two shows, one for breakfast and one for dinner. Using its radio spectrum on the other side of that hill, or beyond the area it serves, would be fine at anytime; using it's spectrum in between the morning and evening shows would be fine anywhere.

Caveats

It must be emphasized at this point that the above is a purely hypothetical scenario, and not a prescription. Getting this to work would involve technical hurdles that a brief overview such as the one above could not bring up, that could only be discovered in the process of bringing the technology to market. Each technological solution – GSM, CDMA and LTE – would present its own difficulties, which may become apparent only when the product is shipped, so to speak. Fine technical judgments would need to be made: an example of the difficulty involved could be gauged from the early debates comparing the first CDMA standard (IS-95) with GSM at the time.

The economic model to use for shared spectrum and shared infrastructure is also something under intense discussion right now, and a number of scholarly papers have already been written up.

[1]. This is what you'd get in your first few Google search results when you look for “shared spectrum”, because the former has become so widely accepted that it's now part of the linguistic background.

[2]. Explained on http://www.radioraiders.com/gsm-frequency.html, referring to 3GPP spec http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/latest/Rel-7/45_series/45005-7d0.zip

[3]. From http://www.umtsworld.com/technology/cdmabasics.htm

[4]. From Mike Buehrer, William Tranter-Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)-Morgan & Claypool Publishers (2006).

[5]. There are multiple definitions; the simplest one is “how many steps (in cells) that you have to walk from the tower before you can reuse the frequency”, which will suffice for us.

[6]. Of course, it's going to be messier in practices.

[7]. From http://www.vumc.com/branch/PICA/Software/

[8]. Orthogonal for synchronous CDMA, or 'sufficiently' orthogonal for asynchronous CDMA

[9]. Remember that the receiver on the tower has to demux (split) the signals received from many cellphones, and while a Wifi router would perhaps service multiple laptops in the same building, a CDMA tower has to work for a couple of hundred phones at varying distances – some a building-length away and some, many kilometers away. Every receiver has its own maximum signal to noise ratio, where the strength of the signal received has to be more that a certain fraction (which can be quite small, for a good receiver) of the strength of the electromagnetic (radio) noise it receives from other sources; cellphone towers have to deal with much larger signal to noise ratios than Wifi routers. For an FDMA or TDMA system, different users' data arrives at different frequency or time-slots, so as long as those slots are properly differentiated, one user's signal won't be another user's noise. For the commonly used asynchronous CDMA system, however, this is not the case, so at a receiver on a tower, the signal transmitted by a distant cellphone could be swamped by that from a much closer phone. The way this is dealt with is to have phones closer to the tower decrease their transmission power. So even in CDMA, the tower is still telling the phone what to change, only in this case it's the transmission power as opposed to the exact frequency and time.

[10]. http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/promoting-shared-use-europes-radio-spectrum

[11]. From Mike Buehrer, William Tranter-Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)-Morgan & Claypool Publishers (2006)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/an-introduction-to-spectrum-sharing

An Interview with Stephen Song

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan — 2012-02-29T14:08:54Z

Stephen Song, the founder of Village Telco, an initiative to bring practical and inexpensive communication network infrastructure to rural and remote areas, speaks about factors that catalyzed the initiative, the benefits of the network, some challenges, and the Mesh Potato.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: When and how did the Mesh Potato come about?

Stephen Song: It came about after I joined the Shuttleworth foundation in 2008. I was aware of the potential of low cost wireless mesh technologies to create affordable infrastructure, but there seemed to be a challenge in getting these technologies to scale, and we had done some interesting pilot work, but nothing had really taken off. And so I convened a workshop in the middle of 2008 with some of the smartest wireless networking people I knew and so began to explore what were the key barriers.

There seemed to be at least a couple of key barriers – one was that setting up a wireless mesh network was a complex procedure that required expertise. And second was that in many areas where we were interested in providing services, people were as interested in voice services as they were in data. Simply delivering data to a particular community, at least to rural communities anyway, seemed to be only solving half of the problem. So the result of that workshop was that we came to the realization, the conclusion, that what we needed was a hybrid of technologies, something that didn’t exist yet, which was a combination of voice and data technologies together.

We were lucky enough to have a brilliant open hardware designer from Australia attending the workshop almost by coincidence, and he said, “Well, why don’t we build our own?” Up until that point I think our dominant way of looking at the world was by asking what sort of North American or European technologies could we take and repurpose in Sub-Saharan Africa to address this issue of access in a more affordable way. The notion of actually manufacturing our own technology wasn’t on the chart at all and it took a little while for the idea to sink in, because it just seemed infeasible at the time. But sink in it did, which led through my fellowship at the Shuttleworth foundation to the funding of a pilot project to see whether it was feasible to complete at least a prototype design. The created prototype design led to a partnership with the manufacturer in Shenzhen, China, and to a short run of production which led to a bigger run of production. And so one thing led to another and now we have our own device that we manufacture.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: And how would you describe this device to a regular consumer?

Stephen Song: Well, it is a wireless networking device that works with similar units of its kind to form an autonomous wireless network that delivers voice and data services. So you can open a box of Mesh Potatoes, plug them all in, and instantly have a voice and data network. It is a network for which you don’t require a special voice technology. All you need to do to be able to start making calls is to plug in an ordinary phone into the Mesh Potato. So it doesn’t require any sort of additional smart VOIP hand set technology or anything like that. We deliberately chose to do that because analog handsets are very cheap and lots of people have them already or they cost less than $10 to buy. So it seemed like a very affordable way of creating a voice network.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: And how much does a Mesh Potato cost?

Stephen Song: They are about a $100 each.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: And how much does it cost to set up a network and what is the largest distance that it can cover?

Stephen Song: The cost of the network is literally just the cost of the Mesh Potatoes and so once you have them and they are powered up, you have network infrastructure that is yours for as long as the technology lasts, which should be many years. So that’s really the core cost; it’s just the cost of the devices. Then if you connect your network to the Internet or to the public switched telephone network you might have to pay for the access to the Internet or for access to voice services.

Each Mesh Potato has a range of about three to four hundred meters but the way the Mesh Potatoes work is each device acts as a repeater for the next one. So as long as the next house that you can see is less than three to four hundred meters away, you can actually build quite a large network, because if you have two houses that are six or seven hundred meters away, as long as you have one house in the middle that’s got a Mesh Potato, then all three of them are connected. Mesh networking has been around for a while but just hasn’t become as mainstream as WiFi hotspots.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: And in what frequency range does this technology operate in?

Stephen Song: It works in the 2.4GHz range which is your standard WiFi technology, which means that for most countries you can use it without requiring a spectrum license.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: So in what countries, other than South Africa, has this technology been deployed in?

Stephen Song: Our biggest network is in the capital of East Timor in Dili. There is an NGO there called FONGTIL that has set up a large Village Telco network and there are a number of other smaller networks – one in Brazil, some networks in Nigeria and Cameroon, and then multiple other smaller more informal networks as opposed to formal Village Telcos.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: Have there been barriers in terms of deploying this technology?

Stephen Song: A barrier for us is bringing the cost of manufacture down. So one of the downsides of being a very small organization is that in terms of negotiating with manufacturers and arranging deals we have very little leverage. So we will want to bring the cost of the Mesh Potatoes down by another 50 percent, which is completely feasible, but it’s a challenge to actually build the relationships with the manufacturers to get things done quickly.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: So what company currently manufactures this technology?

Stephen Song: A company called Atcom.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: Can you provide a successful case study of this technology being deployed where it has made a difference in the village or where it helped create other social endeavors because people had access to this technology?

Stephen Song: Yeah, I think Dili in East Timor is probably the most successful example, in that the NGO that is running the network, FONGTIL, is kind of an umbrella organization for other NGOs in the region that need to connect and talk to each other on a regular basis. However mobile communication is quite expensive in Dili. So the NGOs have really valued being able to communicate easily and cheaply with their partner organizations through the Mesh Potato network.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: Sounds good. Thank you very much for your time.

Stephen Song: All right, bye for now.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/interview-with-stephen-song

An Interview with PK Garg

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan — 2012-03-14T05:20:15Z

Former Wireless Advisor to the Government of India, Ministry of Communications & IT, and current ITU regulatory board member, PK Garg, discusses some of the telecom policy interventions in an interview with Yelena Gyulkhandanyan. As of March 2010, India’s telecommunication network has become the third largest in the word, with teledensity increasing from 5.11 per cent in 2003 to 52.74 per cent.[1] This tremendous growth is largely attributed to the evolution of telecommunication policies which served to create competition within the market and affordability in service provision.

P. K. Garg: In 1991, the teledensity of India was less than 2 per cent. The then government, as part of the economic liberalization policy wanted the teledensity to grow fast. At that point of time the government was supporting the telecom sector for the growth of teledensity to the tune of about four to five billion dollars per year through the annual budget. During the same time frame it was felt that the government would further need to support the telecom sector to almost double the level if teledensity was to reach five per cent and also if every village was to have a telecom connection to make telecommunications accessible to each and every citizen. At that time the thrust was more on accessibility rather than having an individual connection for every home or every citizen.

Yelena: So if a telecom connection is accessible to the whole village then all villagers can share one line instead of having an individual connection?

P. K. Garg: Yes, until that time telecom facilities were not accessible to many people. So with the accessibility at least if there is one telephone in the village, whether it is a PCO, whether it is a phone in the Panchayat, all can use it. So the thrust of the government at that time was that the telecom facilities should be made accessible to all citizens. And even for taking the teledensity to five per cent it was estimated that it would require about 25 to 30 billion dollars over a period of five years. The government made provision for almost three-fourth of this money in the Indian budgets and the planning processes. So the fiscal imbalances, etc, that is an overall economic aspect, not only related to telecom. I think you have plenty of material from other sources on what measures the government took to deal with the issue – one of which was the liberalization: entry of the private sector was decided upon and it was also decided that the government telecom department would concentrate on increasing the accessibility through line telephones. The entry of wireless was to be left to the private operators, because the government money that was available for this was limited.

Yelena: And this was prior to 1994?

P. K. Garg: This was around 1991-1992 time frame. The government decided that the wireless telephony (mobile telephony) should be left to the private sector because it would require quite a significant investment and if the government funds were diverted to the mobile wireless service provision then it would have to reduce the investments available for line telephony and increase of teledensity. Another factor at that point of time was that nobody felt that mobile telephony will grow to that extent. They were feeling that one might get a few million connections, maximum four to five millions, because it was considered to be a service for rich and elite people, business people, top bureaucrats, but not so much for the common masses.

Yelena: So where did that shift come where the government realized that mobile connections are important for all citizens?

P. K. Garg: I would say it was a combination of many factors. To understand this one has to go through the history of our wireless mobile telephony a little bit. In 1994, licenses for mobile telephony in India were granted for the four metro service areas – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta. Two operators in each of these areas were selected. At that time it was not pure bidding; it was sort of a beauty contest where certain pre-conditions were made and only those who technically qualified for those conditions could bid for that. At that point of time the government had indicated a certain ceiling for the tariffs and at that point of time outgoing calls as well as incoming calls – both were charged. Then around 1995-96 the mobile telephony licenses for other areas of the country were auctioned. It was slightly different from the 1994 bids which were more on the pattern of a beauty contest. And not only the mobile telephony licenses were auctioned; it was considered then that one more operator in each area should come in the line telephony sector also as a competitor to the government operator – first, to provide competition, secondly, to add to the government efforts to increase the teledensity.

Yelena: So the government operator was BSNL right?

P. K. Garg: At that time it was not BSNL, it was called the Department of Telecom and only in Delhi-Mumbai it was MTNL. MTNL was formed in 1986, and it was managing the Delhi and Mumbai areas. The rest of the country was still under the Department of Telecom. Later on they converted into the Department of Telecom Services. And in 1996-97, one private licensee or one operator for line telephony areas was also selected through auctions. The private operators began functioning in 1995, starting their services slowly with first mobile telephony networks in the metro areas. Mobile telephony networks in the other areas started functioning around 1996-97 and the private operators for line telephony were allowed to use wireless in the last mile, the WLL wireless in local loop. So they also started rolling out their networks in 1997.

However, around the beginning of 1998 most of the operators, especially the mobile telephony operators, felt that their business case which was the basis of their bids was not right. And 1) the growth was not as expected; 2) the ARPU (average revenue per unit/ subscriber) was far below their expectations which they had assumed for their business case. So the net result was that they approached the government saying sorry, we made a mistake in our business calculations and the government has to bail us out, otherwise we will not be able to service the existing customers also. And as you can appreciate most of these funds were lent by banks and financial institutions. That was not necessarily the money of the promoters. So then the lending banks and financial institutions also supported the cause of the operators with the government. Because many of our banks who had given money to the operators were nationalized banks, some of them were private also, but most of them were nationalized banks, and if the national banks were not able to recover their loans, it means the public money is gone. So the government had set up a high level group, ministerial level group, in the last quarter of 1998 to examine this issue and the group had detailed discussions with the operators, the banks, the user groups, the economists in the country and many others. They also consulted international experts. Then finally government agreed that, yes, some relief needs to be given to these companies/ operators. And that is how the new telecom policy of 1999 came into play.

The most salient aspect of that policy was revenue share. The license fee was earlier based on their bids, and in India it was not a total payment of auction amount upfront, it was staggered. The bid itself was payable over 10 years and the operator had the choice to indicate at the time of bidding how he would like to pay – whether he would like to pay uniformly or whether he would like to pay less in the beginning, more in the end, or he would like to pay more in the beginning, less in the end – he had the choice. And as per the normal economic rules the government then calculates the net present value of that bid amount for the purpose of comparison. So the result was that instead of the fixed license fee, the government said OK, now you will not pay any prefixed amount but you will pay a percentage of the revenues which you will earn. That was a big relief because then the operator was not required to pay any fixed amount which was quite large, and he was to pay a percentage of the revenue towards the license fee.

Yelena: So it depends on how much money they make…

P. K. Garg: So if the subscriber growth is there, they get revenues, they pay that much, and if they don’t get adequate revenues, they will pay less, if they get more revenues they will pay more. And then the spectrum charges also, which were earlier based on a formula, were also changed over to the revenue share or percentage of their revenues.

Yelena: What was the formula?

P. K. Garg: Earlier the formula was that for each city, say 1MHz of paired spectrum was charged at about $10 000 per year, per city and in addition there was a fee of Rs.100 (appox $ 2) per subscriber, per year that is the wireless license charge. So instead of separate spectrum royalty and the license fee, both were combined and it was taken as the revenue share. So the burden of a fixed fee was taken away and the operators were to pay a percentage of their earnings; whatever the revenues they get, they pay a part of that. So that was the biggest consequence of the New Telecom Policy 1999. This allowed the operators to reduce their tariffs because anybody can appreciate the two barriers for the growth of mobile telephony: cost of the handset which is entry level cost and the tariff costs. During 1999-2000 onwards the cost of the handsets was already coming down. Plus the revenue share allowed the operators to reduce the tariffs, because earlier if they were charging half a dollar per minute then they were paying a fixed amount of license fee and spectrum charges out of that, but now if they were to reduce their tariff from half a dollar to 10 cents, they would be paying only the license fee and the spectrum charge as a percentage of the revenue out of the 10 cents only. So they didn’t have much of a fear to reduce their tariffs, because the payment to the government will also be less. These factors encouraged them to reduce their tariffs – one was competition and the second was that they could get more customers.

Then the next point which encouraged the fast growth was the decision of our regulator in 2003 that only the calling party will pay; the receiving party will not pay. Earlier even the receiving party on the mobile had to pay.

Yelena: In Canada, if you don’t have a good plan, you still have to pay to receive a call.

P. K. Garg: In US also. It is there still. Even if I receive a call I will have to pay. So the charges for receiving a call were a hindrance, especially with the lower strata of society, because they were hesitant to receive the call if they had to pay. But once the liability was removed from the receiving party, many people started using the phone for receiving only. For example, the self employed artisans, electricians, painters, carpenters, anybody else could give their mobile telephone numbers to the prospective customers or clients and when they need their services they could call them without any financial penalty to the receiving party. One doesn’t have to pay anything except for the normal monthly or rental charges if one uses the phone for call receiving purposes only. That gave a tremendous boost to our telecom sector growth. For example, in early 2003, until this regulation was enforced, the total number of mobile customers in India was in the region of 10 million. These 10 million subscribers came, you can say, spread over at least 4-5 years starting from 1995. But from there onwards, the growth started picking up to almost more than 1 million subscribers per month. Another factor as I mentioned is that by that time the cost of the handset had come down to about $50-$60.

Yelena: How much was it before?

P. K. Garg: Initially in the 1995 time frame it was very much in the range of about $600. And from $600 it came to $60 (one-tenth). So these factors – the entry level cost of the handsets coming down, the tariffs also becoming low and the receiving calls becoming free – they were the factors which put mobile telephony on a very fast growth. Thereafter it’s well known to everybody because we crossed 100 million mobile subscribers in the middle of 2006 and from there onward it has been picking up and the country has seen almost 15 million per month new connections. Now also it is about 10 million new connections per month but it had even crossed 15 million during some time frame around 2007-08. So that is how the growth took place.

Yelena: The unified access services license: I think it was introduced in 2003. Could you speak about some of the reasons it was introduced?

P. K. Garg: Basically it is not my area of specialization, because mine was spectrum related, but I will give you some general aspects which I know. As part of the telecom policies most of these concessions were given to the operators. Then the government got from them some concessions or levied upon them certain conditions. For the mobile operators, government said that it will bring in a third operator which was the government operator. Moreover, the government also said that because we are giving you a concession with the license fee, etc, the government will have the right to introduce more operators as and when it feels the necessity for it in the public interest. Similarly for the line telephony also, since line telephony operators were also allowed certain concessions, in 1999 the government said that it may introduce more operators in addition to the one government and one private operator. So then in the year 2000 the government asked the government operator to enter the mobile telephony as the third operator. The name of the operator was MTNL in Delhi and Mumbai and then the remaining areas the operating wing of the telecom department was renamed as BSNL. BSNL was formed in October 2000. Then BSNL was asked to enter the mobile area for the rest of the country except Delhi-Mumbai where MTNL was there. Then in 2001, the government felt that one more private mobile operator can be introduced for which bids were called. They also said that for line telephony, because the issue of spectrum was not there, anybody who wished to come for line telephony would be allowed to do so. And then one operator came almost for all over India, that was Reliance in the line telephony. TATA also came into the play for a few areas and then couple of others were there like Shyam telecom for one or two areas as well as HFCL for one or two areas for line telephony. For mobile telephony, because it was only one license to be given, no single operator could get it for the areas all over India. Then some places Airtel got, some places went to Vodafone, and some places Idea received. So like that, all of the 22 circles went to different operators.

Yelena: And prior to this, per circle there were only two wireless operators?

P. K. Garg: Initially there were two mobile operators, third one became BSNL-MTNL, and the fourth one was introduced in 2001. And then what happened was that the fixed line operators were allowed wireless in the last mile. So they adopted CDMA; Reliance chose CDMA system to provide WLL and this CDMA technology had developed by that time to a level that could provide full roaming. Not only could it provide the wireless in local loop in the last mile but it could also provide full roaming and it was sort of alleged by many people and even the wireless mobile operators that Reliance had started providing full mobile services and not restricting to WLL which was the mandate of their license. That gave rise to many legal issues; there were legal cases by the mobile operators saying that the bid amounts offered by the fourth cellular operator in 2001 and the fixed line operators were quite different. The line operators’ bids were very low and the mobile operators’ bid amounts were very high; not as high as 1996-97 time frame, but still very high as compared to the bids of the fixed line operators. So they said that this was unfair competition and this was not allowed as per policy; why are they doing it? They went to court where they made the government also as a party, claiming that the government was allowing them to do it. At that time, in 2003, the government realized that this dispute in the telecom sector should be ended. After consultations with the Telecom Regulatory Authority the government decided to no longer issue separate licenses for basic fixed line services and cellular services, and instead introduced the Unified Access Services License (UASL). The earlier fixed line operators were given a choice that if they wanted to go for full mobility using CDMA or whatever technology, they could do so by paying the bid amount which was paid for the cellular licenses in 2001.

Yelena: And dual technology licensing came about in 2007 I believe?

P. K. Garg: Yes that was in 2007. Until that time an operator could have either mobile services in a CDMA or GSM, but not both.

Yelena: Great. Thank you for this history overview of telecommunications in India.

As part of CIS’s research interests in unlicensed spectrum policies, P. K. Garg was asked to comment on international and national level policies, as well as his perspective on the matter.

Yelena: Do ITU radio regulations reserve any bands for unlicensed use?

P. K. Garg: ITU radio regulations include the international allocations of different frequency bands. These international regulations are agreed by all the member countries of ITU at the world radio conferences. So it is agreed by all the countries, all the countries have to abide by that. In the international allocations there is no band which is unlicensed. There are certain bands which are allocated for ISM (Industrial Scientific and Medical) uses. For example, some bands are earmarked for microwave ovens because that’s an industrial use. Now of course it is for home use also but microwave ovens initially were for industrial use. Similarly certain frequency bands are for operating medical devices. And there are certain other scientific requirements for other bands. So there is a category called ISM (Industrial Scientific and Medical).

Yelena: And are these the 5GHz and 2.4 GHz bands or are there more?

P. K. Garg: Yes, they are also there, but there are many other sub-bands which are allocated for ISM services. Now many of these bands have been de-licensed for public use in many countries and as you said just now, the 2.4GHz, 5.2GHz, and 5.7GHz are the bands. There are other bands also. Many social requirements like cordless phones, let’s say individual requirements of the society, were developed in many of these unlicensed ISM type bands, because it was considered impractical both for the users, the vendor as well as the regulating authority in the country to issue licenses for each and every cordless phone. That is why they were developed in these bands. Some of these bands were de-licensed first in US and few other countries just like the 1500 or 1600 MHz sub bands. Then there was a band earlier around 150MHz, subsequently there were some parts even in the 900MHz band and the 450MHz band. That is where these cordless phones were developed. The cordless phones were one of the first de-licensed usages. Prior to that there were, you might have heard of them, walkie-talkies. They operated on 400MHz and covered a range of maybe a kilometre. That was to be used when people would go in the forest or trekking or camping, etc. So they were also developed in the ISM bands which were de-licensed in few countries.

Then as the requirements of the cordless phones came subsequently for WiFi modems, all these technologies were developed in ISM bands and even in those countries where they were not de-licensed, it was felt that it was better to de-license them, because 1) it will provide benefit to the society 2) it would be impractical to regulate their use or issue a license for everybody, because, for example, if one thinks of even regulating it or issuing licenses for WiFi modems it is practically impossible. And so the spectrum management authorities in the countries, any country, have to weigh how much is the benefit to the society by de-licensing; that is number 1. Number 2 – whether they can de-license or if there are some other users already there in that band, and how to shift them if possible, because those licensed operators/users have to be protected.

So, for example – the 2.4GHz band was de-licensed in India in 2004. For Licensed and unlicensed bands as such, there are many considerations before the spectrum management authority can decide to de-license them. The government could de-license the 5GHz band only for indoor use, because there were some existing users and it was difficult to shift them away from that band. The outdoor usage by the public cannot be allowed, because it will cause interference to those existing users as well as the public will get interference from them if they use it in the outdoors. That is why it could not be de-licensed for outdoor use. Only a small, 50 MHz portion (5825 to 5875MHz) could be de-licensed for outdoor use, but in the 2.4 GHz band the existing users were able to shift out of that band so it could be de-licensed for the outdoor use also.

There is also another important aspect which you have to keep in view while de-licensing any band: though the public requirement will be there, vendors naturally, you will agree, try to force the issue because they develop some equipment and they want to sell it. Now you would have seen that spectrum is a very valuable commodity, it’s a resource, a very valuable resource and billions of dollars have been spent by the operators to get the spectrum. On the one hand one operator is spending billions of dollars, on the other hand, another operator is using de-licensed spectrum providing the commercial services. There is a big gap as you can see. So when the government de-licenses any spectrum, the idea is that the public will use it for personal use. The intention is not to de-license it for the commercial use, because commercial usages will continue to grow, continue to increase. Today if you de-license 100 MHz, tomorrow requirements will grow and they will say that they need another 100 MHz, and after another few years they will ask for another 100 – 200 MHz. Hence the de-licensing requirements will never end. So this creates quite a difficult situation with respect to other commercial operators who have paid for this spectrum.

Yelena: That’s definitely something to keep in mind.

P. K. Garg: Yes. Even now, for example – some of these Internet service providers, they are using this 2.4 GHz band. Now this 2.4GHz de-licensed band which they are using, they are using quite extensively. As a result, the availability of this band for the public gets restricted. If members of the public want to use it they will get interference and if WiFi modems find one channel busy, they will find another channel, and if they find that channel busy too, then they will go to the third channel. Thus the number of channels which are available to the public will continue to decrease.

Yelena: So by the public you mean community projects or individuals?

P. K. Garg: Yes. For example – you and me– if we are to use a WiFi modem at home and if we find because of other commercial usages around our houses that we are not able to function, that means the benefit of that unlicensed band is lost for us.

Yelena: And there is no way to regulate so that the public gets more access?

P. K. Garg: No, because once the spectrum management authority de-licenses any band it sets certain parameters – how much power, what is the bandwidth of each channel, etc. Beyond that it will not control it. Only if somebody is using a higher power than what is allowed, it can be checked and then the person can be penalized. But whether it is for commercial use, personal use, or community use is a very grey area. It is difficult for the government to control this, requires a long litigation process and other interventions.

Yelena: That is certainly understandable. However, I’m looking into how unlicensed spectrum can be used for public good. There are projects that provide cost-effective wireless communication networks in remote areas, such as the Dharamsala wireless community network project set up by AirJaldi, or networks set up by the Digital Empowerment Foundation. So, our advocacy for de-licensed spectrum is to benefit such projects.

P. K. Garg: Basically you are right. For example – if you see now for the indoor use, almost 250MHz of spectrum in 2.4GHz and 5GHz band is available unlicensed. I would say even close to 300MHz is available. And out of this 300MHz almost 150MHz is available for outdoor use also. Now if any community wireless network or a city-wide network operating on WiFi is to be created, 150MHz is more than enough if it is used judiciously. However, supposing I am an operator and I started using the unlicensed spectrum for giving services to my customers throughout the city, and their data and the total time requirements are quite extensive, then what will happen is that it will either reduce the availability of spectrum to other users or it will become totally unavailable to them. So the basic purpose of de-licensing is defeated then.

Yelena: That makes sense. During my interviews with several other experts who are really strong advocates of unlicensed spectrum, it was stated that a solution to de-licensed spectrum being clogged is to de-license more spectrum. Considering what you mentioned, why are they still advocating for this?

P. K. Garg: Well, as I was mentioning to you, unfortunately many of these people are not fully aware of the ground realities of the situation. Now no part of spectrum is completely virgin. If somebody says today it is a question of 100GHz band to be de-licensed that is a different issue. But for the 100GHz band there are no devices available today and no usage. But if we come to the band anywhere below 10GHz, all the bands are used by somebody or the other. So before de-licensing, one has to shift those users and shifting anybody is not easy. Which band will the government shift them to?

Yelena: That is definitely something to consider.

P. K. Garg: The government will have to give them alternate bands; where will they provide them from when all the bands are in use? So the proponents of de-licensing sometime are not able to appreciate the full gravity of the situation. And another thing is that the government cannot be regulating whether it is a commercial use/private use or societal use. And many of the problems in the existing unlicensed bands have come up because they are really used more and more for commercial purposes. That is the unfortunate part of it. Otherwise 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands themselves are quite adequate to serve the societal requirements. Tomorrow, the ultra wide band systems are coming. The requirements will be there, but they will be operating in higher bands and they will be confined to very small areas; even home, even your office. So they can be tackled by indoor de-licensing.

Yelena: And this is according to the 2011 National Frequency Allocation Plan?

P. K. Garg: Well, the National Frequency Allocation Plan doesn’t talk of any additional de-licensed bands but they will consider it. However that will be for indoor, very low power applications. As I mentioned to you for indoor usage it is almost like 300 or 350MHz which is available; for outdoors it is only 150MHz which is available. So for indoor it is already 200MHz of additional frequencies which are available as unlicensed. And if all these bands are put to proper use it can very easily allow even up to 100Mbps indoor usage for every house. There shouldn’t be much of a difficulty. One is that all this indoor usages are not continuous; this 100Mbps is not 24/7 because there are short spurts usages over a few milliseconds, then there is a gap and all these WiFi modems and other devices make use of the dynamic situation, so they are able to coexist. Even if I am using it here and somebody else is using it at the other end of the room in this large hall it is possible to coexist. And certainly if it is the next house or the next building the same frequencies can be used; they will be reused. So the solution lies in the greater reuse of the same spectrum; whether you call it reuse or you call it sharing, it’s the same thing. So one has to share the spectrum; reuse the spectrum.

Yelena: Great. Thank you for your time and for sharing your expertise.

[1]. Indian Telecom Sector. (2010). Government of India Department of Telecommunications. Retrieved March 11, 2012, from www.dot.gov.in/osp/Brochure/Brochure.htm.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/interview-with-garg

An Infrastructure Road Map

Shyam Ponappa — 2014-06-02T08:30:03Z

What should and should not be done by a new government in this crucial sector.

The article was first published in the Business Standard on April 30, 2014 and in Organizing India Blogspot on May 1.

Comprehensive, Integrated Strategy & Execution

Let's hope a newly elected government has the coherence and leadership to begin to deal right away with the mess in infrastructure, learning from what has gone wrong before. There are problems galore with our infrastructure, but a couple of examples stand out for what to look out for and avoid in future initiatives. There's little doubt that we must improve our approach to projects and undertakings in terms of functionality and efficiency, and that digital infrastructure is a key requirement.

While this article is on prioritising digital infrastructure, let us not underestimate the problems of deficient infrastructure. For sustained high growth, equally critical needs relating to power and logistics, with its interdependent linkages between transportation - by road, rail, air and water, and the associated holding/staging areas of terminals, airports and ports - need to be addressed with organisation and capital for capacity and de-bottlenecking.

One example is the multiplicity of schemes to register individuals, including the Unique Identification (UID) orAadhaar scheme, the National Population Register (NPR), the multipurpose national identity card, the voter identification card, and so on1. Another example is the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) by Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL). Accepting for the moment that these projects are well intentioned, there seem to be flaws right from the design stage, and on through execution. While the fallout from past errors has to be dealt with, it's most important to avoid these mistakes in fresh initiatives.

The UID and NPR projects apparently began without sufficient care in defining their purposes; they did not mesh seamlessly with each other and with other objectives and processes. This disjunction has carried through in implementing their design and execution2.

The NOFN aims to extend a countrywide network on the foundation of the existing fibre networks of state-owned entities Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), RailTel and PowerGrid. This was to link over 245,000 village panchayats by the end of 2013, but is still undergoing limited trials. Given its magnitude, this requires vast capital investment that is unrelated to likely revenue generation in the short run. This critical infrastructure project is apparently behind time and over budget despite its reduced scope3. That said, such monumental undertakings and changes can't be expected to go like clockwork, and the considerable efforts being made should eventually contribute to positive outcomes. For instance, a Confederation of Indian Industry report prepared with the help of KPMG in 2013 outlines possible business models and ecosystems in four areas, namely, education, health care, banking and agriculture4. It's just that a thorough, comprehensive approach from the outset would be most beneficial.

In hindsight, what's lacking in both instances is proper organisation and co-ordination, the discipline of sound project management; and this is a missing piece in most areas of deficiency in governance, including infrastructure development. While a great deal of opprobrium is directed at corruption, there's little focus on these disciplines related to competent design, execution and delivery. Both depend on digital infrastructure. This is where real efforts must be focused to fix things, quite apart from dealing with corruption.

The "plumbing" of hardware, software, communications lines, and systems that enables effective use of information and communications technology is a critical necessity for our economic growth and well-being. While a balanced availability of energy, transportation and water supply/sewerage is required, in the short run, it is ICT that is likely to yield the broadest overall benefits and economic returns through multiplier effects, provided the others come up to minimum requirements. According to the World Economic Forum's (WEF's) Global Information Technology Report 2014 issued last week, the top 10 countries embracing information technology are Finland, Singapore, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, the United States, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and South Korea, in that order. The report includes a "networked readiness index" that ranks countries based on an assessment of their digital infrastructure and ability to use information and communications technologies to grow, foster innovation, and improve the well-being of their citizens.

Between 2012 and 2014, India dropped in networked readiness from 69th to 83rd out of 144 countries. By comparison, China dropped from 51st to 62nd, and Brazil from 65th to 69th. The WEF report says that India continues on its declining trajectory - and, among other things, that despite competitive markets (24th) and the availability of the latest technologies (58th), its difficult business environment and lack of digital infrastructure (119th) reflect in deprivation in education, resulting in limiting the creation of a wide skill base (101st). Our information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) sector is still largely oriented to external markets. For the financial year 2014, export revenues are expected to have grown 13 per cent to $86 billion. This is almost five times domestic revenues, estimated to have grown at 10 per cent to Rs 1.15 lakh crore (just over $19 billion).

Clear, convergent objectives and task-oriented processes and systems are not really part of our culture or vocabulary, barring sectors oriented to external markets like IT-BPM, and some corporations and professionals. There are, of course, rare individuals who excel, such as the former head of Delhi Metro, E Sreedharan, who maintained his reputation from the Konkan Railway and before that, Indian Railways. But it's not as if getting it right is a foregone conclusion for countries with a far better record of good systems and high-quality delivery - as evidenced, for instance, by Germany's increasing problems after turning away from nuclear energy. So, the incoming government needs to focus on starting to do things right, and that is the best way to create opportunities that can make the most of our demographics, and the potential of our large and increasing markets. It must view any scheme as part of an integrated, overarching system, and apply itself from the very beginning with care and understanding to defining the aims, objectives, and detailed processes so that they mesh and converge with what else is there.

An explanation of Aadhaar and NPR: http://egov.eletsonline.com/2012/04/there-is-actually-no-conflict-between-uid-and-npr/
A discussion on systems aspects such as authentication and data security: "Do we need the Aadhaar scheme?", February 1, 2012, Business Standard (http://goo.gl/j3P5vf)
"Reality check on the broadband dream", April 27, 2014, Business Standard (http://goo.gl/C9h4im)
"Creating viable business models for inclusive growth through the National Optical Fibre Network": http://www.kpmg.com/IN/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/KPMG_CII_Broadband_Report_Final.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-shyam-ponappa-may-1-2014-an-infrastructure-road-map

Ambiguity in the App Store: Understanding India’s emerging IT sector in light of IP

samantha — 2014-04-15T08:24:28Z

Mobile applications hold immense potential for India but are not fully understood by even their own developers in the context of India’s intellectual property (IP) regime. This is the first in a series of blog posts introducing CIS's new access to knowledge research initiative that seeks to understand how stakeholders encounter India’s IP law and what this means for the mobile app ecosystem, and in turn, the Indian mobile user. This research also aims to address problematic policy areas for innovation and protection for developers, as well as to comment on India’s regime with respect to the emerging mobile app sector.

India is at a pivotal point within its IT industry as mobile technologies take off like never before. Smartphone usage appears to be replacing PC use altogether for many,[1] and today’s generation is even said to belong to India’s "mobile only generation" as 41% of Indians access the internet through mobile phones.[2] The potential for mobile technologies for India can be better envisioned as various reports compare prior growth rates with astonishing projections for the next few years, and in doing so, demonstrate India’s exponential growth in terms of smart phone and internet penetration.

In the last 3-4 years, the number of users who access the internet through a 3G connection has long surpassed the number of fixed line broadband connections accumulatively over the last 17 years.[3] The funny part is that 3G has yet to be widely adopted, with only 4% of over 900 million mobile subscriptions using 3G.[4] This number is expected to grow from 36 million to 266 million by 2016—within a mere 3 years,[5] and smartphones, from 67 million this year to 382 million by 2016.[6] At that point, India will likely be within the world’s top 5 countries for smartphones, potentially representing almost 10% of the entire world’s supply—practically five times that of what it was only 5 years prior in 2011.[7] As the cost of data and price of smartphones come down, and as mobile internet and smartphone penetration rates surge tremendously, new pathways are paved for emerging sectors to evolve, such as that of the mobile application market,[8] a market which is expected to have a value of Rs 2,700-crore by 2016.[9]

Every month, 100 million apps are being downloaded in India, ranging from productivity to localized music and language apps, to health and spirituality apps, to banking and e-commerce apps; with ones relating to dating and gaming growing in popularity.[10]

India’s appetite for mobile apps is definitely here to stay. This booming app market is expected to increase demand for an additional three lakh developers in the next five years in India[11] and introduce many new players into market.

Although holding great potential, the mobile app ecosystem has yet to become robust, and is still a place of volatility and ambiguity for developers. As more and more build upon previously produced content within the pursuit of new idea for a mobile application, the lines become blurred as to what is legally acceptable and what is not. For emerging start-ups, these blurred lines are irrelevant, with the main focus on the product and with insufficient manpower and money flow to invest time elsewhere. But for the developers that are on their way up the enterprise ladder, protection is sought out. As developers gain more leverage within app stores, and therefore more exposure, their applications may be at risk for being copied by others, and may begin to seek support commonly in the form of copyright or not-so-often patent protection. As this system of who seeks protection and who does not repeatedly manifests within the Indian mobile app ecosystem, an uneven playing field is further tipped in favour of those for who are willing to pay for a lawyer. Many a time, developers are not aware themselves that they may be infringing upon others’ intellectual property, and as foreign players begin to enter India’s mobile app market — often with overwhelmingly large IP portfolios—Indian developers may unknowingly be at risk for litigation for their own mobile applications.

This blog post kick-starts a new research initiative from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) as I attempt to understand the many factors at play at the intersection of the mobile app ecosystem and Indian intellectual property (IP) law. It is also the first in a series to attempt to paint a comprehensive picture of what the real implications are of intellectual property within the mobile app ecosystem for India. This initiative falls within CIS’s A2K Programme which ultimately aims to protect citizen, consumer and public interest via IP law reform and by offering alternatives to strictly proprietary-based intellectual property regimes, with those that incorporate principles of openness. These differentiating regimes will be looked at further with reference to mobile applications in the series of postings to come.

In performing this research I hope to attain the following achievements: 1) to understand the legal environment in which the mobile app ecosystem exists, 2) to evaluate India’s current IP regime with respect to its mobile application industry, and lastly, and 3) to work towards creating contextually appropriate conditions to harness the potential of mobile app technologies for India. Each of these objectives are looked at closer below, as I demonstrate how I intend to attain each goal, and for what reason:

To understand the mobile app ecosystem in light of India’s IP regime

As the mobile app market is still on its incline, there is little understanding of the implications of policy decisions on this ecosystem and the stakeholders implicated within it. Consequently, policy decisions are ill-informed and at risk of being determined by foreign players in pursuit of foreign interests. I hope to acquire a sufficient sense of understanding of these implications from the ground up: beginning with the developers themselves. In performing empirical research to survey how stakeholders within the ecosystem encounter Indian IP law, with a main focus on developers themselves, I hope to also be able to identify key determinants of IP-related disputes and areas of concern amongst mobile app developers and understand corresponding implications for the mobile app market, and in turn, the potential for this market’s impact in India.

To evaluate India’s IP regime with respect to the mobile app ecosystem

Through the carrying out of this initiative I hope to produce the research necessary that will get the debate started regarding the role of intellectual property in the mobile applications market in India. In order to do so, I hope to identify and address policy blindspots — if any — within the current IP regime, as well as to make evident the consequences of such. I also hope to be able to draw my own conclusions to assess the current IP regime with respect to the needs of various stakeholders and the market which they drive forward through investigating how policies related to IP law facilitate or hinder levels of innovation, creation, and protection for mobile applications and their developers, to the benefit or detriment of Indian mobile users.

To work towards creating conditions to harness the potential of mobile apps for India

It is evident that within the mobile app market, along with other mobile technologies, lies potential for the future of access to information and means of communication amongst mobile users from all corners of India. Relative trajectories for market trends and mobile and internet penetration should not be taken for granted, however, as the environment within which these trends take course may be considered to be volatile and may consequently enable or undermine what potential this market holds for current and future consumers. Through analyzing primary empirical evidence and research findings in conjunction with market reportings and projections, I hope to be able to identify key conditions for an enabling legal environment in which mobile applications are available and accessible for the fulfillment of their potential.

The IP debate is a highly contested one, with opposing viewpoints and varying manifestations across jurisdictions. In order to understand how India fits into this debate, with respect to the mobile app ecosystem, I intend to guide my research in asking the following questions:

Who are the stakeholders and key players in the mobile app ecosystem, and how does each encounter India’s IP law?
What are the determining and resulting factors at play at the intersection of the mobile app ecosystem within India and India’s IP law regime?
What conditions would create an enabling legal environment for mobile app developers in terms of innovation and protection for their works?

This research will employ a multidisciplinary approach in incorporating theory and contextual aspects related to academic law, philosophy, political science, economics, history, and sociology in attempts to holistically understand the multifaceted picture in question and the different perspectives of such.

As preliminary research to this initiative, I have been in touch with mobile app developers of differing scales within the ecosystem. In speaking with each, I continue to observe a prevalent theme to be that of how each interprets Indian IP law. Regardless of whether they develop mobile apps for clients or their own enterprises, or are part of a small startup enterprise or an Indian success story, or even if they’re IP consultants themselves: in trying to understand the Indian IP landscape, one often encountered experience is confusion. As a result, the ambiguity of what may be protected under intellectual property and what may not be lingers on, to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of many. I intend to continue carrying out interviews with various stakeholders across India — with a special focus on Bangalore as India’s IT hub — including developers, incubators, lawyers, and even consumers, to better understand how each feels about Indian IP law, to what extent developers engage in protection for their IP, and if this theme of ambiguity is truly a consistent one throughout the mobile app ecosystem with regards to the Indian IP regime.

If you are interested in contributing to this initiative, I invite you to contact me by e-mail at samantha@cis-india.org. Any or all contributions may be kept anonymous and your explicit approval will be sought out before incorporating any of your responses into my research.

[1]. Bhine, A., Sharma, K., Rao, S., Mishra, K., Preetham, N., & Nemani, N. (2013). India’s mobile internet: The revolution has begun: An overview of how mobile internet is touching the lives of millions. Avendus . Retrieved from http://www.avendus.com/Files/Fund%20Performance%20PDF/Avendus_Report-India's_Mobile_Internet-2013.pdf

[2]. NextBigWhat.com (2012). Mobile Internet in India: All you need to know about it [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/nextbigwhat/mobile-internet-revolution-in-india-all-that-youd-like-to-know

[3]. Bhine, A. et al. (2013)

[4]. NextBigWhat.com (2012)

[5]. Mobile Marketing Association (2013). India Adspend Report. Retrieved from http://www.mmaglobal.com/whitepaper/india-adspend-report

[6]. Press Trust of India (2013, Sep 29). Mobile games, apps market in India to touch Rs 2,700 cr by 2016: Report. IBN Live. Retrieved from http://ibnlive.in.com/news/mobile-games-apps-market-in-india-to-touch-rs-2700-cr-by-2016-report/425284-11.html

[7]. Bhine, A. et al. (2013)

[8]. Pahwa, N. (2013, Apr 30). TiE India Internet Day: On Smartphones, Mobile App Monetization & Indic Languages. Medianama. Retrieved from http://www.medianama.com/2013/04/223-mobile-app-monetization-smartphones/

[9]. Press Trust of India (2013, Sep 29)

[10]. Kulkarni, V.A. (2013, Aug 22). India in line for the big app boom? Certainly, say developers. Know Your Mobile India. Retrieved from http://www.knowyourmobile.in/applications/8759/india-next-line-big-app-boom-certainly-say-developers

[11]. Nair, R. P. (2013, Aug 13). Booming app market is driving startups to offer mobile technology course. The Economic Times. Retrieved from http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-08-13/news/41375028_1_app-market-mobile-app-development-company-marketsandmarkets

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ambiguity-in-the-app-store

Alternative Scenarios

Shyam Ponappa — 2012-05-10T10:49:46Z

Only about 48 per cent of India is covered by the telecom network with only 20 per cent rural coverage, says Shyam Ponappa. In his article published in the Business Standard on 4 February, 2010, he points out how alternative approaches may enhance extensive coverage.

Like the industrial revolution, India missed the infrastructure systems building stage. As a consequence, even in 2001, the telecom network covered a mere 4 per cent of our population. Now, it covers about 48 per cent, but with only 20 per cent rural coverage. Our need being extensive coverage, the following what-if scenarios explore how alternative approaches might pan out.

The market-driven scenario

One approach is that all that’s required for an effective communications infrastructure is to go ahead with the spectrum auctions — that long-delayed, but always expected “3G” auction, to begin with. Imagine that it happens. What then?

Current policies will result in three winners of 10 MHz each. If they are from among present operators, they could be any three of Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Idea, Tata… or one or more new players: Google, Intel… until one of these wins the fourth “3G” slot when that band is made available, and so on. These operators will probably roll out networks and services where heavy traffic is expected, as with 2G so far: more extensively in urban areas. Provided other policies evolve rationally, e.g., that acquisitions are allowed and spectrum holdings can be consolidated, in the long run India may have around five or six large countrywide operators. There may be regional/segment operators with lesser franchises, or addressing specific segments. Each company will incur capital costs for spectrum and network investment, which then must be recovered from users. Network growth is likely to be on similar lines as before.

Take the evolution of India’s telecommunications policies in the 90s, and the desultory state of the sector until the reforms of the National Telecom Policy ’99 (NTP ’99), followed by reductions in revenue share to more reasonable levels in 2002. Even so, the facts show that:

network growth is skewed heavily towards urban users; and,
broadband coverage is abysmal.

Urban bias in network growth
By November 2009, urban coverage was at 107 per cent of the population, while rural coverage was at 20 per cent. In addition, rural wireless lines grew to 91 per cent, while the wire-line share dropped to 9 per cent; hence the increased importance of spectrum. Networks need more rural reach.

Low broadband coverage

Broadband subscriptions in August 2009 were at just seven million, two million short of the estimate for 2007. According to Comscore, at the end of September 2009, India had under 36 million Internet “unique visitors” (excluding access from Internet cafes, mobile phones and PDAs). This is roughly equivalent to the installed base of PCs, compared with about 560 million phone lines, of which under 40 million are wire-line. Something must be done to increase broadband coverage at lower prices.

The shared-network scenario

Now, imagine what shared-network facilities could do to lower costs, with no duplication of capital investment. Consider the added benefits of shared spectrum as part of this shared network — which, given the fragmented, inefficient present allocation, is the primary need for effective last-mile coverage. Then, add the benefits of substituting revenue sharing for up-front spectrum auction payments. With incentives for performance, the savings in time and money in network build-up and throughput will be immense, while the green footprint from less network hardware will be a double bonus. Government revenues will be far in excess of the foregone auction bids, together with more tax from higher profits, provided the revenue-share percentage is reasonable, as witnessed after NTP ’99 plus reduced revenue-share.

Need for reforms: Networks, spectrum and broadband

Significantly, much of the wire-line rural network is reportedly unsuitable for broadband, because of the length of “last-mile” connections, their quality and the problems of maintenance in difficult terrain. Besides, the cost — more than five times wireless, according to one operators’ association — and difficulty of laying cables in rural terrain, compounded by the impediments of clearances from multiple local authorities, render this impractical. The need is for more coverage with the same investment, even if it is private sector investment.
Therefore, network-building with spectrum reform and broadband need more supportive policies. In particular, incentives and disincentives/penalties are needed for intensive rural coverage as well.

Imagine the IT companies capturing the Y2K opportunity and outsourcing without special communications facilities and tax breaks. Those regulatory measures enabled the development of an essentially outward-oriented IT services sector. Likewise, NTP ’99 with lower revenue-share has led to high growth in telecommunications. This appears to be the best way to establish broadband as an essential infrastructure, especially in rural and semi-urban areas.

Required measures

The initiatives required cover three areas:

Policies that make it profitable to build networks and provide broadband services all across the country, not just in heavily-trafficked areas. This will enable communications access to all, providing a platform for service delivery for government and the private sector with tremendous user benefits. These services could encompass education, health and sanitation, extension services related to economic activities, including logistics, telecommuting, entertainment and information.
Formulating incentives and implementing them so that the primary objectives are achieved. The public-interest broadband objectives are likely to be on the lines of access anywhere — realistically, in most populated places — at reasonable prices. Key results have to be defined and tracked to ensure achievement. There’s a mountain of work in defining reasonable cost so that many more people can access broadband, while the business is commercially attractive. However, that is a separate issue. It needs to result in a large number having subsidised access, just as they must have access to food, education, and other necessities.
Equally important, formulating disincentives that are then applied impartially, so that transgressions that detract from the objectives are penalised.

These issues must be addressed simultaneously from the perspectives of technology, economics, defence and security, and commercial interests, including existing operators’ legacy interests. For this, the government has to work with all stakeholders and specialists to develop solutions with experienced, objective facilitation. Business, government, and consumers can benefit.

The article appeared in Business Standard.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/alternative-scenarios

Alliance aimed at reducing internet cost launched

praskrishna — 2013-10-29T09:08:10Z

A number of government bodies, non-government organizations and private players have joined hands to create a coalition aimed at reducing the cost of internet access worldwide. The coalition -- Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) -- will advocate policy and regulatory reforms to push down the cost of bandwidth in developing and poor countries, where cost of internet access remains very high.

This article was published in the Times of India on October 7, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

"By advocating for open, competitive and innovative broadband markets, A4AI aims to help access prices fall to below 5% of monthly income worldwide, a target set by the UN Broadband Commission. Reaching this goal can help to connect the two-thirds of the world that is presently not connected to the internet and make universal access a reality," the alliance said in a press note, citing figures provided International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

According to ITU, by 2012, fixed-broadband prices represented 1.7% of monthly gross national income in developed countries. In developing countries, the cost of broadband connection accounts for 30.1% of average monthly income.

The A4AI has the backing of World Wide Web Foundation, which was started by the inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee. Sonia Jorge, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Internet told TOI, "The Web Foundation hosts the A4AI's secretariat and both teams collaborate to benefit from natural synergies among the programmes."

Berners-Lee explained, "The reason for the alliance is simple - the majority of the world's people are still not online, usually because they can't afford to be. In Mozambique, for example, a recent study showed that using just 1GB of data can cost well over two months' wages for the average citizen... The real bottleneck now is anti-competitive policies that keep prices unaffordable. The alliance is about removing that barrier and helping as many as possible get online at reasonable cost."

The global sponsors of the A4AI are Google, UK Department for International Development, US Agency for International Development and Omidyar Network, an firm that often invests in non-profit entities. But Intel, Microsoft, Facebook, Cisco, Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, the US State Department and several other regional and international bodies are also members of A4AI.

From India, Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is part of the alliance. Sunil Abraham, director of CIS, told TOI his group "hopes to learn from policy work carried out by the alliance and apply the lessons in India where access to good quality broadband services remains prohibitively expensive".

For now there are not many details on how the A4AI is going to achieve its goals. Sonia said it had two telecom companies -- Digicel and Main One - as its members and talks were going on with some other telecom firms for their involvement.

The alliance will begin in-country engagements with three to four countries by the end of 2013, expanding to at least 12 countries by the end of 2015. "We would be very glad to have the opportunity to engage and work in collaboration with the government of India," said Sonia.

A4AI will also produce an annual 'affordability report'. The first edition is expected to come out in December 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-october-7-2013-alliance-aimed-at-reducing-internet-cost-launched

Airtel Open Network

Harsh Gupta and Aditya Tejas — 2016-06-17T11:58:31Z

Today, Airtel launched its Open Network platform. The web page displays visualization data on network coverage and signal strength across the country, as well as a detailed breakdown of cell tower placement, including towers that are shutdown or still being planned.

Airtel also reportedly promises that its call centres and physical stores have been upgraded with tools based on the new interface to allow for easy reporting of network coverage issues.[1] Users can report issues or request new cell towers directly through the platform.

This is part of Airtel’s wider ‘Project Leap’, a Rs. 60,000 crore overhaul of the operator’s network, which claims to include a bevy of technological solutions aimed at improving service. Airtel claims that these include smaller cells, indoor solutions, Wi-Fi hotspots and upgraded base stations.

This is a praiseworthy move on Airtel’s part. No other major telecoms company has undertaken a similar initiative. There exist private alternatives such as OpenSignal[2][3] that provide cell coverage map, among others. However, these services make use of crowdsourced data collection from users to create their maps.

While the portal is very convenient, it is worth pointing out that the website itself contains no links to any open data -- merely the visualization of data. At the time of writing, there was no indication of any way to request access to raw data on network coverage. While OpenSignal and other alternatives provide APIs[4] or direct access to their database, we saw no similar services on the Open Network website. Without access to raw data the Open Network initiative isn’t really open, as citizens cannot make use of data in any way other than what is provided in the visualization. Raw network coverage data would be immensely valuable to public and private actors, researchers, and the general public alike.

Furthermore, while the portal indicates the quality of coverage in an area (including separate indicators for voice and data quality) it gives no indications as to how these categories were arrived at, or what a ‘Moderate’ level of data quality means empirically. It is also unclear how often the visualization is refreshed, or how old the data currently on display are.

In addition, the provisions for reporting issues through the platform seem to be lacking, and it is unclear how open Airtel will be with these. Expressing interest in hosting a cell tower takes you to an online form and a promise that ‘we will get in touch with you.’ By contrast, trying to report an issue takes you to a ‘network troubleshooting guide’ with some basic tech support information and a number to call an advisor.

The Open Network website promises that “the more open questions you ask, the more open answers we can give.” But the platform contains no fundamentally new or different mechanisms for reporting issues which take advantage of the crowdsourced ethos that Airtel lays claim to. While this is a very promising first step for the company, we hope that they continue to refine their website and display a meaningful commitment to the principles they have espoused here.Furthermore, while the portal indicates the quality of coverage in an area (including separate indicators for voice and data quality) it gives no indications as to how these categories were arrived at, or what a ‘Moderate’ level of data quality means empirically. It is also unclear how often the visualization is refreshed, or how old the data currently on display are. In addition, the provisions for reporting issues through the platform seem to be lacking, and it is unclear how open Airtel will be with these.

Expressing interest in hosting a cell tower takes you to an online form and a promise that ‘we will get in touch with you.’ By contrast, trying to report an issue takes you to a ‘network troubleshooting guide’ with some basic tech support information and a number to call an advisor.

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/telecom/news/airtels-open-network-launched-on-app-to-show-coverage-quality-across-india-849280

opensignal.com

https://radiocells.org/

http://developer.opensignal.com/networkrank/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/airtel-open-network

After the Lockdown

Shyam Ponappa — 2020-04-09T10:05:49Z

This post was first published in the Business Standard, on April 2, 2020.

This is a time when, as the authorities deal with a lockdown, there needs to be an equal emphasis on providing for large numbers of people without the money for food and necessities, while the rest of us wait it out. Hard as it is, an MIT scholar writes that after the Spanish flu in 1918, cities that restricted public gatherings sooner and longer had fewer fatalities, and emerged with stronger economic growth.1 It is likely that costs and benefits vary with economic and social capacity, and we may have a harder time with it here. Going forward, government action to help provide relief, rehabilitate people and deal with loss needs to be well planned, including targeting aid to the urban and displaced poor.2

As important now as to ensure the lockdown continues is to plan on how to revive productive activity and the economy, and restore public confidence. A systematic approach will likely yield better results.

A major element of the recovery plan is steps such as liberal credit and amortisation terms, perhaps much more than the three-month extension the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced. A primary purpose is the re-initiation of large-scale activities such as construction, of which there are reportedly about 200,000 large projects around the country. These have to be nursed back to being going concerns. The RBI may need to consider doing more, including lowering rates.

An ominous development that has grown as the economy slowed is financial stress that could swell non-performing assets (NPAs). At the half-year ending September 2019, about half of non-financial large corporations in India, excluding telecom, showed financial stress (see table).

Source: Krishna Kant: "Coronavirus shutdown puts Rs 15-trillion debt at risk, to impact finances", BS, March 30, 2020:

https://www.business-standard.com/article/markets/coronavirus-shutdown-puts-rs-15-trillion-debt-at-risk-to-impact-finances-120032901036_1.html

These include some of India’s largest companies, producing power, steel, and chemicals. The 201 companies have total debt of nearly Rs 15 trillion, more than half of all borrowings. There is also the debt overhang of the National Highways Authority of India, and of the telecom companies. Ironically, the telecom companies are our lifeline now, despite having nearly collapsed under debt because of ill-advised policies in the past, which have still not changed. Perhaps our obvious dependence telecom services now will spark well conceived, convergent policies for this sector, so that we can function effectively.

A start with immediate changes in administrative rules for 60GHz, 70-80GHz, and 500-700MHz wireless use, modelled on the US FCC regulations as was done for the 5GHz Wi-Fi in October 2018, could change the game. It will provide the opportunity in India for the innovation of devices, their production, and use, possibly unleashing this sector. This can help offset our reliance on imported technology and equipment. However, such changes in policies and purchasing support have eluded us thus far. Now, the only way our high-technology manufacturers can thrive is to succeed internationally, in order to be able to sell to the domestic market. Imagine how hard that might be, and you begin to get an inkling of why we have few domestic product champions, struggling against odds in areas such as optical switches, networking equipment, and wireless devices. For order-of-magnitude change, however, structural changes need to be worked out in consultation with operators in the organisation of services through shared infrastructure.

For the longer term, a fundamental reconsideration for allocating resources is needed through coherent, orchestrated policy planning and support. What the government can do as a primary responsibility, besides ensuring law and order and security, is to develop our inadequate and unreliable infrastructure, including facilities and services that enable efficient production clusters, their integrated functioning, and skilling. For instance, Apple’s recent decision against moving iPhone production from China to India was reportedly because similar large facilities (factories of 250,000) are not feasible here, and second, our logistics are inadequate. Such considerations should be factored into our planning, although Apple may well have to revisit the very sustainability of the concept of outsize facilities that require the sort of repressive conditions prevailing in China. However, we need not aim for building unsustainable mega-factories. Instead, a more practical approach may be to plan for building agglomerations of smaller, sustainable units, that can aggregate their activity and output effectively and efficiently. Such developments could form the basis of numerous viable clusters, and where possible, capitalise on existing incipient clusters of activities. Such infrastructure needs to be extended to the countryside for agriculture and allied activities as well, so that productivity increases with a change from rain-fed, extensive cultivation to intensive practices, with more controlled conditions.

The automotive industry, the largest employer in manufacturing, provides an example for other sectors. It was a success story like telecom until recently, but is now floundering, partly because of inappropriate policies, despite its systematic efforts at incorporating collaborative planning and working with the government. It has achieved the remarkable transformation of moving from BS-IV to BS-VI emission regulations in just three years, upgrading by two levels with an investment of Rs 70,000 crore, whereas European companies have taken five to six years to upgrade by one level. This has meant that there was no time for local sourcing, and therefore heavy reliance on global suppliers, including China. While the collaborative planning model adopted by the industry provides a model for other sectors, the question here is, what now. In a sense, it was not just the radical change in market demand with the advent of ridesharing and e-vehicles, but also the government’s approach to policies and taxation that aggravated its difficulties.

Going forward, policies that are more congruent in terms of societal goals, including employment that support the development of large manufacturing opportunities, need to be thought through from a perspective of aligning and integrating objectives (in this case, transportation). Areas such as automotive and other industries for the manufacture of road and rail transport vehicles need to be considered from the perspective of reconfiguring the purpose, flow, and value-added, to achieve both low-cost, accessible mass transport, and vehicles for private use that complement transportation objectives as also employment and welfare.

Systematic and convergent planning and implementation across sectors could help achieve a better revival.

Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com

1: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-reopen-analysi/the-u-s-weighs-the-grim-math-of-death-vs-the-economy-idUSKBN21H1B4

2: https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/the-coronavirus-lockdown-and-indias-urban-vulnerables/1915316/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/after-the-lockdown

After Securing Net Neutrality In India, TRAI Goes To Bat For Data Privacy

Admin — 2018-07-29T05:28:20Z

This will be a stop-gap measure before the creation of a privacy bill.

The article by Gopal Sathe was published in Huffington Post on July 16, 2018. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Last week, the Department of Telecom gave the nod to net neutrality regulations, ensuring that there would be no discrimination of data at a time when the US is moving in the opposite direction. The net neutrality norms were based on the recommendations from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) - which the BBC in November described as the world's strongest - but the regulator isn't celebrating right now - it's moved on to another equally important topic - privacy and data protection.

On Monday, TRAI announced its recommendations on privacy, security, and ownership of data in the telecom sector, and the 77 page document serves as the first major public guidelines on privacy and data protection in India.

TRAI has outlined a consent based framework, where users have to clearly choose what data is being used, which bears some similarities to Europes GDPR. TRAI noted that while the right to privacy should not be treated solely as a property right, it must be noted that the controllers of personal data are mere custodians without any primary right over the same. In other words, your data should belong to you, and not to Google, or Facebook, or any other company which holds your data.

"The Right to Choice, Notice, Consent, Data Portability, and Right to be Forgotten should be conferred upon the telecommunication consumers," TRAI recommended

In section 2.3, it also notes that meta-data is personal information and as such should be given the same protections. This is an important point given that even metadata can be used to track and identify people accurately. It also noted that there needs to be a right to be forgotten, and once you stop using a service it should not store your data beyond what's mandated by the law, according to section 2.46. Section 2.49 also allows users the right to withdraw consent, which means that even if people have given consent to gathering your data, users will be able to stop tracking on demand.

At the same time, TRAI also noted the stop-gap nature of its recommendations, and said, "till such time a general data protection law is notified by the government, the existing Rules/ License conditions applicable to the Telecom Service Providers for protection of users should be made applicable to all the entities in the digital eco-system."

Good, with some caveats

Early reactions to the recommendations are largely positive. On Twitter, lawyer Apar Gupta, who is one of the founding members of the Internet Freedom Foundation shared some quick thoughts about the recommendations. Describing this as a substantive document he called it "partly positive since it calls for interim safeguards", but added that the "form of some seems problematic."

On the plus side, he noted that many of the protections in the recommendations "focus on a user rights model, which includes notice, choice, consent, portability, deletion and erasure." He also praised the recommendations for not taking a view on data localisation, and that the protections need to apply to private as well as state entities.

However, he criticized the fact that TRAI is planning to impose license conditions on all OTT providers - that is to say, all third party services. He also noted that the recommendations did not directly address state surveillance. He also pointed out that an Electronic Consent Framework as described in the recommendations may "centralise consent requests thereby may end up generating more personal data and unifying them into a single portal managed by the govt/regulators."

"We are happy with the TRAI's recommendations on Privacy, Security and Ownership of Data as the regulator is calling for all digital entities to be brought under data protection framework. This would include all devices, operating systems, browsers, and applications and would be welcome stop-gap measure till rules and regulations of the telecom services providers are applicable to them," said Rajan Matthews, DG Cellular Operators Association of India.

"This will ensure, in prevailing circumstances, that the privacy of users is protected and maintained. National security and privacy issues are of paramount importance. Accordingly, the regulator by making this recommendation, is ensuring that no exception is made for any service provider, while subjecting them to the rules to meet the national security and privacy norms. However, this is our preliminary view and we will need to review the other recommendations to determine their implications."

Speaking in a television interview, Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said he's still processing the document, but "on the face of it it seems good."

"There are still certain concerns I have which haven't been addressed. The telecom licenses themselves, which are issued by the Government of India, require a whole lot of data to be collected, metadata to be collected, by telecom companies. So I'm not sure how that requirement by the Government of India squares off with what is now being recommended by TRAI."

"Let me also point out that one of the things that TRAI says, and it might be exceeding its brief a little bit, is that it says this should not only cover telecom operators, but also device manufacturers, operating systems, application creators, and other kinds of software. What TRAI seems to want to do is actually quite a bit more than what I think the DoT has, or really ought to be doing. I really don't understand whether this will find any favour in the interim before the government decides to take up the Justice Srikrishna Committee report."

Justice Srikrishna committee report still due

Although TRAI's recommendations are an important document, and will serve as stopgap privacy rules, India is also on the verge of a data protection and privacy bill, which will be based on the recommendations of the Justice BN Srikrishna committee on the subject. The committee was formed in August and was expected to deliver its report in June, but sources say that disagreements over the Aadhaar have caused some delays.

The committee is expected to send its recommendations to the government soon, at which point things could change, but for now, TRAI's recommendations are an important development as India moves to secure the privacy of its people.

Ahead of that though, you can read the full TRAI recommendations here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/huffington-post-gopal-sathe-july-16-2018-after-securing-net-neutrality-in-india-trai-goes-to-bat-for-data-privacy

Centre for Internet and Society

April 2012 Bulletin

Internet Governance

Google Policy Fellowship

Announcement

Op-ed in the Hindu

Columns in the Indian Express

Event Reports

Events Organised

Events Participated

Video

Media Coverage

Digital Natives

Public Lecture

Book Review...a few excerpts

Accessibility

Event Report

New Fellow at CIS

Access to Knowledge

New Event

News & Media Coverage

Openness

Event Reports and Video

Events Organised

Telecom

Column in Business Standard

About CIS

Follow us elsewhere

April 2011 Bulletin

Researchers@Work

Workshops organised in Bangalore

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Columns on Digital Natives

Digital Natives Newsletter

New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Accessibility

Workshop organised in Hyderabad

Openness

Submission

New Blog Entry

Internet Governance

Featured

New Blog Entries

Study Tour

Featured Research

Interview

Workshops organized in Ahmedabad and Bangalore

New Blog Entries

Telecom

Column

News & Media Coverage

Follow us elsewhere

April 2010 Bulletin

News Updates

Research

Advocacy

Accessibility

Intellectual Property

Openness

Internet Governance

Telecom

Other Advocacy

APC starts research into spectrum regulation in Brazil, India, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa

Spectrum policy in a nutshell

Indians look beyond the present

An Overview of Telecommunications Policy and Regulation Framework in India

An Introduction to Spectrum Sharing

The Current Scenario – Wi-Fi, GSM and CDMA: A Primer from the Perspective of Spectrum Coordination

Frequency Reuse

Neighbouring towers sharing spectrum

The Current Trade-off between Trunking and 'Economic' Efficiency: The Principal Argument for (Inter-operator) Shared Spectrum

CDMA and Spectrum Sharing

LTE

The Regulatory Perspective

The Big Question: Infrastructure Sharing

Coarse-grained Spectrum Sharing

Caveats

An Interview with Stephen Song

An Interview with PK Garg

An Infrastructure Road Map