Centre for Internet and Society

Digital India - Now to Work

Shyam Ponappa — 2015-11-10T03:18:15Z

There's a buzz about Digital India again with an Indian PM finally reaching Silicon Valley. So are we close to broadband taking off, or is this just more hype?

The article was published in the Business Standard on October 1, 2015 and mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot on October 2, 2015.

The announcements are certainly promising. For instance, that Indian Railways will provide Wi-Fi services at 500 railway stations over the next few years. Google's support tendered by CEO Sundar Pichai offers new hope that this will happen. Other promising announcements include Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's announcement of cloud-based services from India, and connectivity at the village level through TV White Space (unused broadcast spectrum), and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacob's $150-million fund for start-ups in India.

There have been announcements like these before. For instance, the Railways announced Wi-Fi projects for years, with modest achievements. For details, see "A history of Wi-Fi and Indian Railways from 2006 to Infinity (maybe)". [See http://www.medianama.com/2015/02/223-a-history-of-wi-fi-and-indian-railways-from-2006-to-infinity-maybe/, Riddhi Mukherjee, February 27, 2015].

What's troubling is that in terms of ground realities, except for TV White Space for broadband, there's little evidence of a systematic approach to problems besetting communications, and changes in policies to solve them. Everyone seems carried away, and this is as true of most of the media and the commentariat as it is of the politicians. But informed, systematic efforts at solutions are absolutely essential to achieve these aspirations.

Take the ingenuous comparisons of Silicon Valley with Bengaluru, with the latter being described as "nearly there". Such election rhetoric from former US Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry is one thing, but our savvy media folk should know better. People who visit Silicon Valley from India, or those who are based there and occasionally visit India, can't be blind to the stark differences. One is a place where the basics related to living and functioning effectively actually work well; the other isn't. One has potholed streets with garbage, decrepit or nonexistent sanitation, and chronic power cuts; the other doesn't. It's as simple as that.

This leads to another observation that's tossed off too easily, about less need for government. Blithe statements that government needs to be reduced, or to get out of the way and let the private sector function, are often made with apparently little understanding of what governments do before getting out of the way. Those essential services in Silicon Valley and elsewhere that function seamlessly and are taken for granted? That's what governments can do. In other words, that is government's responsibility: to provide, apart from security and law and order, the infrastructure services and organisation of communities, markets and financial systems that enable citizens to function effectively and live well. Yes, markets are indeed planned and structured in order to function well.

The data on broadband at the end of 2014 in the Broadband Report 2015 by the ITU and Unesco suggest that India is not doing too well compared with its developing neighbours in Asia (see chart at http://www.broadbandcommission.org/ documents/reports/bb-annualreport2015.pdf). Our leadership and government need to confront this reality, and apply themselves to reforms to improve conditions. Broadband subscriptions as a percentage of our population trail most countries, and the percentage of individuals using the Internet is at the bottom of the pack, with Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.

To make Digital India a reality, here's what the government needs to do:

Trials using TV White Space (TVWS, or unused broadcast spectrum) for broadband are finally under way, after years of struggle to get them going. If they work out, policies must be framed quickly for this spectrum to be bundled with fibre backbones such as BharatNet (the erstwhile National Optic Fibre network), and licensed service providers given access at reasonable cost.
Policies need to be formulated with government and operators working together, instead of as adversaries. This will increase the probability of success, as the private sector can be convinced of and contribute to practicable methods that they accept.
Policies for sharing spectrum can be extended to other under-used spectrum held by the government and Defence (secondary sharing, as in the USA), and to networks as well. This will facilitate broad, contiguous spectrum bands that are essential to support rising data usage that is affordable. Policies must also enable authorised operators to access all networks, fostering competition while increasing revenue potential and reducing costs. The data on broadband at the end of 2014 in the Broadband Report 2015 by the ITU and Unesco suggest that India is not doing too well compared with its developing neighbours in Asia. Our leadership and government need to confront this reality, and apply themselves to reforms to improve conditions.
The TVWS devices are manufactured by relatively small companies abroad with the exception of Huawei, which acquired Neul, one of the pioneers in the UK. Indian innovators can produce such devices locally, but only if they have a supportive ecosystem. That means sufficient continuing orders to create revenues for sustainable profits and cash flows. In a market like India, such orders need government support until new policies are in place and the demand is established. Once that happens, private enterprises can compete.

For instance, a chip designer start-up in Bangalore with designs for TV and broadband cards using TV White Space has had to scramble to manufacture complete products to bring their prototypes to market. Without sustained buying, they'll languish like other device manufacturers overseas, with episodic sales to narrow markets. That's because developing economies are likely to be bigger markets for these devices than developed economies, but only after policies allow deployment; secondly, there's insufficient support in developed markets. The irony will be if Indian innovators can get only offshore prospects like Huawei as partners or investors.
Unremitting government effort in the systematic development of basic infrastructure services (at the primary level, besides communications, there's power, transportation, water and sanitation, basic health and education; at the secondary level: communities, markets and financial systems) will round out the potential for India as a producer economy as well as a large and growing market.

This is the work that now needs to get done: accept the reality of our infrastructure deficiencies, change our spectrum and network sharing policies, plan step-by-step, and execute for results.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-october-1-2015-shyam-ponappa-digital-india-now-to-work

A lifetime of five years on the internet

praskrishna — 2013-05-20T09:04:28Z

Centre for Internet and Society observes its fifth anniversary on Sunday.

The article by Subir Ghosh was published in DNA on May 19, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted in this.

Five years is a long time in the internet space. The past five years, certainly, has been. And so has it been for the Centre for Internet and Society that completes five years here.

When a group of citizens got together to come under a platform called CIS five years ago, they had wanted to work on policy issues about the internet that had a bearing on society. They, in fact, still do; except that the new media space itself has undergone a metamorphosis. Five years ago social media was just starting off, few people had smart phones, and online speech was not a burning issue.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of city-based CIS, affirms this, and goes on to assert: “Five years ago, privacy was not a mainstream concern. Today, many different actors and stakeholders are interested in the configuration of the draft Privacy Bill. We first warned the public about the draconian measures in the IT Act during the 2008 amendment. Four years later, many more people are familiar with problematic sections and are adopting various strategies to amend the Act and it’s associated rules.”

Likewise, five years ago, people dismissed “shared spectrum” as a pipe dream; today “shared spectrum” is mentioned in the National Telecom Policy. CIS usually thinks ahead, and works on a range of issues.

“For internet adoption in India to grow dramatically from the dismal statistics today, we need to ensure continued access to cheap devices and affordable and ubiquitous broadband,” says Abraham.

“With Ericsson suing Micromax for Rs100 crore, the mobile wars have come to India. If we have to protect innovation in sub-100 dollar devices, we need to configure our patent and copyright policy carefully.”

But since CIS works primarily on policy issues, shouldn’t it have been based in Delhi rather than in Bangalore? “We do have a small office in Delhi. But we are headquartered in Bangalore because we need to keep learning from technologists and the technical community,” explains Abraham.

When an organisation calling itself the Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org) observes its fifth anniversary, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that many of the activities related to the anniversary celebrations (May 20-23) have precious little to do with the internet, and is more about society itself. And yes, an entire evening is devoted to Kannada. There’s a talk by Chandrashekhara Kambara on ‘Kannada in the modern era,’ and another by UB Pavanaja titled ‘From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada’.

“We are looking at the complete eco-system. For instance, during the digitalisation of TV in India, what will happen to the internet? Do TV promoting policies undermine the growth of broadband? On the second day we look at the connection between another older technology - cinema and the Internet.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dna-india-may-19-2013-subir-ghosh-a-lifetime-of-five-years-on-the-internet

Revamp Telecom Sector & Revive The Economy

Shyam Ponappa — 2017-10-11T02:53:51Z

Share infrastructure and spectrum, and adopt revenue-sharing for growth. There’s little doubt our economy is facing a slough of problems, including misdirection and loss of momentum.

The Op-ed was published in the Business Standard on September 7, 2017 and re-posted in Organizing India Blogspot the following day.

Apart from the present government’s doings or omissions, other legacies have also contributed to this, such as the complacency of previous governments, the scams, the obduracy of the then Opposition, resulting in the attrition of parliamentary processes, and so on. This, followed by the persistently divisive approach of the incumbent government has effectively scuppered any possibility of convergent societal efforts. There’s no point attributing blame for the purposes of redeeming the situation. Instead, we must try to pick up the pieces.

Some things need doing, and urgently, but we (and especially our governments) seem to be avoiding them. Basic infrastructure is our most urgent need, apart from unifying leadership and social institutions. Certain systemic bases simply must be built and made available to organise and channel energies into constructive, productive activities and well-being, although it will be time-consuming and far from easy on our continental scale.

In infrastructure, broadband can yield the quickest and highest rewards (e.g., http://organizing-india.blogspot.in/2010/10/broadband-for-education-training.html) by adopting policies that enable responsible access to existing resources, instead of continuing with self-imposed administrative restrictions. Everything else — energy, water and sewerage, and transportation — is more complex, and needs far more capital investment and organisation. What’s more, with good communications support, other infrastructure becomes easier to build and manage. On the face of it, the government seems to be addressing this. For example, an Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) was formed three months ago to recommend solutions for the debt-laden telecom sector. Interim reports did not augur well, though, suggesting there was no need for major policy changes because of signs of recovery. Unfortunately, the IMG’s final recommendations are on the same lines: Deferring spectrum and licence fee payments from 10 years to 16 years, and reducing interest charges by about 2 per cent. However, there is no reduction in licence fees or spectrum charges nor easing of spectrum limits on consolidation; interconnection charges will be decided by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, and spectrum auctions will be after April 2018. But for an overleveraged, hypercompetitive sector, deferring the massive capital requirements for auctions by some months and other proposed measures doesn’t really change the game.

Will this enable the telecom sector to recover? Many operators and observers think not, including yours truly. The reasons below leave one wondering whether the IMG made their recommendations with full knowledge, or were not fully cognizant of the realities.

Why major changes are necessary
There are compelling reasons for radical policy interventions. A report by Strategy& (formerly Booz and Company, now part of PwC) suggests that telecom operators in developing countries have negative margins on data services (see chart).
Source: https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/reports/connecting-the-world-media-report

This is significant for India (a) because we need considerable growth in networks and delivery, (b) that is affordable, (c) yet sustainable, i.e., generates positive cash flows.

The reality is that the already troubled sector’s revenues fell steeply after Reliance Jio’s entry in 2016, and so did government revenues from licence and spectrum charges. Yet, having upended the sector’s finances, Jio paid only Rs 47.81 crore as licence fees and spectrum charges for the six months ending June 2017, or less than 1 per cent of total operator payments, since it had minimal revenues. By contrast, Bharti Airtel paid Rs 2,902.75 crore, Vodafone Rs 2,005.25 crore, and Idea Cellular Rs 1,677.67 crore. The sector is being severely weakened by this strategy as revenues and government collections collapse, resulting in deficient infrastructure.

While high government revenues alone are the wrong criterion for telecom policies, this shows how the sector’s finances were gutted, and the likely reality going forward. A recent report by Standard & Poor’s (S&P) expects revenues to fall up to 10 per cent for the year, with the sector settling down over 12-24 months. But that is merely one surmise; the certainty is of continuing damage to the market’s ability to sustain itself, as well as the reality of reduced operating revenues and government collections.

These disruptive practices are hollowing out industry capacity, whereas the country’s need is for more capacity to be built for broader and better access, given under 300 million data subscribers. Adequate network access needs to be built up in underserved areas, and appropriate content and linkages have to be built for the full range of user needs covering education, health, and entertainment through government and commercial services.
Only the government can develop appropriate policies and regulations, including levying no more than reasonable charges (high government charges have constrained India’s communications development). After the sector stalled in 1997-98, there was a partial remedy by the National Democratic Alliance through NTP-99, substituting a revenue-sharing arrangement for fees owed through auctions. The government’s share was initially too high, but as it was gradually reduced and as competition increased, mobile telephony grew explosively, as did government revenues (see: http://organizing-india.blogspot.in/2017/04/facts-not-beliefs-should-drive-policies.html).

For a similar explosive surge in broadband economic revival, we need policy decisions urgently that:
a) Adopt infrastructure sharing fully to reduce costs. Do this through two or three consortiums to have competition, with government entities anchoring each. For instance, 70 per cent of Sweden is covered by a shared network between Telenor and Hi3G, which is shared outside the major cities. For shared networks, equipment is readily available to support multiple operators; we need the enabling policies.
b) Approach spectrum as a shared public resource. For assigned spectrum, allow licensed operators and manufacturers/developers secondary access (primary holder retains priority), at reasonable revenue-sharing charges, without up-front fees. Start with unused or under-used frequencies such as TV White Space.
c) Allocate spectrum for Wi-Fi conforming to global standards to benefit from ecosystems, e.g., 5 GHz and 60 GHz.
This will enable maximum utilisation of spectrum and networks for the common good, instead of artificially restricting access as is the practice today. We will all benefit greatly from better networks and services, and government revenues will exceed any conceivable auction fees.

Shyam (no-space) Ponappa at gmail dot com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-shyam-ponappa-september-8-2017-revamp-telecom-sector-and-revive-the-economy

Response Submission on TRAI's Consultation Paper on Privacy, Security and Ownership of Data in Telecom Sector

Amber Sinha, Elonnai Hickok and Udbhav Tiwari — 2019-03-13T00:27:30Z

CIS submitted its comments on the consultation paper on privacy, security and ownership of data in telecom sector which was published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on August 9, 2017.

The submission is divided in four parts. The first part introduces the document, the second part gives an overview of CIS and its work, the third part contains general comments on the consultation paper and the fourth part contains specific comments on questions posed in the consultation paper. Click to read the full submission made to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on November 6, 2017.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/response-submission-on-trais-consultation-paper-on-privacy-security-and-ownership-of-data-in-telecom-sector

Breakthroughs Needed For Digital India

Shyam Ponappa — 2016-05-04T02:34:19Z

It's time the government accepts that current policies are not enough to bring about Digital India.

The article originally published in the Business Standard on April 6, 2016 was also mirrored on Organizing India BlogSpot on April 7, 2016.

It helps to remind oneself of the scale of Digital India, its magnitude and sweep: to provide e-governance and other e-services everywhere, including 250,000 gram panchayats serving another 400,000 villages. That includes all the backbone and aggregation networks, and institutional processes to get there. The links indigitalindia.gov.in, such as http://www.bbnl.nic.in/, illustrate what's involved - and because many users are from households, the demand is for even more extensive networks.

The menu of services through Internet access is ambitious, and includes government services, health care, education, market information, financial services and so on. But it's the lack of basic access, of the "pipes" and "plumbing" for connectivity, that's the first, most difficult, yet essential step. Until this aspect is in place, getting results in areas such as efficient delivery of electricity, e-governance - including subsidies, education and skills, health care, manufacturing, and so on - is very much more difficult.

These services make up a robust wishlist, although their commercial underpinnings have yet to be designed and spelt out. As regards delivery, significant policy developments were reported last week. The Telecom Commission approved the operation of virtual network operators, allowing for operators who don't own networks or spectrum. They also recommended lowering spectrum usage charges from five per cent to three per cent of Adjusted Gross Revenues, while the exception of one per cent for Broadband Wireless Access spectrum continues. The bad news was in the Budget for 2016: service tax of 14.5 per cent on spectrum acquisitions, including through auctions.

But these are simply not enough. It's time the government accepts that Digital India is too distant, and they'd better formulate corrective measures. For example, even after 10 years with some success in setting up Common Services Centres (CSCs) in parts of the country, there doesn't seem to be a replicable template with sufficient momentum for ubiquitous connectivity. Worse, urban services remain constrained by too little spectrum that costs too much, with many impediments to augmenting capacity.

Consider factors affecting execution and delivery.

First, there's the telecommunications industry in its current beleaguered state. Its constituents have their backs to the wall for various reasons:

Low revenues and high costs.
Constrained access because of shortages - of networks; or of the means to build them, such as inexpensive rights-of-way, where laying fibre is feasible and viable; and where that isn't, shortage of inexpensive spectrum, and other cost-impediments such as local government charges for towers.
Below-par services for current demand.
Loads of debt, much of it incurred to pay for spectrum.
Banks with little appetite for further lending to this sector, and
Uncertain market sentiment.

For local manufacturers, the competition from global vendors is formidable if not overwhelming, given their advantages of ready access to capital, tax breaks, state sponsorship, established products and markets, and relationships. Access to spectrum will enable development and testing of devices, which is very difficult under present circumstances, but local manufacturing also needs entire ecosystems.

For the government, there's an overriding imperative for revenue collection. The motivation is an unrelenting need for (legitimate) expenditure on infrastructure, governance, and basic welfare in a developing economy. This is compounded by execution on a massive scale that also involves changes in user behaviour, for instance, village institutions like CSCs that have yet to take root. Another level of complexity is because two-thirds of users are from non-urban areas requiring extensive wireless broadband, untested for rural delivery except for satellite television.

With the public and media suspicious of government and industry, resolving these aspects is more difficult because of their skepticism and opposition. There's a disinclination to evaluate policies objectively because of recent scams. It is increasingly obvious that plugging away at legacy plans with their failure rate won't do, and more effective ways must be framed to achieve connectivity. For solutions acceptable to the government, to service providers, and the public, essential criteria are transparency and fairness. Next, the approach must be practicable, yield reasonable government revenues, and have reasonable profit potential. All these elements are required for sustainable initiatives. Every step has to be thought through, with all government departments working together (another big ask) and with industry, from the basic strands: connective links, sustainable equipment at reasonable cost, and revenue streams (whether from user payments or partly from subsidies) for services and content to more than cover those costs.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-april-6-2016-shyam-ponappa-breakthroughs-needed-for-digital-india

Who Minds the Maxwell's Demon (Revisiting Communication Networks through the Lens of the Intermediary)

sharath — 2013-03-05T07:37:37Z

A holistic reflection on information networks and it’s regulatory framework is possible only when the medium-specific boundary that has often separated the Internet and Telecom networks begins to dissolve, to objectively reveal points of contention in the communication network where the dynamics of network security and privacy are at large – namely, within the historic role of the intermediary at data/signal switching and routing nodes.

It is unfair to contextualize the history of the Internet without looking at how analog information networks like cable and wireless telegraph and later, the telephone, almost coincidentally necessitated the invention of automated networks for remote machine control and peer-to- peer communication over the Internet that promised to drastically reduce intermediary overheads. While the whole world was fraught in patent wars over wired private networks, the first nodes of the ‘open’ internet were built in a two-week global meeting of computer scientists who were flown down to simply prepare for ‘a public exhibition’ of the ARPANET in 1971.

While India only received it’s first telephone in New Delhi late into the 20^th century, “Telegraph Laws” to most of the Indian working class always remained an ominously urgent telegram that brought the news of a dear one who had taken seriously ill. And so, on a lateral note, it is apt to bring to light the life of one Mr Almond Brown Strowger, wherein the idea of an automatic telephone exchange was given birth to by the ‘business of death’.

The Automatic Telephone Exchange

Almond Strowger was an undertaker based in Missouri, in a town where there was yet another undertaker, who’s wife incidentally was an operator in the then manual telephone exchange. Strowger came to believe the reason he received fewer phone calls was that his business competitor’s wife ended up preferentially routing all callers seeking Strowger’s funeral services to her undertaker husband instead. Strowger conceived the initial idea in 1888 and patented ‘The Automatic Telephone Exchange’ in 1891. http://goo.gl/oieIJ

Popularly known as the ‘Strowger Switch’, the Step-by Step switch (SXS switch) consisted of two interfaces – One at the customer’s end that used telegraph keys (and later a rotary dial) to send a train of electric current pulses corresponding to the digits 0 -9 all the way to the exchange. The actual Strowger switch at the exchange, used an electromechanical device that could move vertically to select one of 10 contacts, and then rotated to select one of another 10 in each row – a total of 100 choices. Consequently was formed in 1892, the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company at Indiana with about 75 subscribers. Strowger later sold his patents for $10,000 in 1898 to the Automatic Electric Company, a competitor of Bell System’s Western Electric. His patents were eventually acquired by Bell systems for $2.5 million in 1916, showing just how much growth and investor interest the telephone industry had gained by then.

Switching Paradigms

The architecture of global communication was headed towards different ideals and directions. Most media historians contrast these methodologies into ‘circuit switching’ and ‘packet switching’, or a connection-oriented fault intolerant system on one hand and another connection-less fault tolerant protocol respectively, both of which were being developed concurrently. In reality however, a major driving factor were the stakeholders backing the infrastructure of the rapidly growing communication industry, who were looking for growing returns on their investments. And hence these parallel ramifications may also be looked at through the lens of closed proprietary and medium specific networks versus an open, shared, medium in-specific paradigm of information theory.

Circuit switching relied on an assured dedicated connection between 2 nodes, and was especially patronized by the industry that saw telecommunication as the latest fad in urban luxury (a key factor in the distinction of suburban areas as the affluent moved into urban areas that were ‘connected’ by telephone). Owners and manufacturers of the hardware infrastructure became the most significant stakeholders. The revenue model was based on the amount of time the network was used and hence was popular in analog voice telephone networks. The entire bandwidth of the channel was made available for the duration of the session along with a fixed delay between communicating nodes. Therefore, even if there was no information being transmitted during a session, the channel would not be made available to anyone else waiting to use it unless released by the previous party. Early telephone exchanges relied on manual labour to facilitate switching until the automated exchange came about.

Packet switching on the other hand, leaned towards the paradigm of shared bandwidth and resources, and more importantly approached communication with complete disregard to the medium of transmission, be it wired or wireless. Furthermore, it also disregarded the content, modality and form of communication with an objectified data-centric approach. Information to be transmitted was divided into structured “packets” or “capsules”. These packets were all ‘thrown’ into the shared network pool consisting of numerous other such packets, each with its own destination, to be carefully buffered, stored and forwarded by intermediary routers in the network. Apart from occasional packet loss, the time taken to send a message is indeterminate and is dependent on the overall traffic load on the network at any given time.

INTERFACE MESSAGE PROCESSOR and the ICCC ‘Hackathon’

Plans forged on into the early 1960s towards the development of an open architecture to enable network communication between computer systems, culminating in the invention of the ‘interface message processor’ that promised to herald the coming of an era of packet switching by enabling the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the first wide area packet switched network – and precursor to the world wide web as we know it today.

While the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) had previously contracted Larry Roberts who in 1965 developed the first packet switched network between two computers , the TX-2 at MIT with a Q-32 in California, a growing need was felt to have a centralized terminal with access to multiple sites that would enable any computer to connect to any site. The first IMP was commissioned to be built by the engineering firm BBN (Bolt, Beranek and Newman, a professor student trio from MIT).

(The very first Interface Message Processor by BBN: Courtesy: http://goo.gl/tvo8n)

By 1971, the four original nodes that connected the ARPANET (viz, UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, University of Utah and University of California at Santa Barbara) had expanded to 15 nodes, but the lack of a common host protocol meant that a full-scale implementation and adoption of the ARPANET was far from complete. The time had come to allow the public to engage with the promising future that the Internet held. What entailed was the organization of first public International Conference on Computer Communication (1972) (http://goo.gl/PFhtL) under the umbrella of the IEEE Computer Society at the Hilton Hotel, Washington D.C. In many ways the event was the original version of a modern day new media art ‘hackathon’ and involved about 50 computer scientists who were flown in from around the globe alongside the likes of Vint Cerf and Bob Metcalfe. The deadline of a public demonstration provided the much-needed impetus to drive the network to functional completion. Exhibits included a variety of networked applications like the famed dialogue between the ‘paranoid patient’ chatbot PARRY and doctor ELIZA, motion control of the LOGO ‘Turtle’ across the network and remote access of digital files that were printed on paper locally. A milestone in distributed packet switching had been achieved and the stage had been set to compete with the archaic paradigm of circuit switched networks, even as delegates from AT&T (incidentally one of the funders of the event) watched on with the hope that the demonstration would run into a fatal glitch.

Who Minds the Maxwell's Demon

It may not be boldly evident from the vast corpus of policy research surrounding the regulation of communication networks (be it the issues of network security, privacy, anonymity, surveillance or billing systems) that key-points in the control system where dynamics play at large, are at the interfacing nodes and data/signal switches at either transceiver nodes as well as intermediary nodes. This is further underlined by the historical fact that the invention of the automatic telephone exchange was fuelled by the necessity to ensure a paradigm of unbiased circuit switching within the context of a networked business.

Just a glimpse at the number of patents that directly or indirectly refer to the Automatic Telephone Exchange patent shall bring to light myriad applications that range from “Linking of Personal Information Management Data”, “Universal Data Aggregation”, “Flexible Billing Architecture”, ”Multiple Data Store Authentication” , “Managing User to User Contact using Inferred Presence Detection” to various paradigms surrounding distributed systems for cache defeat detection, most of which are part of PUSH technology services that manage networked smartphone applications from instant messaging to email access. Other proposed systems for spectrum management and dynamic bandwidth allocation, such as policy alternatives to spectrum auction that entail frequency hopping at the transmitter level shall invariably depend on a centralized automated intermediary who shall in theory have transparent access to data flow. The role of routing intermediaries with specialized access, poses many interesting questions with regards to policy issues that surround network privacy and security.

This brings us back to the seemingly comical reference that this article makes to a mysterious entity named the ‘Maxwell’s Demon’. A thought experiment proposed by James Clerk Maxwell, involved a chamber of gas molecules at equilibrium that was divided into two halves along with a ‘door’ controlled by the “Maxwell’s Demon”. The demon had the ability to ‘open’ the door to allow faster than average molecules to enter one side of the chamber while slower molecules ended up on the other side of the chamber, causing the former side to heat up while the other side gradually cooled down, thereby establishing a temperature difference without doing any work, and thus violating the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics. The parallel drawn in this article between networked switching intermediaries and the Maxwell’s demon does not go beyond this simple functional similarity.

However for the ambitious reader, it maybe interesting to note that ever since the invention of digital computers, scientists have actively pursued the paradox of Maxwell’s demon to revisit physical fundamentals governing information theory and information processing, which has involved analyzing the thermodynamic costs of elementary information manipulation in digital circuits – A study that probably constantly engages Google as they pump water through steel tubes to cool their million servers.

We shall save all this for another day, but on yet another related note, everytime say an email sent to an invalid address bounces back to your inbox as a “Mailer Daemon”, let it be known that the “Daemon” in Operating System terminology that refers to an invisible background process that the user has no control over, infact directly owes it’s etymology to the paradox of ‘Maxwell’s Demon’.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/who-minds-the-maxwells-demon

February 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-03-11T05:35:46Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) wishes you a great year ahead and welcomes you to the second issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we bring you an overview of our research programs, updates of events organised by us, events we participated in, news and media coverage, and videos of some of our recent events.

Memorial

Rahul Cherian, an expert and policy activist in disability law, intellectual property and technology law passed away due to an illness while on a visit to Goa on February 7, 2013. Rahul was the founder of the Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability and Policy, and a fellow at CIS. He was also a partner at IndoJuris Law Offices in Chennai and was one of the experts who drafted the Treaty for the Visually Impaired currently being negotiated at the World Intellectual Property Organization. The Hindu (February 8, 2013), First Post (February 8, 2013), Legally India (February 7, 2013), and Bar & Bench (February 8, 2013) covered this story. Lawrence Liang wrote an obituary page, A Lightness of Spirit (The Hindu, February 9, 2013) and Nishant Shah wrote a column One For All (Indian Express, February 17, 2013).

CIS organised a memorial function for Rahul Cherian at the TERI, Southern Regional Centre in Bangalore on February 28, 2013.

Jobs
CIS invites applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project), Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge and Openness), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org.

Accessibility

CIS is doing two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. One of this is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and another is for developing a screen reader and text-to- speech synthesizer for Indian languages. CIS is also working with the World Blind Union and many other organisations to develop a Treaty for the Visually Impaired helped by the WIPO:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities

Anandhi Viswanathan from CIS and Manojna Yeluri from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are working in this project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapters on Bihar and West Bengal:

The Bihar Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, February 14, 2013): The state of Bihar is in the process of formulating a comprehensive state policy on disability. The Bihar State Policy on Disability is an extension of the National Policy for Persons with Disabilities and is currently in a draft form awaiting government approval and notification.
The West Bengal Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, February 28, 2013): The state of West Bengal has issued the West Bengal Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Rules, 1999 to implement the provisions under the central Persons with Disabilities (Protection of Rights, Equal Opportunities and Full Participation) Act, 1995.

Media Coverage

Indian Users’ Perspective On WIPO Negotiations On Treaty For Visually Impaired (by Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch, February 16, 2013). Nirmita Narasimhan is quoted.

Access to Knowledge

The Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop the growth of Indic language communities and projects by community collaborations and partnerships. This is being carried out by the Access to Knowledge team based in Delhi. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. The project researches upon the noteworthy opportunities of the new types of low cost mobile devices, content and services as available in the market.

Wikipedia

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of four members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval, and one new team member Dr. U.B. Pavanaja who works from Bangalore office.

New Team Member

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja joined the A2K team as Programme Officer, India Language Initiatives on February 19, 2013. Dr. Pavanaja holds a Master’s degree from Mysore University and Ph.D. from Mumbai University. He was a scientist at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, for about 15 years. He is one of the earliest editors of Kannada Wikipedia. He has to his credit many firsts, viz., first Kannada website, first Kannada online magazine, first Indian language (Kannada) website to receive Golden Web Award, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for Palm OS, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for WinCE device (HP Jornado 720), first Indian language version (Kannada) of universally popular Logo (programming language for children) software, etc. His Kannada logo won the Manthan Award for the year 2006. He was a member of the technical advisory committee setup by the Govt. of Karnataka for Standardization of Kannada on Computers (2000). He is also a member of the Kannada Software Committee of Govt. of Karnataka (2008-current).

Events Organised

Knowledge Sharing through GLAM at Bangalore (Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad, Kumara Krupa Road, Bangalore, February 25, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Nitika Tandon participated in this event.
Wikimedia Bangalore Meetup @ Indian Institute of Management (Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (organized in partnership with Wikispeed and NASSCOM). Vishnu Vardhan spoke on the Access to Knowledge project. Noopur Raval participated in the event.

Blog Entries

Creative Commons comes to India (by Subhashish Panigrahi, February 28, 2013).
Fifty-fourth Bangalore Wikimedia Meet-up at IIM, Bangalore (by Noopur Raval, February 28, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia Community Brings Wikipedia Education Program to IIMC, Dhenkanal (by Subhashish Panigrahi, February 28, 2013).
FOSS, Wikimedia and Mozilla Under One Roof at GNUnify 2013, Pune (by Subhashish Panigrahi, February 28, 2013).

Event Reports
CIS organised one Wiki workshop in the month of February 2013. We also bring you the report from an event organised in the month of January:

Celebrating Odia Wikipedia's Ninth Anniversary (organized by the Odia Wiki Community with support from CIS and Academy for Media Learning, January 29, 2013, Bhubaneswar). Few glimpses of the event are available as audio podcasts.
Digital Literacy Workshop at Department of Arts, Delhi University (by Nitika Tandon, February 5, 2013).

Media Coverage

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ନ‌ବମ ଜନ୍ମତିଥି ଅବସରରେ କର୍ମଶାଳା: ଇମିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ପ୍ର‌ୟୋଗ (Odishan.com, February 4, 2013).
ସମ୍ବାଦ: ଲିପି ବ୍ୟାକରଣ ଓ ମାନକ ଭାଷାର ପ୍ରୟୋଗ ଜରୁରୀ. (Sambad, February, 2013).
Odisha: Workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia language: Application of Odia language in e-media (e India Bureau, March 2, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia’s 9th anniversary (fullOrissa News, February 13, 2013).
Odisha: Workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia language: Application of Odia language in e-media (India Education Diary.com, March 2, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.
Odia language workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia Wikipedia: Application of Odia language in e-media (Odishaviews.com, February 5, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

Ongoing Events

Wikipedia Workshop @ BITS Goa (BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, March 7, 2013, 5.30 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.).
A Wikipedia Editing Workshop in Goa (Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa, March 8, 2013, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.).

Announcement

Sanskrit Wikiquote — Now Available: The Access to Knowledge team at CIS is happy to announce the availability of Sanskrit Wikiquote. Shiju Alex, an ex-team member played an active role in bringing this out. For more info see http://bit.ly/Y9OY9R.

Pervasive Technologies

Event Participated In

International Conference on Contours of Media Governance: Teaching, Disciplinarity, Methodology (organised by Jamia Millia Islamia University with support from Ford Foundation and ICSSR, Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, February 25 – 27, 2013). Sunil Abraham presented preliminary findings from the Pervasive Technologies project.

Other Openness Updates

Announcements from Other Organizations

Iryna Kuchma wins the second EPT award: The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development announced the winner of its 2nd Annual Award in recognition of the effort made by individuals working in the developing and emerging countries in the furtherance of Open Access (OA) to scholarly publications. Dr. Francis Jayakanth won the inaugural award last year.

HasGeek

HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works from the CIS office in Bengaluru.

Event Report & Video

Report of Aaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight (by Zainab Bawa, February 6, 2013). On January 19 and 20, 2013, HasGeek organized a hacknight to commemorate the life and work of Aaron Swartz. Zainab Bawa shares the developments.

Internet Governance

CIS has an agreement with Privacy International, London to facilitate the implementation of activities related to surveillance and freedom of speech and expression. We are also doing a project on examining the indicators of female economic empowerment in the IT industry in India.

Gender

Women in India’s IT Industry (by Jadine Lannon, February 27, 2013)
Women in the IT Industry: Request for Data (by Jadine Lannon, February 28, 2013).

Free Speech & Expression

Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked URLs by Department of Telecommunications (IIPM Edition) (by Snehashish Ghosh, February 14, 2013). The analysis was quoted in FirstPost.
Don’t SLAPP free speech (by Sunil Abraham with inputs from Snehashish Ghosh, Tehelka, February 3, 2013, Issue 9, Volume 10).
Freedom of Expression Gagged (by Chinmayi Arun, Hindu Business Line, February 15, 2013).

Media Coverage

Hate speech: ban or ignore? (NDTV, February 5, 2013). Pranesh Prakash, Shivam Vij, and Sanjay Rajoura gave their expert views on the impact of hate speech.
Censorship and sensibility in India (by Samanth Subramanian, February 6, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Online Abuse of Teen Girls in Kashmir Leads to Arrests (by Betwa Sharma, New York Times, February 8, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Indian net service providers too play censorship tricks (by T Ramachandran, The Hindu, February 9, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Anonymous joins protests against Internet shutdown in Kashmir (by Indu Nandakumar, Economic Times, February 12, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Why was the Gwalior court in such a hurry to block IIPM URLs? (by Danish Raza, FirstPost, February 19, 2013). Snehashish Ghosh’s analysis on blocked website is quoted.
Stop Press Carousel (by Arindham Mukherjee, Outlook, February 22, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
"All Indian Enterprises should Be Very Worried": Centre for Internet and Society (by Shubhra Rishi, Computer World, February 25, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Events Participated In

Freedom of expression online: identifying and addressing challenges and developing a shared vision and a working partnership: (organized by Wilton Park, Wiston House, Sussex, UK, February 13 – 15, 2013). Pranesh Prakash participated in the event.
9th International Asian Conference (organized by ITech Law, Bangalore, February 14 -15, 2013). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session on Censorship of Online Content.

Privacy

2012: Privacy Highlights in India (by Elonnai Hickok, February 12, 2013): Elonnai summarizes the top privacy moments of 2012 in India.
Surveillance Camp IV: Disproportionate State Surveillance - A Violation of Privacy (by Elonnai Hickok and Katitza Rodriguez of Electronic Frontier Foundation February 19, 2013).
BigDog is Watching You! The Sci-fi Future of Animal and Insect Drones (by Maria Xynou, February 25, 2013).

Events Organized

Analyzing the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 (March 1, 2013, CIS, Bangalore).
Unique Identity Number (UID), National Population Register (NPR), and Governance (March 2, 2013, TERI Southern Regional Centre, Bangalore).

Event Participated In

The Omnishambles of UID, shrouded in its RTI opacity: CIS sponsored Colonel Mathew Thomas to hold a workshop at the fourth National Right to Information (RTI) organized by the National Campaign for People's Right to Information, held in Hyderabad from February 15 to 18, 2013.

Upcoming Event

DML Conference 2013 (co-organised by CIS and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central, Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2013).

Internet Access – Knowledge Repository

CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation was executing the telecom knowledge repository project which included producing and disseminating modules on various aspects of telecommunications including policy, regulations, infrastructure and market. However, from November 2012 there was a change in the mandate of the project. The new repository will cover the history of the internet, technologies involved, principle and values of internet access, broadband market and universal access. It will also touch upon various polices and regulations which has an impact on internet access and bodies and mechanism which are responsible for formulation policies related to internet access. The blog posts and modules will be published in a new website: www.internet-institute.in.

Upcoming Event

We are hosting an “Institute on Internet and Society” in collaboration with the Ford Foundation India, which is to be held from June 8, 2013 to June 14, 2013. Call for registration and relevant details will be announced soon on our website.

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:

Newspaper Column

The Supreme Court & Spectrum Management (by Shyam Ponappa, Organizing India Blogspot, February 14, 2013, originally published in the Business Standard, February 6, 2013).

Blog Entry

Who Minds the Maxwell's Demon: Revisiting Communication Networks through the Lens of the Intermediary (by Sharath Chandra Ram, February 28, 2013).

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of 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:

Events Participated In

D:coding Digital Natives - Seminar with Nishant Shah (organized by HUMlab, February 26, 2013). Nishant Shah gave a talk on D:coding Digital Natives at Samhällsvetarhuset.

Video Vortex # 9 Re:assemblies of Video (organized by the Institute of Network Cultures, Post Media Lab, Moving Image Lab, Leuphana, et.al, February 28 – March 2, 2013). Nishant Shah delivered a key note at this event.

Digital Humanities

From 2012 to 2015, the Researchers At Work series is focusing on building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. We organised the first Habits of Living workshops in Bangalore last year. The next workshop is being held in Brown University.

Upcoming Event

Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal Effects (organised by CIS and Brown University, March 21 – 23, 2013, Brown University, Rhode Island). Nishant Shah will be speaking at this event.

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. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We have conducted policy research for the 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, NIA Bill, etc.

CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO. CIS staff participates in the Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) meetings regularly held in Geneva, and participate in the discussions and comments on them from a public interest perspective. Our Policy Director, 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 http://cis-india.org

Support Us

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

Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the 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/february-2013-bulletin

Are India's Glory Days Over?

Shyam Ponappa — 2013-03-12T04:59:44Z

Unless major structural changes are effected, India will miss an economic take-off for many years, writes Shyam Ponappa.

The blog post was published in Organizing India on March 8, 2013. Originally published in the Business Standard on March 6, 2013.

Underlying the varied narratives on the Budget is the persistence of structural inflation, especially in food items. India has sunk in an inflation quagmire, moving from a ranking of around 60th until 2008 to about 120th since then, with lower rankings indicating worse relative inflation. Most analysts opine that growth will be slow, and agree that the revenue deficit needs to be reduced much more than in the Budget. The planned reduction of expenditure or increase in revenues needs to be something like five times the budgeted half a per cent of GDP to reduce the risk of the external account imbalance.

Slow growth is inevitable

This year's Budget, according to one commentary from the Heritage Foundation, "leaves India on the same, failing course it's been on of undisciplined spending and unrealistic expectations". The report goes on to mention high expenditure, inadequate revenues and very high consumer inflation, with no reforms.[1]

Another
analyst articulates a different view that in fact actually demands low growth. Focusing on the balance of payments risk because of a current account deficit, he argues that the Budget had to constrain growth, or risk triggering a crisis. This view suggests that we cannot export more until the world recovers and can buy more, and until it does, our unfavourable external balance puts us at risk.[2]

Or is it?

There's no denying the conclusion of the Heritage report, although there may be disagreement about some of the professed remedies, like opening up banking and insurance to foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the gap arising from the trade imbalance, while making India's economy more vulnerable, doesn't preclude interim strategies and limit our options to necessarily constraining growth. The current account deficit calls for convergent management of expectations that result in unrestricted foreign capital inflows, not the scattershot confusion of mixed signals. To what extent this should be at the cost of the growth that is so essential for the stability of our social fabric is debatable.

For instance, is there the possibility, as in tourism-driven economies, that there could be a consistent inflow of capital to tide over the deficit until exports recover, ie, traditional export markets recover? Or that if we shifted to an unambiguous emphasis on FDI over time instead of encouraging short-term, anonymous, even incognito, inflows through Participatory Notes, that the gap could be bridged? Or that if our enterprises could start designing and manufacturing new products for sectors such as broadband and wireless communications, we might develop new markets in more growth-oriented areas in Asia, thereby improving our trade balance?

Infrastructure : the enabler and multiplier

No matter what direction we take, unless our governments - the non-monolithic, disparate powers that operate in the states or at the Centre - start dealing with realities, our glory days are over for years together. For instance, unless radical action is taken to increase food production and distribution, the curse of inflation will stunt growth, and hamstring our ability to improve infrastructure. In all this, the centrality of infrastructure as enabler and multiplier cannot be overemphasised.

Within infrastructure, there's little doubt about the crippling of telecommunications, now reduced to a shambling wreck by misconceived policies to capture revenues for the treasury, whether by governments' greed, or by the clamour of ill-informed and irrational public opinion, or courts misinformed by self-proclaimed guardians of the public interest whose ignorance overwhelms their good intentions by far.

Meanwhile, at the Mobile World Congress at Barcelona

Around the same time, half a world away in Barcelona, there was an annual convention on mobile communications. People from companies around the world congregate for the Mobile World Congress, which ran from February 25 to 28 this year (for the first day's highlights, see: http://www.mobileworldlive.com/mwc-2013-day-1-opening-highlights-feature). This convention drew over 70,000 people, where Samsung and Nokia made their announcements about new smartphones, as did LG, Huawei, Intel and a host of others. It is also where the producers of systems for the delivery of these services, such as Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Nokia Siemens Networks, showed what they were doing to prepare for the vast anticipated increase in mobile broadband.

The Mobile World Congress has relevance to India because our Trai and the DoT representatives were there, studying developments in managing spectrum and communications. If they're allowed to formulate solutions to solve some of our problems, instead of being restricted by ignorant litigants through the courts to incur more self-inflicted harm, their actions could revolutionise India's approach. Of particular interest for India were Ericsson's "Supplemental Downlink", which uses access to a predefined spectrum band to augment existing licensed capacity, and Nokia Siemens Networks' "Authorised Shared Access", which enables access to spectrum assigned to a primary holder, government in this case, to be used commercially without compromising the existing incumbents.[3]

Need for capacity and productivity hikes

Major structural changes are required to create conditions to move India out of its growth doldrums. Take the collapse in the telecommunications sector. The first step is to give network owners the benefit of infrastructure status to lower borrowing costs. Radical changes to spectrum and network management to maximise service delivery while reducing costs, including extending the principle of revenue sharing from licences to spectrum use, can further improve outcomes with the same input. Also, sustained efforts to support the design and manufacture of products - whether through FDI in joint ventures or licensed local manufacturing, or the creation of products from scratch - could reduce the trade burden of ICT imports, which otherwise threaten to exceed our oil imports over time.

Our authorities must now develop ground rules that can lead to a potential revival, while corporations and the government work together to ensure success. Apart from this, sectors that can help with the balance of payments, like tourism, and domestic coal for power, must get focused solutions. Such developments are required in diverse sectors to break out of our tailspin.

[1]. "India Stays on Path to Economic Failure", Derek Scissors, The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org/2013/02/28/india-stays-on-path-to-economic-failure/

[2]. "Budgeting in hard times", T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan,
The Hindu: http://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/budgeting-in-hard-times/article4472061.ece

[3]. (a) Supplemental Downlink and (b) Authorised Shared Access:
a) http://www.qualcomm.com/media/documents/files/benefits-of-hspa-supplemental-downlink.pdf
b) http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/sites/default/files/document/authorised_shared_access_apr_2012_0.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-shyam-ponappa-march-8-2013-are-indias-glory-days-over

Dr. Surendra Pal

praskrishna — 2012-06-27T06:27:16Z

Dr.Surendra Pal is the associate director of the Indian Space Research Organization’s Satellite Centre and Programme Director of ISRO’s Satellite Navigation Program.

Pioneering the creation of India’s satellite navigation and communications systems, Dr. Pal was in charge of the design, development, and the fabrication of spacecraft-related telecommunication systems for all Indian scientific, remote-sensing and communication satellites. Further, he established essential satellite-based navigation schemes in India, such as developing the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS) and GPS Aided and Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/surendra-pal

Satya N Gupta

praskrishna — 2012-06-27T06:49:40Z

Satya N Gupta is a veteran in the field of telecommunications, drawing from his vast experience in telecom regulation as well as industry. Gupta joined the Planning and Coordination Wing of Ministry of Communication in 1981, holding the post of Officer-in-charge of Wireless Monitoring Station, Srinagar and Secretary, Regional Advisory Committee of SACFA for J&K and HP. Among other accomplishments, he was a member of the NGN Regulation review group of ITU and also worked as Pr. Advisor with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India at the level of Additional Secretary and is heading the Converged Network Division dealing with Regulatory, Technical and Economic aspects of Data Networks and Services.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/satya-n-gupta

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

praskrishna — 2012-06-27T06:52:50Z

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is an independent journalist and an educator. His work experience, spanning nearly 35 years, cuts across different media: print, radio, television and documentary cinema. He is a writer, speaker, anchor, interviewer, teacher and a commentator. His main areas of interest are the working of India’s political economy and the media, on which he has authored/co-authored books and directed/produced documentary films. Some of the media organizations that he has worked with are Business India, BusinessWorld, The Telegraph, India Today, The Pioneer, and Television Eighteen.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/paranjoy-guha-thakurta

Payal Malik

praskrishna — 2012-10-12T05:50:30Z

Payal Malik is currently, Advisor to the Competition Commission of India. She has years of research experience in issues of competition and regulation in network industries like power, telecommunication and water. Her research collaborations have involved TRAI, Competition Commission of India, OECD, World Bank, and many others.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/payal-malik

Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra

praskrishna — 2012-08-05T14:41:14Z

Dr.Rakesh Mehrotra has more than 30 years of experience in Telecom Operations, DTH Broadcasting, GMPCS and Satellite, Software Application, Global IT Solutions, and Mobile Communication Networks. He was the Ex-President, Tata Teleservices Ltd, Ex-VP ASC Enterprises Ltd (Zee TV), Ex-GM & COO, Crompton Greaves.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/rakesh-mehrotra

Dr. Nadeem Akhtar

praskrishna — 2012-06-27T06:59:40Z

Dr. Nadeem Akhtar is currently working as Principal Research Engineer at the Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT). He leads the network layer research team at CEWiT and also represents CEWiT at 3GPP Radio Access Networks Working Group meetings. His research interests lie in the field of mobile and broadband wireless access technologies. Dr. Akhtar is a member of IEEE Standards Association and ITU-APT Foundation of India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/nadeem-akhtar

Frequently Asked Questions (Module 7.2.2)

Tina Mani — 2012-08-21T05:27:35Z

In this unit, Tina Mani gives answers to some frequently asked questions relating to Internet Protocol Television (IP TV), Mobile TV, role of Set Top Box (STB) in an IP TV network, features provided with IP TV services, Time Shift Television, Digital Video Recording, the difference between an MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, etc.

What is the difference between IPTV and Mobile TV?
Mobile TV is the availability of regular TV channels to view on your mobile. The network conditions of a wireless network are unpredictable, and hence the technology is built to adapt to varying conditions. Mobile TV and internet TV (TV viewing on the PC using an internet connection) are also sometimes referred to as Over The Top TV. IPTV makes assumptions about the reliability of the transport mechanism and works well only if the transport network provides sufficient bandwidth and like fixed line broadband, or cable as a medium of transmission.

What is the bandwidth required for acceptable quality of TV viewing?
With MPEG-2 compression, an SDTV signal requires about 3 Mbps, and a HDTV signal requires about 16Mbps. However, with MPEG-4 compression, an SDTV signal requires 1.5 Mbps and an HDTV signal requires about 8 Mbps.

What is the role of a set top box (STB) in an IPTV network?
An IP set-top box sits in the house and acts as an interface between the television set and a broadband network. It tunes to the right channel by listening to the multicast address for the channel, and decodes the signals so they can be played by a TV. It keeps a copy of the program guide or electronic program guide (EPG). It handles content protection using digital rights management (DRM). Set-top boxes also come with a browser interface for Web browsing and connectivity to external services provided by the service provider or partners. It provides home networking to connect to other devices like PCs or tablets in the house, and allows the playback and rendering of content stored on the PC (photos, music, and personal videos).

What features are usually provided with IPTV services?
Services like Video on Demand, Digital Video Recording (DVR), Time Shift television, games, interactive television like voting, and purchases from the TV can be provided with IPTV. The key difference between this and regular TV is the interactivity, which is possible because there is an uplink path from the user to the TV headend, which is different from satellite services with a one way path only from the headend to the user.

What is Time Shift Television?
Live TV programs are made available for viewing later by recording a day’s or weeks’ worth of programs either remotely or on a hard disk available on the set top box. These programs can be watched any time rather than only at the scheduled program time. This also allows ads to be skipped while viewing.

What is Digital Video Recording?
Live TV programs are made available for viewing later by recording a day’s or weeks’ worth of programs either remotely or on a hard disk available on the set top box. These programs can be watched any time rather than only at the scheduled program time. This also allows ads to be skipped while viewing.

How is Video on Demand different from Pay per View Services available with Cable and DTH services?
To offer Pay per View Services, a few fixed movies are made available for a period of time and ordered using an out of band message like an SMS. “Out of band” means, that a different medium from the one being used for television is used for communication with the service provider. Some service providers offer set top boxes with hard disk capacity built in, and transfer a collection of movies to the set top box, which can be viewed on purchase. In this case the choice of movies is limited by the capacity of the hard disk. True Video on Demand involves a big collection of movies that sit on the remote server, and that can be accessed from the customer premises whenever needed.

What is the difference between MPEG-2 and MPEG-4?
MPEG-2 was the original standard compression technique used for digital TV. MPEG-4 (also known as AVC) was introduced for low or variable bit rate mediums like mobile or internet, and various devices like mobile, PC and TV.[1] Demand for High Definition (HD) videos and larger screens made MPEG-4 attractive for the TV medium as well. MPEG-4 provides much higher compression ratios than MPEG-2, and better error protection for unreliable mediums of transport.[2]

Is IPTV service possible over cable?
Yes, IPTV over cable is achieved using the DOCSIS 3.0 specs for Cable, this is described in the module on Cable TV.

[1].http://bit.ly/RcJs47
[2].http://bit.ly/RcJxEN

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/module-7-2-2-faqs