Centre for Internet and Society

“OTTs Eating Into Our Revenue”: Telcos in India

geetha — 2014-09-10T05:36:37Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those Dropped Calls

Shyam Ponappa — 2015-09-04T14:59:22Z

And what could be done to fix them...Why do we have so many dropped calls on our mobile phones? Operators say it's because of the closure and shortage of cell towers, and too little spectrum.

The Op-ed was first published in the Business Standard on August 5 and mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot on August 6, 2015.

Public opinion is conflicted, wanting better services at low prices, fearful of the hazard of more towers, while also wanting operators to pay dearly for spectrum through auctions. The government asserts there's enough spectrum and operators need only to invest and deliver. Can these be resolved to get better services?

There are several elements in this situation relating to technology, to the regulatory aspects of administration (policies and regulations), or to management aspects (structure, organisation and processes). Understanding these and managing them will be crucial in devising solutions.

First, an overview from a lay perspective. An operator runs a number of "cell towers" connected together, as well as to other operators' towers (mobile networks) and fixed networks. A cell tower in its simple form - for one operator, covering one cell/area - comprises a base transceiver station (radio), antenna (mast), and other equipment. Radios need spectrum for wireless communication between towers, and subscribers linked to towers.

Apart from spectrum and licensing costs, the number of towers in an area drives the capital and operating costs, materials and energy used, and the environmental impact. As each tower covers a number of subscribers and spectrum is used for wireless connections, more subscribers need more spectrum. So, a given set of towers provides greater traffic-carrying capacity if there is more spectrum. Conversely, less spectrum requires more towers and equipment, which means higher costs and environmental impact. In other words, for a given frequency range (spectrum band) and set of towers and subscribers, a small set of broader bands can carry more traffic than can a large set of narrower bands.[1]

Calls get dropped or blocked if there is too little spectrum for the number of subscribers, because the calls exceed the spectrum's carrying capacity. Users get good reception if they are near towers, but if other towers are too close, interference from signals from those towers can reduce the capacity of available spectrum, and reception may also be noisy. A weak connection with a distant tower results in poor reception. Distance cuts both ways: a short distance from tower-to-user yields a good connection (strong signal), but other towers must be far enough to avoid interference (i.e., have weak signals for the user). For 900 MHz with a mast height of 10 metres, this tradeoff results in distances between towers of under 100 metres in Delhi because of the scarcity of spectrum, compared with 200 metres in Istanbul, 300 metres in Munich, or 350 metres in Berlin.[2]

An additional benefit of more spectrum is that peak-hour capacity increases, so that more traffic can be carried without calls being dropped or blocked over the same network configuration. Our problem is that we have many operators with narrow, non-contiguous slivers of spectrum. This further reduces the efficiency of the available spectrum.

A reduction of towers because of closure on account of public pressure or for environmental reasons creates genuine problems, but simply adding towers is only a partial solution, as it doesn't remedy the shortage of spectrum. One reason is interference resulting in the reduced capacity of available spectrum - because cells in our urban centres are less than 100 metres apart, much less than in other countries, because sufficient commercial spectrum hasn't been made available. Therefore, more towers alone will cause spectrum to be used less efficiently, but won't reduce dropped calls arising from insufficient, fragmented spectrum. Also, adding towers is expensive, and is detrimental to the environment.

Operators deal with scarce spectrum by deploying more base stations per unit area, and also by using advanced technologies such as adaptive multi-rate codecs and synthesised frequency-hopping. In 2008, Indian operators were among the few worldwide to adopt such techniques, while having the smallest outdoor sites and heaviest traffic densities per MHz.[3] This results in higher costs relative to revenues.

Contrast with China

Comparing the approaches taken by China and India, there's little doubt of the need for a change in our approach. China provided operators with low-priced spectrum to scale up and drive economic growth, among other forms of support. Despite foreign holdings, it hasn't imposed substantial fees. India brought in more operators than other markets, didn't provide as much commercial spectrum, fragmented what it had, and priced it out of sight. Consequently, substantial spectrum is idle with the government, while large operators with very little spectrum and the legacy of underdeveloped fixed networks have over 100 million customers each, with high voice and growing data usage. This situation is likely to worsen as more spectrum holdings come up for renewal.

Efficient data transmission requires even broader bands. The charts below show how capacity increases per MHz with broader bands, and the bandwidth in terms of megabits per second (Mbps) needed for services.

Capacity Increases with Broader Bands

Possible solutions

One possibility is to adopt policies and regulations that facilitate spectral efficiency, e.g., allowing roaming and spectrum trading. This wouldn't mitigate the problem of excessive capital expenditure on spectrum auctions that exceeds investment in networks (according to an industry estimate), but would probably improve spectrum utilisation.

Another is to share all spectrum through pooling, allowing common-carrier access on payment to Radio Access Networks including spectrum. If charged only a reasonable revenue share with incentives such as reductions for rural services, there is likely to be explosive growth in broadband delivery with an increase in government revenue, if the organisation and coordination is done right. The government needs to bring together operators and other stakeholders, including the Ministries of Communications & Information Technology and of Information & Broadcasting, and with expert help, work out how to organise and deliver the promise of Digital India.

[1]. An assessment of spectrum management policy in India, 2008; p 10: http://www.aegis-systems.co.uk

[2]. For GSM, there is a 50 per cent increase in the capacity per MHz using two channels of 12 MHz each instead of two channels of 6 MHz each. Ibid., 15.

[3]. Ibid.,28.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-august-6-2015-shyam-ponappa-those-dropped-calls

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS

praskrishna — 2014-02-25T09:15:58Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is celebrating 5 years of its existence with an exhibition showcasing its activities and accomplishments. The exhibition will be held at its offices in Bangalore and Delhi from May 20 to 23, 2013.

Download all the posters exhibited during the recent exhibition here.

As a move to promote transparency, CIS is inviting the general public to be its auditors by throwing open its account books and contracts which show how it has spent the Rs. 13.13 crores received from its donors. The four-day event will see renowned artists like Kiran Subbaiah, Tara Kelton, Navin Thomas and Abhishek Hazra featuring their work and also giving live demonstrations.

Agenda

Open exhibition on all the 4 days from 10.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m., in Bangalore and Delhi. The evening programmes will be held in Bangalore. Dinner will be served right afterwards.

Evening Programmes

May 20, 2013

18.00 19.00	Why did I buy a set-top box?: What we know, don't know and need to know about Digitalisation — A Talk by Vibodh Parthasarathi Why are we being asked to install set-top boxes? How will this change what we want, and pay for, on TV? Grappling with these questions, the talk will evaluate the rationale of the digital migration in cable currently underway, and the less talked about digital migration being planned for the public broadcaster. These scarcely debated and often contentious issues form the core of a recent Country Report on the Media in India, anchored by the speaker. The India Country Report, the first inter-sectoral and policy oriented study of our electronic media landscape, finds the ongoing digitalisation of cable, the infusion of digital tools in the press and the proposed digital switchover of the public broadcaster, posing varied challenges not only to journalism but to public interest at large. This report is part of a global initiative, Mapping Digital Media, examining opportunities and risks amidst the transitions to a digital media ecology across 50 countries. Video
19.00 19.30	Film Screening on Cyber Cafes of Rural India by Video Volunteers Video Volunteers in partnership with CIS have been documenting the cyber cafes of rural India. Kamini Menon and Christy Raj will do the screening of seven 2-minute films: Cyber Cafe Trends Slowly Changing in Imphal by Achungmei Kamei (Manipur) Transgender Interaction with Cyber Cafes by Christy Raj (Karnataka) Cyber Cafes Prevail Over Mobile Phones in Nagaland by Meribeni Kikon (Nagaland) Mobile Technology Threatens Cyber Cafes in HP by Avdhesh Negi (Himachal Pradesh) Cyber Cafe Visit - A Day's Journey by Saroj Paraste (Madhya Pradesh) The Challenges of Establishing Cyber Cafes by Rohini Pawar (Maharashtra) The Community Service Centre - Myth or Reality? by Neeru Rathod (Gujarat) Video
19.30 20.00	Hindustani Classical Performance by Aditya Dipankar
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283 Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 21, 2013

18.00 19.00	Screening of Sabaka A young elephant trainer in India vows revenge against the cult that killed his family. He seeks help from the local Maharajah who refuses, and he sets out alone to battle the enemy... Sabaka is a 1954 film produced and directed by Frank Ferrin starring Boris Karloff, Reginald Denny, June Foray, et.al.
19.00 20.00	Slouching towards Tlön: An Encyclopedia for the 2nd century of Indian cinema — A Talk by Lawrence Liang Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen’s Encyclopedia of Indian cinema (1994) marked an important moment for the study of Indian film history. In the two decades since its publication we have seen a rise in the academic community working on Indian film history along with the rise of various new archival initiatives online. Materials that were hitherto unavailable have also made their way into the public domain via the efforts of film historians, cinephiles and other enthusiasts. It is perhaps fitting to think about what a collaborative encyclopedia of Indian cinema for the 21st century may look like. Using Rajadhayksha and Willemen’s Encyclopedia as a base, Lawrence has been working on an online version that incorporates moving images, photographs and archival materials and his presentation will open up questions of how one thinks of an online encyclopedia as well as larger conceptual questions of the relationship between the encyclopedias, the internet and moving image archives. Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283, Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 22, 2013

Cybersecurity, Privacy and Surveillance

18.00 18.30	“The Indian Surveillance State”— A Talk by Maria Xynou The Central Monitoring System confirms that, starting from last month ‘Big Brother’ is a reality in India. But how do authorities get the tech to spy on us? Maria has started investigating surveillance technology companies operating in India. So far, 76 companies have been detected which are producing and selling different types of surveillance gear to Indian law enforcement agencies. Join us to see India´s first investigation of who is aiding our watchers! Video
18.30 19.00	Why Privacy and How? A Talk by Bernadette Langle "But I have nothing to hide!" That's what most people think. Are you sure? What about all the services you use for free, don't you think the service provider has to spend money on that, and that he needs to earn it somehow? Bernadette will show some alternatives and also how easy it can be, to put your messages in a virtual private envelope as you use to do with messages on paper. Video
19.00 19.45	Cyber Security Preview — Presentation by Laird Brown and Purba Sarkar CIS in cooperation with Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, is developing a film project on cyber security in India from a civil society perspective. Laird will show the preview of the project. The preview will include an overview of the project along with a video footage from the first series of interviews. Video
19.45 20.00	Faking of Fingerprints: A Presentation by Bernadette Langle Bernadette will give a brief presentation on how easy it is to fake a fingerprint. Afterwards you can get hands-on. Fake a fingerprint yourself and take it with you to your home. Video Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283, Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 23, 2013

Kannada Language and IT

18.00 18.15	Kannada in Modern Era: A Guest Talk by Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambara Dr. Chandrashekhara will be the chief guest for this session and will give a guest lecture. Video
18.15 19.30	From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada: A Talk by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja Kannada language which has a history of 2000 years and quite rich in literature started on palm leaves. Kannada advanced with modern times adopting the marvels of Information Technology. This is accomplished by successfully implementing Kannada in various facets of IT. It is being used everywhere from data driven applications to websites to hand held devices like tablets. These aspects will be brought out during the talk. Summary in Kannada: ತಾಳೆಗರಿಯಿಂದ ಟ್ಯಾಬ್ಲೆಟ್ ತನಕ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಪಯಣ ಸುಮಾರು ಎರಡು ಸಾವಿರ ವರ್ಷಗಳ ಭವ್ಯ ಇತಿಹಾಸವಿರುವ ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯದ ಉಗಮ ತಾಳೆಗರಿಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ ಆಯಿತು. ಕನ್ನಡ ಭಾಷೆಯು ಆಧುನಿಕ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಅದ್ಭುತ ಕೊಡುಗೆಗಳನ್ನು ತನ್ನದಾಗಿಸಿಕೊಂಡು ಬೆಳೆಯಿತು. ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಎಲ್ಲ ಅಂಗಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡವನ್ನು ಅಳವಡಿಸಿ ಬಳಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವುದರ ಮೂಲಕ ಇದು ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಯಿತು. ಆನ್ವಯಿಕ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಶವಿರಲಿ, ಪ್ರತಿಸ್ಪಂದನಾತ್ಮಕ ಜಾಲತಾಣವಿರಲಿ, ಕೈಯಲ್ಲಿ ಹಿಡಿದು ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡುವ ಟ್ಯಾಬ್ಲೆಟ್ ಇರಲಿ –ಎಲ್ಲ ಕಡೆ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಬಳಕೆ ಆಗುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಈ ಎಲ್ಲ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಕಡೆ ಒಂದು ಪಕ್ಷಿನೋಟವನ್ನು ಈ ಭಾಷಣದಲ್ಲಿ ನೀಡಲಾಗುವುದು. Video
19.30 20.00	Carnatic Music Performance by Nirmita Narasimhan Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283 Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

About the Speakers

Vibodh Parthasarathi	Vibodh Parthasarathi works with the Centre for Culture and Media Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He is also a Board Member at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. He maintains a multidisciplinary interest in media and development policy, business history of creative industries, and governance of media infrastructure. At the Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, his ongoing research addresses media policy literacy, the TV news industry and the digital switchover in India. He is the co-editor of the critically acclaimed tri-series on Communication Process (Sage).
Lawrence Liang	Lawrence Liang is the Chairman of the Board at the Centre for Internet and Society. He is a graduate of the National Law School. He subsequently pursued his Masters degree in Law and Development at Warwick, on a Chevening Scholarship. His key areas of interest are law, technology and culture, the politics of copyright and he has been working closely with Sarai, New Delhi on a joint research project Intellectual Property and the Knowledge/Culture Commons. A keen follower of the open source movement in software, Lawrence has been working on ways of translating the open source ideas into the cultural domain. He has written extensively on these issues and is the author of The Public is Watching: Sex, Laws and Videotape and A Guide to Open Content Licenses. Lawrence has taught at NLS, the Asian College of Journalism, NALSAR, etc., and is currently working on a Ph.D. on the idea of cinematic justice at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Maria Xynou	Maria Xynou is a Policy Associate on the Privacy Project at the CIS. She has previously interned with Privacy International and with the Parliament of Greece. Maria holds a Master of Science in Security Studies from the University College London (UCL).
Bernadette Langle	Bernadette Längle recently graduated in social and cultural anthropology, philosophy and computer science. She is also a so-called hacktivist together with one of the oldest hacker associations of the world, the Chaos Computer Club, having a lot of influence in German politics. As one of the core-team organizer of Chaos Communication Congress in Germany she also has a lot of experience in organizing events.
Laird Brown	Laird Brown is a strategic planner and writer. His core competencies are brand analysis, public relations, and resource management. Laird has worked at the United Nations in New York; high-tech ventures in North America, Europe, and India; and, is a guest speaker at ICT conferences internationally. He is currently working on a film project for CIS on cyber security in India with Purba Sarkar.
Purba Sarkar	Purba Sarkar is an associate producer with the cyber security film project. She holds a Bachelor in Technology degree from West Bengal University of Technology. Purba worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail for 4 years before joining CIS in January, 2013.
Dr.Chandrashekhara Kambara	Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambara is a prominent poet, playwriter, folklorist, film director in Kannada language. He is also the founder-vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi. He is known for his effective usage of North Karnataka dialect of Kannada language in his plays and poems and is often compared with D.R. Bendre. He has been conferred with many prestigious awards including the Jnanpith Award (the highest literary honour conferred in India) in 2011 for the year 2010, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Padma Shri by Government of India, Kabir Samman, Kalidas Samman and Pampa Award. After his retirement, Kambara was nominated Member of Karnataka Legislative Council, to which he made significant contributions through his interventions.
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja	Dr U B Pavanaja holds a Master’s degree from Mysore University and Ph.D. from Mumbai University. He was a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, for about 15 years. He has done advanced research in Taiwan. He resigned from BARC in 1997 and dedicated himself fully for the cause of Computer and Indian languages. 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).

The Artists

Kiran Subbaiah	Kiran Subbaiah studied sculpture at Santiniketan, MSU Baroda and the RCA London. He was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam where he worked on art that incorporated informatics and electro-mechanics. He is also known for making videos using custom-built tools that enable him to perform multi-person film-making tasks single-handed. His art is shown extensively in India and abroad. Subbaiah is based in Bangalore and is represented by the Chatterjee and Lal gallery in Mumbai. Kiran will present the Spectator, a robot that can sense the presence of human beings around it. It tries to appreciate them as works of art.
Tara Kelton	Tara Kelton is an artist and designer. She has been living in Brooklyn, USA and Bangalore, India for the last three years. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2009. Kelton’s video, print, and web-based works investigate moments in which technology alters our perception of the physical world. Kelton has taught at the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology and has recently exhibited her work at Vox Populi (USA), Franklin Street Works (USA), GALLERYSKE (Bangalore) and the India Design Forum (Mumbai). Tara will present Trace, a surveillance camera feed drawn in real-time by anonymous online workers.
Navin Thomas	Navin Thomas is a multimedia artist and a professional scrap market junkie, he spends a good quality of his precious time looking for obscure cultural misfits... after destroying most of himself in the 90's, he now spends his time restoring your mother's brother’s tin space toys and other unusual situations.
Abhishek Hazra	Abhishek Hazra approaches his art with a particular emphasis on the study of the historiography of science. He uses videos and prints that often integrate textual fragments drawn from real and fictional scenarios. He has previously exhibited and performed at Science Gallery, Dublin, HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art Contemporain, Experiment Marathon Reykjavik, Reykjavik Art Museum and Kunstmuseum Bern. Abhishek was most recently an artist in residence at SymbioticA, the Centre for Excellence in Biological Arts, University of Western Australia, Perth. It was first performed as part of Beam Me Up, curated by Reinhard Storz and Gitanjali Dang, which was acknowledged by Pro Helvetia, New Delhi and German Book Office, New Delhi. Abhishek will be presenting #cloudrumble56 (attempted to re-animate sections of the Indian parliamentary archives — specifically, the transcripts of the scientist M.N. Saha's (1893-1956) interventions — through a performance that was transmitted only through live tweets on Twitter).
Aditya Dipankar	Aditya Dipankar started fiddling with music at the age of 4 when he started learning the tabla and then went on to play it for a long time. Years later, he discovered his strong inclination towards singing. Now, under the noble guidance of Pandit Vijay Sardeshmukh (Senior disciple of Pandit Kumar Gandharva), he is trying to understand the simplicity and spontaneity in the rich tradition of Hindustani classical music.
Nirmita Narasimhan	Nirmita Narasimhan is a Policy Director at CIS and works on accessibility for persons with disabilities. She was awarded the national award for empowerment of persons with disabilities by the President of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award. Nirmita Narasimhan is a disciple of Dr. Radha Venkatachalam and renowned maestro Prof. T.R. Subramanyam. She began learning music at the age of 5 and went on to complete her Ph.D. in this subject from the Delhi University. Nirmita has been performing since 1995 and received several accolades such as the Sahitya Kala Parishad Scholarship and prizes in several competitions. She received the Gold medal in MA for standing first in the University and also stood first in MPhil. She has released a CD on Ponnayya Pillai compositions and also sung in an album of varnams. Nirmita has performed in different places in India such as Delhi, Chennai, Tirupathi and Bangalore as well as in Singapore and has also given several thematic concerts such as Eka Raga Sandhya and Pallavi concerts.
Sharath Chandra Ram	Sharath Chandra Ram (Sharathchandra Ramakrishnan) has interests in multimodal art, cognitive science, accessibility, digital humanities and network cultures. He is a faculty at the Centre for Experimental Media Arts at the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology. At the Centre for Internet and Society he helped set up and manage activities at the Metaculture Media Lab : an open hackerspace and alternative platform for research and exchange. His writings and musings at CIS maybe found here: http://cis-india.org/author/sharath He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in Artificial Intelligence specializing in interactive virtual environments. Previously as a Research Associate at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences he received a special mention award at the International Conference on Consciousness (2012) held at the National Institute of Advanced Studies for his work on ‘Cross modal Integration’. As an amateur radio broadcaster, he is a proponent of the free use of airwaves for relief work, education and transmission art. He has also been a development related radio journalist (PANOS @ Nepal, Voices UNDP@Bangalore), speaker at the International Ham Radio Convention (Port Blair, 2006) and as a film enthusiast has been a Press Reviewer for the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Locations

Bangalore

Centre for Internet and Society
No. 194, Second 'C' Cross, Domlur,
2nd Stage, Bangalore - 560071,
Karnataka, India
Ph: +91 80 4092 6283
Fax: +91 80 2535 0955

Delhi

Centre for Internet and Society
G 15, Top floor
Behind Hauz Khas, G Block Market
Hauz Khas,
New Delhi 110016
Ph: + 91 011 40503285

Event Brochure

Event Flier

Event Posters/Banners and Videos

Accessibility

National Resource Kit (PDF, PNG)
NVDA E-Speak (PDF, PNG)
International Collaborations (PDF, PNG)
Partners (PDF, PNG)
Publications (PDF, PNG)
Timeline (PDF, PNG)
Inclusive Planet (PDF, PNG)

In the below video Anandhi Viswanathan gives a demo of the National Resource Kit project and Rameshwar Nagar gives a demo of the NVDA and ESpeak (Text-to-Speech) project during the exhibition.

Access to Knowledge

Broadcast Treaty (PDF, PNG)
Copyright (PDF, PNG)
Software Patent 1 (PDF, PNG)
Software Patent 2 (PDF, PNG)
Pervasive Technologies (PDF, PNG)

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

Factsheet (PDF, PNG)
Reaching Out (PDF, PNG)
Outreach (PDF, PNG)
Bridging Gender Gap (PDF, PNG)
Press Coverage (PDF, PNG)
Education Programmes (PDF, PNG)
Team Achievements (PDF, PNG)
Visualization (PDF, PNG)

Openness

Open Access to Scholarly Literature (PDF, PNG)
Open Access to Law (PDF, PNG)
Open Standards (PDF, PNG)
Free/Open Source Software (PDF, PNG)

Internet Governance (Free Speech)

Blocking of Websites (PDF, PNG)
Freedom of Speech (PDF, PNG)
Intermediary Liability (PDF, PNG)
Internet Governance Forum (PDF, PNG)

Internet Governance (Privacy)

Privacy Events (PDF, PNG)
Timeline (PDF, PNG)
UID (1) (PDF, PNG)
UID (2) (PDF, PNG)
DNA (1) (PDF, PNG)
DNA (2) (PDF, PNG)

Telecom

Institutional Framework for Indian Telecommunication (PDF, PNG)
Growth of Telecom Industry in India (PDF, PNG)
Delicensed Spectrum (PDF, PNG)
Spectrum Sharing (PDF, PNG)

RAW Monographs

Archives and Access (PDF, PNG)
Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities (PDF, PNG)
The Last Cultural Mile (PDF, PNG)
Porn, Law, Video Technology (PDF, PNG)
Re:Wiring Bodies (PDF, PNG)
Community Informatics and Open Government Data (Special Issue) (PDF, PNG)

News and Media

Media Coverage (PDF, PNG)
Organizational Chart (PDF)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/celebrating-5-years-of-cis

From Open Citizen Radio Networks to the Race for .RADIO gTLD

sharath — 2013-05-05T05:00:01Z

In light of the recent shutdown of INDYMEDIA ATHENS server and its associated antagonistic Internet radio streaming services, Radio98FM and Radio Entasi, Sharath Chandra Ram, takes a look at open radio networks run by citizen operators as well as the politics around internet radio and it’s growing potential as a medium for citizen activism.

On the afternoon of April 11, 2013, the president of the National University of Athens (NTUA) ,Simos Simopolous ordered the university’s Network Operations Centre (NOC) to pull the network plug off the IndyMedia Athens server that shared the university’s network infrastructure. With it went down the Internet radio stream of Radio98FM, an independent radio station broadcasting from within NUTA along with Radio Entasi. The takedown as it were later revealed, was an order by the Minister of Public Order, Nikos Dendias followed by the MP Adonis Georgiadis of the New Democracy Party tweeting in praise of the Minister’s decision. (Translate Tweet here : http://bit.ly/ZiBDuR ) Indymedia Athens still continues to be accessible through the Tor network at http://gutneffntqonah7l.onion/

The choice and use of broadcast networks in political and citizen uprisings have had a culturally specific side to it. The massive 2006 democracy movement in Nepal was fuelled entirely by pirate FM radio broadcasts, as most mountainous regions have no access to telephony, Internet or print news delivery services. Recently the world saw the power of social media , youtube and Twitter -- in Iran after the police killed student activist Neda and later in the landmark crisis of Tunisia.

By combining the power of seamless accessibility that the audio medium provides by allowing the user to multi-task, along with the viral broadcasting ability of the Internet, we indeed have an effective tool for networked citizen science. Are there popular models that the community can emulate, and what are the barriers to entry in a trans-medial paradigm such as Internet audio re-transmission?

An Overview of Open Radio Networks

Let’s a take a quick peek into the wireless radio –VoIP service named ECHOLINK that I am fortunate to have had access to, over the last decade. Available to only ‘licensed’ and verified amateur radio operators, one maybe rest assured that strict legalities have unfortunately made such an open and transparent trans-medial global networked infrastructure impossible for commercial deployment or of use to the common citizen.

The ECHOLINK network was made possible thanks to the relentless efforts of amateur radio operators from around the world. It has enabled numerous wireless VHF local repeaters and links around the globe to be accessible over the Internet from practically any remote machine/device connected to the Internet, for both transmission as well as reception.

A memorable event was when I connected to a local Florida repeater from my bedroom’s PC and ended up conversing with an amateur radio operator who was driving around in his car through the Hurricane Katrina flooded streets with a VHF Handheld FM Transceiver, limited food supply and a gallon of reserve fuel canned in his backseat. Despite this, there was a sense of brethren and calm in his crackling radio voice that made it to the Florida repeater and then all the way to my home-station in Bangalore.

More recently, after the Fukushima Tsunami and Nuclear fallout, we observed that the Japanese government had jammed almost every radio repeater link, including the Emergency Amateur Radio service in Japan as they did not want any international contact to be made regarding the situation. Nevertheless after hours of trying, I intercepted a number of conference link nodes in Japan with people passing on information to each other about the deteriorating conditions in various prefectures. Below is a recorded excerpt from a conversation between two concerned citizens that I intercepted:

The Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) was a precursor to the Echolink network, invented by Dave Cameron (Callsign: VE7LTD) who installed the first three Windows O/S based IRLP nodes in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1997, followed by a more reliable Linux Node (VE7RHS) in 1998, after which the IRLP network soon spread worldwide. Amateur Radio operators with a VHF handheld transceiver and a custom (also DIY) IRLP interface hardware could connect to any local node within their RF Range and by using particular DTMF codes could establish a connection to any other node in the world by referring to a global list of node numbers. (http://status.irlp.net/).

ECHOIRLP enables Radio network node owners to support both IRLP as well as ECHOLINK networks on their repeater. A publically open trans-medial network such as this would certainly transform global information dissemination and accessibility, citizen journalism, community networks as well as disaster management.

Impedances and Emerging Trends in Commercial radio webcasting:

Similar radio network paradigms, albeit highly commercial, already exist within the mobile phone infrastructure, and with location-based services and audio databases like Spotify and audio detection apps like SoundHound on the rise, one could expect a huge boom in Internet radio services with contextual advertising on personal devices in the coming years. As with the press wars during the early 1930s in America, when newspapers viewed radio broadcasting as a formidable competitor, various impedances have kept Internet streaming away from the space that local wireless broadcasters and telecommunications networks have enjoyed for so long.

Unlike in the US or EU Copyright law, in India, there is currently no copyright law that clearly regulates Internet webcasting and radio retransmission on the Internet. In the United States however, webcasting of copyrighted audio content as well as internet retransmission of over-the air FM and AM radio broadcasts are subject to a per-performance royalty and an ‘ephemeral’ license fee. For the royalty calculations, transmission to each individual recipient is considered to be one ‘performance’. Estimating the market value of a ‘performance’ however is tricky, and the standing example that served as a reference, was the agreement reached between the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) that represents a majority of record labels that own copyrighted sound recordings and YAHOO! Inc , a then major webcaster and Internet re-transmitter. The RIAA-Yahoo! Agreement involved a lump sump payment of USD 1.25 million for the first 1.5 billion transmissions that amounted to about 0.08 cents/performance. The initial proposal by the CARP (Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel) however, set this at 0.14 cents/performance for pure internet webcasts and 0.07 cents/performance for over-the air retransmissions, which later was rejected and equalized to 0.07cents/performance for both, after another recommendation by the Register of Copyrights was accepted by the Librarian of Congress.

In addition to this, an ephemeral license fee has to be paid by a webcaster and is currently set to be at about 8.8 per cent of the gross performance fee. ‘Ephemeral recordings’ in traditional broadcasting refer to the temporary copy made off a phono-record to facilitate transmission of the final studio mix. The twist in webcasting however is that temporary server copies necessary for Internet retransmission are subject to this ephemeral license fee.

Another limitation is bandwidth. Unlike wireless radio broadcasting that has a radial spread over line of sight depending on the wattage of transmission, the number of listeners that a server’s Internet radio streaming can tend to simultaneously, depends on the available bandwidth at the transmitting end. For instance, a 128kbps homebrew audio transmitted over a 1Mbps line using ShoutCast or Icecast, could probably support no more than 10 listeners although the advantage that listeners maybe geographically disparate cannot be overlooked.

The possibility of having a central webspace that provides access to streams of re-transmission of say, every FM news channel across the world still remains unfeasible. The logical next step would be to install multiple repeater servers that can access radio Internet servers located in different parts of the world retransmitting both commercial FM broadcasts as well as independent radio broadcasts, and constructed similar to the Echolink infrastructure. Ofcourse this would only be possible with a community-funded initiative led by the global amateur radio community in tandem with commercial pubic service broadcasters who agree to sacrifice on re-transmission royalties in view of mass accessibility. This collaboration now seems very possible with the latest .RADIO gTLD community based application that was filed by the EBU in 2013.

The .RADIO TLD competition

With ICANN launching the gTLD program, a notable contest has started for ownership of the .radio gTLD. The latest applicant is the Eurovision Broadcasting Union (EBU), the largest international association of broadcasters with supporters including the World Broadcasting Unions (WBU) and the Association Mondiale des Radiodiffuseurs Communautaires (AMARC). The EBU has filed for a ‘community based designation’ application, a move that has been actively supported by the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU), (http://goo.gl/H23YF), the founding fathers of the global amateur radio community. The European Broadcasting union, created in 1950, is a not-for-profit association and is one of the key sector members and technical advisors of the International Telecommunications Union. It’s primary function has been to advocate and negotiate the interests of European public broadcasters.

But three other standard applications for the .RADIO domain have been made to the ICANN as early as in 2012 by – BRS Media, AFILIAS and Tin Dale (LLC) all of whom have decried the latest application of EBU. BRS Media, as early as in 1998, entered into an ingenious agreement with the Federated States of Micronesia (country code .FM) and Armenia (country code .AM) and began offering the pricey .FM and .AM domains to Internet radio broadcasters and media services. AFILIAS Inc., who own the .MOBI and .INFO top level domains with it’s employees and investors in the ICANN Board have applied for 31 additional TLDs apart from .RADIO.

The ICANN reviews each applicant on the basis of descriptions of their mission and purpose of interest in the .RADIO TLD. While all the others allow ‘Open registrations’ of second level .RADIO domain-names by any organization, the EBU application entails a much more restrictive registration process where the initial round of registrations shall be limited to existing broadcasters, trademark owners, internet radio, amateur radio broadcasters and radio professionals.

The support of AMARC as well as the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU), (http://goo.gl/H23YF), has helped EBU to fulfill ICANN’s important pre-requisites for a community-based TLD application – that is “to substantiate its status as representative of the community it names in application by submission of written endorsements in support of the application.”

Does this mean that we shall finally see the dawn of widely accessible Internet radio and digital re-transmissions of over the air broadcasts, with the amateur radio networks working in tandem with commercial public service broadcasters? Will the EBU truly be a representative of the global broadcasting community and will it treat US counterparts no different from EU and rest of the world? And finally, what impact shall all this have on Internet governance, dissemination of public opinion and citizen interventions? These are but some of the burning questions that shall surface in the near future.

Key References

http://www.echolink.org
http://www.irlp.net/
Summary of the Determination of the Librarian of Congress on Rates and Terms for Webcasting and Ephemeral Recordings (http://goo.gl/xPEj8)
http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/
http://www.arrl.org/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/open-citizen-radio-networks-to-race-for-.radio-gtld

December 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-01-16T05:15:27Z

We at the Centre for Internet & Society wish you all a great year ahead. In the December 2012 newsletter, we bring you the draft early chapters of our “National Resource Kit” project for persons with disabilities (covering four southern states); and accessibility-related comments on the Twelfth Five Year Plan; the draft research on pervasive technologies and access to knowledge that we presented at the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest in Brazil; our comments on the privacy implications of including RFID tags in the proposed Rule 138A of the Motor Vehicle Rules, a report on the open access lectures delivered by Prof. Leslie Chan during his tour of India, reports of Wikipedia-related workshops conducted across three cities, and news and media coverage.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge — Indic Language Initiatives), Developer (NVDA Project), Research Manager (Digital Humanities project), and Policy Associate (Access to Knowledge and Openness) and Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org.

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:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
CIS received a grant of INR 54,83,200 from the Hans Foundation for Creating a National Kit of Laws, Policies and Programs for Persons with Disabilities on August 16, 2012. Anandhi Vishwanathan from CIS and Shruti Ramakrishnan from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are the researchers presently working for this project. Early draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from the readers:

The Tamil Nadu Chapter (by Shruti Ramakrishnan, December 30, 2012).
The Karnataka Chapter (by Shruti Ramakrishnan, December 30, 2012).
The Kerala Chapter (by Anandi Vishwanathan, December 31, 2012).
The Andhra Chapter (by Anandi Vishwanathan, December 31, 2012).

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:

Event Organised

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (FGV Law School, Rio de Janeiro, December 15 – 17, 2012). The Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was organized by Fundação Getulio Vargas, American University Washington College of Law, Columbia University, Open AIR, and ICSTD. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash participated in the event. Pranesh was one of the moderators in the Roundtable Discussion on Priority Policy Forums, Research and Analysis Needs and Commitments.

Research for the Global Congress

For the 2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest event, CIS conducted research. Jadine Lannon (based on research by Annapoornima and Rohan George and with help from Yogesh Kumar did research on documentation of phones and their patent, Amba Kak did research on copyright and mobile licensing, Vikrant Vasudev conducted research on patent pools and valuation methods, Hans Varghese Mathews did research on mathematical models of patent pools and Nehaa Chaudhuri did research on analysis of 3Gand 4G patent pools.

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 Report

Random Hacks of Kindness Global December 2012 — A Report (by Yogesh Londhe, December 10, 2012). Event was hosted at CIS office in Bangalore. CIS, Amnesty International India Office, Greenpeace India Office, HasGeek, Yahoo Research & Development and SimpleTechLife sponsored the event held in CIS office in Bangalore on December 1 and 2, 2012.

Events Participated

‘Information & Networks’ Partners’ Meeting (organised by International Development Research Centre, Canada in Rio de Janeiro, December 11 – 12, 2013). Sunil Abraham spoke in session on Open Business and IP.

Open Access Champion Leslie Chan Delivers Five Talks in India (Department of Library & Information Science, University of Kerala, National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science & Technology, CSIR, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala, Manasa Media Centre, Mysore University Library and SDM Institute for Management Development, December 17 – 20, 2012).

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia Project)
Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.

Events Organised

Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT (NMAIT, Karkala Taluk, December 21, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute).
Wikipedia Workshop at SRM (SRM University, Chennai, December 17, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute).
Marathi Wiki Workshop at TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, December 8, 2012).

Blog Entries

Non Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, December 19, 2012).
New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups (by Noopur Raval, December 28, 2012).

News / Media Coverage

A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur (Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, December 3, 2012).

Videos

Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller (CIS, Bangalore, November 12, 2012). Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation gave a talk.
Art in the Open Source Age — A Talk by Gene Kogan (CIS, Bangalore, November 30, 2012). Gene Kogan, a programmer and digital artist gave a talk.

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 out from CIS office in Bengaluru.

Upcoming Event

Meta Refresh (MLR Convention Centre, JP Nagar, Bangalore, February 22 and 23, 2013).

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:

Analysis of Central Motor Vehicle Rules

Comments on the Proposed Rule 138A of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989 Concerning Radio Frequency Identification Tags (by Bhairav Acharya, December 3, 2012).

Columns/Op-eds

Online Censorship: How Government should Approach Regulation of Speech (by Sunil Abraham, Economic Times, December 5, 2012).
The Worldwide Web of Concerns (by Pranesh Prakash, Deccan Chronicle, and Asian Age, December 10, 2012).
The Trouble with Hurried Solutions (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hindu, December 15, 2012).
Tomorrow, Today (Nishant Shah, The Indian Express, December 29, 2012).

Event Organised

Meeting of the Network of Internet & Society Centers (organised by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society, Center for Technology & Society, KEIO University SFC, the MIT Media Lab, the MIT Center for Civic Media, NEXA Center for Internet & Society and CIS, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 6 – 8, 2012).

Upcoming Events

DML Conference 2013 (Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2012).

Events Participated

Second International e-Governance Conference (organized by the National Committee for Corporate Governance Electronic Iraq and the United Nations Development Programme, Rashid Hotel, Baghdad, December 2, 2012). Sunil Abraham presented on "Review of the Legal Environment in Iraq for Effective e-Governance".
Seminar/Artist Talks : "Outresourcing" with the Transmediale Collective (organised by the Berlin - Transmediale new media collective, December 3, 2012, Bangalore). Sharath Chandra Ram presented a White Paper.
World Conference on International Telecommunications (organised by ITU, December 3 – 14). Chinmayi Arun participated as a civil society representative.
Internet Driven Developments: Structural Changes and Tipping Points (organised by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard University, December 6 – 8, 2012).
Annual Conference on Human Rights 2012 (organised by Estonian Institute of Human Rights and Google). Malavika Jayaram participated as a panelist.
State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp (Sheraton Rio Hotel & Resort, Rio, Brazil, December 13 and 14, 2012). Elonnai Hickok made a presentation on MLATS and International Cooperation for Law Enforcement Purposes.
Economic Impact of Internet in India (organised by Aspen Institute India, December 21, 2012). Chinmayi Arun attended this event.

Blog Entries

Transcripts from WCIT-12 (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 3, 2012).
Section 66-A, Information Technology Act, 2000: Cases (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 3, 2012).
Internet-driven Developments — Structural Changes and Tipping Points (by Elonnai Hickok, December 28, 2012).
State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp: Summary (by Elonnai Hickok, December 31, 2012).
Mining the Web Collective (by Sharath Chandra Ram, December 31, 2012).

Video

Technology Culture and Events in South East Asia — A Presentation by Preetam Rai (CIS, Bangalore, December 18, 2012). Preetam Rai gave a lecture.

Media Coverage

66A ‘cut & paste job’ (by GS Mudur, Telegraph, December 3, 2012). Pranesh Prakash and Snehashish Ghosh are quoted.
Ayodhya trending on Twitter sparks censorship concerns (by Surabhi Agarwal, December 6, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Debate on Section 66A rages on (Vasudha Venugopal, The Hindu, December 10, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Hacktivists deface BSNL website (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, December 13, 2012).
Govt likely to issue guidelines to clarify IT rules soon (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, December 16, 2012).
The freedom of expression debate: The State must mend fences with The Web (by Rahul Jayaram, India Today, December 18, 2012).
‘The IT Act is fine, but its interpretation is not’ (DNA, December 19, 2012).
No fear of losing internet freedom till Jan 15: Experts (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, December 22, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
UN agrees to review agencies governing Internet (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, December 27, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Delhi gang rape: What Facebook, Twitter expose about govt (The Times of India, December 31, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
A note of dissent on cash transfers and UID (The Hindu, December 31, 2012). Sunil Abraham was one of the signatories.
The year social media came of age in India (by Javed Anwer and Rukmini Shrinivasan, The Times of India, December 31, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

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

Inflation Control Through Structural Reforms (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, December 11, 2012).

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India
Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 2,00,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The knowledge repository deals with these modules: Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies, Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom, Telecommunication and the Market, Universal Access and Accessibility, The International Telecommunications Union and other international bodies, Broadcasting, Emerging Topics and Way Forward. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers.

The following are the new outputs:

Licensing Framework for Telecom: A Historical Overview (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 31, 2012).
Market Structure in the Telecom Industry (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 31, 2012).

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:

Book Review

Not Just Fancy Television (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, December 8, 2012): Nishant Shah reviews Ben Hammersley's book "64 Things You Need to Know for Then: How to Face the Digital Future Without Fear ", published by Hodder & Stoughton.

Media Coverage

What does it mean to be a digital native? (by Oliver Joy, CNN, December 8, 2012).

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 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, 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 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/december-2012-bulletin

Connectivity: Let's Apply What We Know

Shyam Ponappa — 2016-04-06T01:19:28Z

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana. Reprise good decisions, and avoid the missteps.

The Op-ed was published in Business Standard on March 2 and cross-posted on Organizing India BlogSpot on March 3.

Past decisions deserve scrutiny when we can learn from them. The Budget expects about Rs 75,000 crore from spectrum auctions. What will be gained and lost? A study by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in 2005 has some pointers for policies going forward. These relate to decisions that enabled the proliferation of mobile telephony between 2003 and 2011. Other decisions had less salutary outcomes, which we would do well to recognise and avoid. Reviewing some of these could influence supportive policies, resulting in industry growth with enhanced user benefits and government revenues.

1. Reasonable fees increase govt revenues

The TRAI report cited below states that as a consequence of the New Telecom Policy 1999's (NTP-99's) shift to revenue sharing for licence fees and spectrum usage charges, government revenues soared. Collections through March 2007 greatly exceeded the auction payment commitments of Rs 19,314 that were given up.

The NTP-99 stirred controversy because of this opportunity loss, as a suspected sellout to the private sector. However, government collections actually turned out to be much higher through revenue sharing. Operators did indeed benefit, but for a good reason: explosive growth in mobile services. Users also benefited immensely through the rapid spread of widely accessible services at relatively low cost, as did government revenues.

In the chart below, the second column shows the auction fees foregone through March 2007 after adopting the NTP-99, amounting to Rs 19,314 crore. The third column shows annual government revenues collected, while the fourth column shows cumulative government collections. Compared to the opportunity cost of auction revenues foregone of Rs 19,314 crore, government collections by March 2007 amounted to over Rs 40,000 crore, more than double the "loss". With revenue sharing, collections did not stop in March 2007, and by March 2010 were nearly Rs 80,000 crore, or four times the "loss". By March 2015, the "loss" had been made up by more than eight times, by collecting over Rs 1.6 lakh crore.

Sources
Column 1 - 1999-00 to 2006-07:Indicators for Telecom Growth, Study Paper No. 2/2005,TRAI:http://trai.gov.in/Content/StudyPaperDescription/ShowPDF.aspx?LNK_PATH=WriteReaddata/StudyPaper/Document/ir30june.pdfColumns 2 & 3 – 2002-03 to 2009-10:Peformance Audit Report on the Issue of Licences and Allocation of 2G Spectrum by the Department of Telecommunications, CAG:http://www.performance.gov.in/sites/default/files/departments/telecom/CAG Report 2009-10.pdfColumns 2 & 3 – 2010-11 to 2014-15 are from the TRAI web site:http://www.trai.gov.in/Content/PerformanceIndicatorsReports/1_1_PerformanceIndicatorsReports.aspx

In hindsight, a combination of policies, market structure/competition, and technology resulted in enormous growth, much higher government collections, and tremendous user benefits. A key impetus was the adoption of the high-volume-low-margin approach of Henry Ford's "Model-T" strategy. This principle is an essential ingredient for achieving Digital India.

2. Unenforced regulations lead to chaos

In our conditions of deficit infrastructure with constrained capital, the need for collaborative access to capital-intensive resources cannot be sufficiently emphasised. It's either that or do without the connectivity, as we've had to so far.

Until around 1999-2000, only GSM technology was permitted in India for mobile telephony (Global System for Mobile Communications, originally Groupe Special Mobile). Thereafter, CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology was introduced for wireless last-mile connections. While CDMA was supposedly restricted to the so-called Wireless-Local-Loop or WLL in place of fixed-lines for basic telephony, ambivalence/laxity in the enforcement of stated policies and the extension of this technology to mobile services led to unending contention and protracted legal battles between GSM and CDMA operators. While users benefited from price wars resulting from overly intense competition, both industry and users suffered considerable opportunity losses, as broadband development was constrained by a hypercompetitive environment roiled by unrelenting conflict. The marketplace was simply not conducive to the extension and evolution of broadband networks, particularly for less dense rural markets, so connectivity and services suffered.

Although several operators negotiated a degree of resource-sharing among themselves that was permitted, the industry couldn't converge on collaborative approaches to highly capital-intensive network building and service delivery, nor did the government devise supportive policies. Those in favour of unbridled market forces may approve of such intense competition. However, the cost of creating capacity and expanding networks is so prohibitive that, as a study on EU networks suggests, "as market conditions appear to be insufficient in most countries so far to trigger broad-scale NGA [Next Generation Access (Networks)] roll-outs in view of high investment requirements… and risks, identifying the right policy measures becomes crucial." It concludes, "public subsidies are the dominant policy alternative in white [unprofitable] areas, whereas access regulations can be the preferred policy in white or "grey" areas, where only monopoly structure or co-investment models lead to private investment."1 And this is for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The takeaway: good policies are essential, but are meaningful only if they are enforced. Otherwise, we all suffer the opportunity loss.

3. Global developments in sharing infrastructure

A major change globally has been a move towards sharing infrastructure. One motivator is broadband usage needs for greater capacity including for wireless delivery. The US pioneered a solution for better spectrum utilisation by permitting secondary sharing while primary holders retain rights of priority access. The FCC permitted commercial access to 150 megahertz in the 3550-3700 MHz band (3.5 GHz Band) in its ruling of April 17, 2015.² Work is under way in Europe on Licenced Shared Access, eg, in 2300-2400 MHz.

Another motivator for sharing infrastructure has been the financial challenge of providing rural and suburban coverage. Shared networks enable more effective and efficient coverage through multiple operators in such markets. Operators save on capital and operating expenses, while gaining access and higher profit potential. For users, better services improve financial prospects, convenience, and access to services that are otherwise inaccessible, including in areas like health care, education and skills development, and government services. Network sharing equipment is now available to support multiple operators and technologies to make sharing a reality.

We need to stop obstructing ourselves with our own rules. Our regulations must instead enable us to make the most of our capital and potential.

1 "The Impact of Alternative Public Policies on the Deployment of New Communications Infrastructure - A Survey", Briglauer et al: http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp15003.pdf

2 Amendment of the Commission’s Rules with Regard to Commercial Operations in the 3550-
3650 MHz Band: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-15-47A1.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/connectivity-lets-apply-what-we-know

Breaking into the Closed Circle: Domestic High-Tech Manufacturing Needs Access To Markets

Shyam Ponappa — 2013-09-03T07:32:45Z

The deferral of India's preferential market access (PMA) policy for locally manufactured high-tech products indicates some lack of clarity and/or confusion in the government.

The article by Shyam Ponappa (originally published in the Business Standard on July 31, 2013) was cross-posted in Organizing India Blogspot on August 1, 2013.

There are compelling reasons for supporting domestic manufacturing capacity in India, and high-tech products deserve high priority. Examining the elements of the proposition for developing our high-tech manufacturing and the state of its capacity may help clarify where and how policies should be heading. If domestic electronics production does not increase significantly, India's electronics requirements will be choked by high imports in excess of even oil imports.

The Bogey of Protectionism

The aim of the PMA policy is to give technically qualified domestic manufacturers access to otherwise closed domestic markets. It only provides an opening, and does not provide any protection or price preference. The notification states explicitly that technically qualified domestic manufacturers are eligible only if they match the lowest bid; if there are no qualified local manufacturers, or if qualified vendors don't match the lowest bid, entire orders may be awarded to the lowest-priced vendor/s (from abroad). Perhaps there is some confusion arising from the nomenclature, as "PMA" usually refers to international vendor access to domestic markets. The notion that the PMA is protectionist and shields domestic suppliers from competition is incorrect.

Deferring PMA to Assess Domestic Capabilities

The government's deferral of the PMA pending assessment of domestic manufacturing capabilities appears unreasonable, as there are already qualified manufacturers in India, several of them transnationals, producing high-tech products for global markets. The top 10 global fabless design companies and the top 25 semiconductor companies operate in India. In 2010, revenues were estimated at $7.5 billion, and in 2012, over $10 billion. India is reportedly among the top countries for fabless design skills, and has the critical ingredients for the growth of fabless companies as start-ups slow in the West: design service companies, design engineering expertise and innovation, returning entrepreneurs, and educational facilities. What they need for scale is local market access, equity funding, good logistics, and effective infrastructure. These are the areas where the government can facilitate matters. Deferring access to local companies at a time of rapid growth in networks will entrench foreign products, providing them with an undue advantage against local producers. Instead, we should be capitalising on our domestic strengths.

Closed Circle of Buyers & Sellers

In high-technology procurement, large international vendors, of whom there are relatively few, form long-term relationships with the relatively few large buyers in oligopolistic markets in telecommunications or electricity. This holds whether the buyers are government entities, state-owned enterprises, or private sector companies. Often, the international vendors have strong home government support. This is why domestic manufacturers need mandatory access to break into a closed circle. There is no ambiguity in this, nor is it protectionist, and there are no price preferences - in contrast to the 15 per cent allowed by the World Bank, or 10 per cent for minority-owned businesses in the United States.

Markets & Demand

Of the many reasons for developing electronics manufacturing capabilities in India, a compelling one is our level of demand for electronics. A task force comprising government and industry participants estimated in 2009 that demand in 2009-10 was around $45 billion, going up to $70 billion in 2012, and projected at $400 billion by 2020 (see chart), with government's share being 40 per cent.


Source: http://deity.gov.in/hindi/sites/upload_files/dithindi/files/Task_Force_Report-new_21211.pdf

Domestic production was at $20 billion in the financial year 2009 while imports were $25 billion, projected to rise to over $300 billion by 2020 if domestic production maintained its trend to reach $104 billion. However, with appropriate policies including the PMA for local manufacturers, in the best case, domestic electronics manufacturing was estimated to increase to over $300 billion. If this could be achieved, India's electronics imports would amount to about $100 billion. Without it, imports of $300 billion may be needed, exceeding even estimated oil imports.

Security Screening/Auditing of Imports

High-security applications in the US, Japan, Israel and China are procured from trusted domestic manufacturers. The US Congress monitors high-tech imports for strategic reasons. The UK is conducting an investigation into whether its broadband networks have been compromised by foreign suppliers, although malware is very difficult to detect, and can be downloaded after security audits. High-tech supplies need to be from trusted sources.

Domestic Producers vs Other Lobbies

In effect, it would seem that the operators and foreign vendors have railroaded the government into perpetuating the status quo of foreign-dominated electronics suppliers in India. Facilitating access to local markets for domestic manufacturers is the kind of support that many governments provide. Take the case of the "Buy American" provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Recovery Act funds used for the construction, alteration, maintenance or repair of public buildings and public works must procure all iron, steel and manufactured goods produced only in the US, with a price preference of 25 per cent. The exceptions are non-availability, prices of over 25 per cent, or where applying the provisions is against the public interest. The objectives were to save and create jobs, to give relief to those affected by the recession, and to invest in infrastructure, education, health and renewable energy. The estimated cost is $831 billion between 2009 and 2019.

Remedial Action

What's needed is for the government to take unequivocal action without delay on enabling policies for domestic high-tech producers. The sooner this is done, and the more sustained support that is provided, the better. Too many confused signals are being sent out on investments.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-shyam-ponappa-august-1-2013-domestic-high-tech-manufacturing-needs-access-to-markets

TRAI Consultation Paper on Spectrum

Shyam Ponappa and A.B. Beliappa — 2013-09-18T06:36:11Z

Shyam Ponappa and A.B.Beliappa worked on this submission to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on their spectrum consultation paper. The submission was made on August 21, 2013.

Q.1. What method should be adopted for refarming of the 900 MHz band so that the TSPs whose licences are expiring in 2014 onwards get adequate spectrum in 900/1800 MHz band for continuity of services provided by them?

Comments on Spectrum Refarming

1. Arbitrary Policies & Their Consequences
The proposed manner of refarming the 900 MHz spectrum is perceived to be as arbitrary as, for instance, the tax claims against Vodafone after the courts upheld its refutation of these claims. Such actions contribute to India’s very low rating on contracts (184 out of 185 countries in enforcing contracts in 2013: http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/india/), and for being a very difficult place to do business.

2. Legitimacy Of Terminating 900 MHz Holdings Starting 2014
One question is whether a refusal to renew existing spectrum holdings in the ordinary course is legitimate, or if it needs to be tested for breach of contract in the courts. This proposed manner of withholding access to assigned spectrum is also contrary to prevalent practice, as well as to the logic of spectrum being essential to the delivery of services of a wireless operator as a going concern.

3. Must All Spectrum Be Auctioned?
a) Another question is whether the Supreme Court order requires that all spectrum must in fact be auctioned. If this is so, the auction of all spectrum is necessary when it becomes available.

b) This is so damaging to the public interest, however, that all reasonable efforts must be made once again to inform the Supreme Court of the facts, i.e., the technological reasons against splintering bandwidth, and the financial reasons against extracting payments that would otherwise be invested in the essential infrastructure of broadband. If the facts are presented clearly and persuasively, there may be a reconsideration of the ruling to auction all spectrum in the light of these facts, as against continuing with this ruling based on miscommunication or misinformation.

c) If there is no alternative to auctions, to succeed, the reserve price needs to be relatively low, and bidders in difficult financial circumstances must be convinced they have no better option. Perhaps one way of ensuring this is to auction for a shorter period, e.g., five years, while simultaneously laying out the path for transitioning to shared spectrum. This is because parallel developments in spectrum sharing for Authorized Shared Access and Licensed Shared Access that are being pursued in the US and the EU are likely to be deployed by then.

4. Net Benefits of Refarming
Given the stage of evolution and coverage of networks in India, their technological level and usage, refarming should be held in abeyance until our markets are in a position to benefit from them. This is because the detrimental effects if the 900 MHz band is cleared in the proposed manner are likely to far outweigh the benefits, as explained below.

5. Purpose of Refarming
What is the purpose of refarming? If the answer is the potential benefits of services from 4G technologies and products, consider the likely nature of these benefits in India. The purpose of refarming in OECD countries is to use 900 MHz for 3G and LTE for high-speed data. This is appropriate for developed economies that have large numbers of data users. In India, high-end users comprise only a niche segment (15.09 million broadband users in April 2013, despite over 725 million active wireless subscribers). Developed economies have refarmed the 900 MHz band because 3G and 4G assume widespread use of data services in the entire network. In other words, if India had a large base of high-data users, 4G networks would be required to deliver high-speed traffic. Also, such users would presumably be (a) willing and (b) able to pay [for the expensive equipment required] for these services.

6. No Economic Basis for Refarming in India
a) The reality is that there are insufficient data users with the willingness and ability to pay for the higher level of throughput. The present state of the economy and its trajectory pose additional constraints. More important, existing technologies are capable of delivering data services at lower cost. The priority is for access networks at lower cost, e.g., wireless middle-mile and last-mile that will enable large numbers of users to access data services at a reasonable price (“reasonable” in the cost structure of India comparable to TV services, and not in cents/minute comparable with OECD countries).

b) That said, a possible consideration is whether and how certain advanced technologies, such as “supplemental downlink” or “carrier aggregation” for augmenting capacity, may be made usable in our circumstances, and whether if certain bands are earmarked for them, such solutions can be introduced here.

7. Need: Low-Cost Last-Mile & Aggregation/Backhaul Capacity
How can networks be built at reasonable cost that have the capacity to deliver data services more comprehensively in India? By providing much more wireless access for the last-mile, and more middle-mile capacity (in combination with existing wired networks). This is where policies can facilitate network build-out and service delivery at lower cost. The nature of required reforms are: reduced front-end charges for wireless last mile access; reduced microwave charges (administered prices) for aggregation and backhaul; incentives for broadband delivery, and perhaps higher incentives for rural broadband delivery. Also, a whole host of initiatives can be orchestrated, as in South Korea, for instance, or Sweden, which contribute to the development of broadband services and usage.

a) South Korea*
South Korea’s digital economy resulted from a combination of macroeconomic, supply-side and demand-side policies and programs, with the government stimulating broadband adoption, particularly in the early years. For example, Korea’s response to the financial crisis of 1997-1998 was to increase the export strength of key sectors such as electronics. There was also a thrust on consumer credit, facilitating the purchase of consumer goods and electronics-related services such as broadband. The initiatives to push broadband deployment and adoption included tax incentives, rural deployment and R&D grants, building certification incentives, and applications support. There were also mistakes, as in the government’s choice of WiBro technology.

By way of illustration, a set of Korean initiatives are detailed below:

Table 5: Selected Korean Supply-Side Broadband Subsidy Programs

Infrastructure Deployment

Tax benefits (credits, accelerated depreciation, exemptions, etc.) for broadband deployment

Backbone provision or subsidy for broadband deployment (KII-Government program providing funding for operators to reach 40,000 govt. locations as well as rural districts)

Technology Support

R&D grants and tax credits
Applications support (KOREN—Korean Advanced Research Network or KII-Testbed) Building Certification & Codes
Requiring or encouraging the pre-equipping of new buildings with fibre and/or broadband access points (e.g. DSLAM)
Institution of certification programs for broadband readiness of MDUs (multi-dwelling units, based on three classes of transmission speed)

Source: Kalba International, Inc., 2012. Ovum Consulting, Broadband Policy and Development in the Republic of Korea

b) Sweden*
Sweden's regulator demonstrated a strong commitment to cover low-density areas, and one of the ways was to foster network sharing. The government promotes a broadband strategy with incentives for all stakeholders. State authorities are actively involved in the Digital Agenda for Sweden, a national initiative. In education, for instance, about 25% of all students rely to some extent on distance education. Open access policies and competition have had a significant impact on the development of broadband.

* Source: Digital Scotland 2020

Achieving World-Class Digital Infrastructure
21st December 2012
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0041/00414982.pdf

8. Shared Facilities
One way that delivery costs can be reduced is if operators share networks, so that all operators can access these networks where they are licensed to do so. This would be feasible if there were practical ways of structuring “common-carrier” or network-neutral access (as in roads, rail, flight paths and airports, ports, oil pipelines, etc.). This would require a buy-in by service providers for radical changes in approach and policies, followed by radical changes in operating networks. It is possible that open consultation with TSPs, other stakeholders, and specialists, done with the help of one or more expert facilitator/s, could yield such a solution. If this were to happen, the process of organizing structures at (a) the wholesale (network services) level, and (b) the retail (user access level) could be addressed collectively.

9. Extend Voluntary Infrastructure Sharing to Mandatory Sharing
We already have consortiums for passive sharing of wireless towers. This needs to be extended from voluntary commercial associations to mandatory, “common-carrier” access, after putting in place suitable commercial arrangements through negotiation. Such commercial arrangements exist for oil pipelines and for oil exploration and production, and can be structured in like manner for facilities and spectrum. They need the appropriate financial structuring with the help of financial specialists, in addition to the engineering solutions.

10. Shared Spectrum: Pool New Spectrum

a) An evolutionary step in this direction is to pool all available, unallocated [unassigned] spectrum, so that it can be shared by [existing] service providers. This is being pioneered in the so-called TV White Space bands in the USA, the EU, the UK, and Singapore. It can be extended to other bands here. This could be a transitional step in evolving a shared facilities model. Provided the stakeholders agree, and an equitable structure and process is devised, this will relieve the present constraints on spectrum availability by providing a common pool of spectrum.

b) Shared spectrum is an alternative that is technically feasible and economically far more viable than fragmenting available spectrum for the exclusive use of our many operators. This also provides for complete transparency, as well as much lower capital and operating costs for society as a whole. The implication is that broadband could be made available more widely at lower cost, leading to much better productivity and payoffs.

c) Many of the questions and associated problems would be resolved. For instance, open access would allow for each operator to choose any technology that is compatible and that does not create interference. Fees could be determined in the same manner as for taxes in inducing investment for manufacturing, as was done in South Korea. It would need a whole range of supportive measures as in the case of South Korea, and if done right, could result in tremendous gains as an organizing force in society.

11. Some 900 MHz Access (Common-Carrier) For All TSPs
If a portion of the 900 MHz band is set aside for shared access, it may resolve one of the most contentious problems between the GSM and CDMA operators, of access to the highly advantageous 900 MHz for its low-cost equipment and ability to penetrate buildings, i.e., better delivery. This step may create conditions that allow for stakeholder engagement for an overall resolution, including ultimately, shared infrastructure.

12. Revenue-Sharing & Consumer Surplus From Shared Spectrum/Networks
India’s experience with revenue-sharing after NTP-99 has shown that collections are far in excess of up-front revenues forgone. Building a sound broadband service with a combination of incentives and forbearance will lead to much greater economic benefits overall, as well as much higher collections by the government over time. The sector can once again prosper and be an engine of productivity.

Shyam Ponappa
Centre for Internet and Society
August 21, 2013

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/trai-consultation-paper-on-spectrum

Net subs grow significantly but public Wi-Fi idea flayed

praskrishna — 2016-11-21T13:55:18Z

Even as internet subscribers are growing significantly across Indian states, TRAI's idea of public Wi-Fi has been flayed by stakeholders.

This was published by Indian Television on November 21, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Maharashtra has recorded the highest number of internet subscribers in India at 29.47 million, followed by Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Karnataka in that order, according to government data. At the end of March 2016, India had a total of 342.65 million subscribers. BharatNet project meantime plans to connect all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats in the country through broadband.

Delhi had registered 20.59 million internet users, while Kolkata and Mumbai recorded 9.26 million and 15.65 million, respectively.

Tamil Nadu recorded 28.01 million subscribers, while the neighbouring states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka respectively registered 24.87 million and 22.63 million. Himachal Pradesh saw the lowest number of subscribers at 3.02 million.

Of the over 342 million subscribers, over 67 per cent are from urban India. At the end of FY16, the rural internet subscriber base stood at 111.94 million. Tamil Nadu recorder the highest number of urban subscribers at 21.16 million, while UP (East) telecom circle is ahead in terms of rural internet customer base at 11.21 million.

Public Wi-Fi condemned

Telecom stakeholders recommending an open and cheap internet have raised concerns over privacy and regulatory hurdles following the release of TRAI's consultation paper on public Wi-Fi.

The Internet Freedom Foundation co-founder Aravind Ravi Sulekha was apprehensive that the proposed regulations could lead to invasion of privacy and interfere with the freedom of hotspot providers to operate freely. The proposals may turn out to be regressive, Sulekha said.

TRAI proposed hotspot providers would have to register with the government and users could access hotspots only after paying using a service tied to their Aadhaar number.

Centre for Internet and Society policy director Pranesh Prakash said that TRAI solution was a classic example of over-regulation and centralism. It turns out that TARI was unclear about the problem to be solved, he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/news/indian-television-november-21-2016-net-subs-grow-significantly-but-public-wifi-idea-delayed

Different forms of Video Communication

Tina Mani — 2013-03-15T05:37:39Z

In this module, Tina Mani takes us through some of the common forms of video communication such as video calling, video conferencing, telepresence and video sharing.

This post was translated in Armenian.

A video is a series of images captured at a rate faster than the eye can perceive. Each image is comprised of many pixels. More pixels indicate more clarity, this is known as resolution. As you can imagine, a video file in the raw (original) format would be huge. Thanks to the digital technologies and availability of advanced digital encoding (i.e. compression) techniques, it became possible to compress these large video files into much smaller files that could be transmitted without much loss or delay. This, along with the availability of high speed IP networks facilitated video as a new means of communication.

Some of the common forms of video communication are Video Calling, Video Conferencing, Telepresence and Video Sharing.

Video Calling

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IP_Video_Phone_1535-DSCN1202-2.JPG

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TANDBERG_E20_%28Jimmy_Wales%29.jpg
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Video_Call.jpg
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Figure 1: Different forms of video calling – on landline, mobile and internet (e.g., on Facebook)

Video Calling is a service where two people can communicate using video, i.e., can see as well as hear each other on the phone or a personal computer (PC).

On the landline network: Video calling from PC to PC over internet is usually available as a free service, for example, from providers like Skype, Yahoo Messenger, and more recently Facebook. The user has to be logged into the application to receive the call. The availability of the user, also known as presence, is indicated to other people with a status like offline, available, etc. These services are charged when the communication has to cross over from the internet to a telecom network, and has to pass through an interconnect gateway. This situation arises when you try to call a mobile or landline number from a PC video calling application. The telecom operators charge for interconnection to their network, and so the users are charged for these calls. Detailed working will be discussed in module 2.8.3.

On the mobile network: Video Calling used to be a facility limited to PCs or Internet Protocol (IP) phones using an internet connection, until the availability of Third Generation (3G)[1] technologies on the mobile. With 3G, came the concept of a special call type for video, using a new protocol[2] known as H324M. It uses the Circuit Switched Mode of operation, where a 64 kilobits/sec (Kbps) channel in each direction is reserved for the call for the entire duration of the call. 3G capable handsets support this and provide a menu option to make a video call to any number in the phone book. However, 64kbps is usually not enough for high quality video. The better mode of operation is the Packet Switched Mode,[3] where there is no hard limit on the bandwidth available for the call.

Video calling on the internet, as well as on the mobile in the Packet Switched mode uses protocols like H323 or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).[4] The Circuit Switched and Packet Switched modes will be discussed in more detail in module 2.2.2. Since data (internet) connections with decent speed and low enough latency[5] are also available on mobile now, the internet video calling applications like Skype once available on the landline network also work seamlessly on the mobile.

One limitation that prevents the use of video calling on the mobile is that many handsets do not have a front camera, and hence one cannot see the other person and be seen at the same time.

Video Conferencing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ekiga_in_a_call.png
Free license

Figure 2: Video Conferencing on multiple devices

A video call that involves more than two people where all the parties can hear each other and a specific number of people can be seen by the others is called a video conference. The video screen appears as a grid with a number of screens that can be viewed simultaneously. The voice of the speaker is detected to show the video of the current speaker.

The way video conferencing works is that one video stream[6] is transmitted by each participant to a Multipoint Conferencing Unit (MCU). The MCU decides which of the streams to combine to form a single video stream to send to all the participants. For the audio portion, the MCU combines the audio streams from all the participants and transmits them to the recipients as a single stream.

Another simpler form of video conferencing available is a decentralized mode, where every person can see every other person, without any central control. This is in effect like multiple video calls from each person to every other person. This offers higher quality, but utilizes higher bandwidth because it requires a separate stream from each individual to every other person in the call. Skype offers a service called group calling which uses this philosophy.

Nowadays, with the use of High Definition (HD) cameras and videoconference solutions as a cloud offering, high quality video conferencing can be used with no fixed hardware investment. The meaning of “Cloud offering “is that all the hardware/ software is placed at a central location and not at the user premises. The only hardware needed at the user premises is a camera and a terminal (computer).

Telepresence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tandberg_Image_Gallery_-_telepresence-t3-side-view-hires.jpg
Creative Commons Attribution Required

Figure 3: Telepresence – a sophisticated video conference

Telepresence is a sophisticated form of a video conference, where a real life setting is simulated, so that it appears as if the other party is sitting in the same room. This requires specially designed rooms with cameras, TV screens and special seating arrangements. For example, one setting uses a curved or U-shaped seating; so that it appears that the other room is actually a different section of the same room. Also, the sound is transmitted as High Definition (HD), which makes it sound real. There are multiple screens, and each screen can display people from a room, or a projected document which can be viewed by all the rooms.

Telepresence solutions are provided by companies like Cisco, Polycom and so on, and usually used for corporate meetings across different geographical locations. These solutions are typically very expensive. For corporations or individuals cannot afford the upfront investment of a dedicated room, equipment and bandwidth required for telepresence, public telepresence rooms are offered on a rental basis in the important cities. (e.g. the Tata Public telepresence service).

Video Sharing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Teliris_VL_Unified_2.jpg
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Figure 4: Video Sharing

Video Sharing is an application where a person shares what he is viewing with another person in real time during a voice call. It uses a packet data connection parallel to the connection used for the voice call. When the video is shared, the recipient’s phone switches on automatically, and they can also in parallel continue the conversation. Some people also refer to an application that allows a user to upload his videos to a central location and make it available for viewing by others, for e.g. YouTube., as Video Sharing.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/resources/video-communication

National Telecom Policy, 1994

snehashish — 2013-03-15T05:51:52Z

The National Telecom Policy, 1994 was formulated for the purpose of opening up the Indian markets for foreign direct investment as well as domestic investment in the telecom sector. The Policy also aimed at providing ‘world class’ quality telecom services and development of telecom services in India. One of the main goals of the 1994 Policy was to increase accessibility to telecom services.

Objectives of the National Telecom Policy, 1994

The main objectives of the 1994 Policy[1]were:

Telecommunication to be accessible to all (telephone on demand)
Universal service (access to basic telecom services for all at a reasonable and affordable price)
‘world standard’ quality of service
Better customer services through efficient complaint redressal systems and dispute resolution mechanisms.
Growth in manufacturing and export of telecom equipment.
Protect the defence and security interest of India.

The target of the National Telecom Policy, 1994 was further revised due to rapid economic growth. The revised targets were:

Telephone to be available on demand by 1997.
All villages in India should have access to basic telephone services by 1997.
In urban area, a PCO should be provided for every 500 persons by 1997.
To make available value added services and to raise telecom services in India to international standard within the 8th Five year Plan (1992-1997), preferably by 1996.

The Status of Telecom Services Prior to Implementation of the National Telecom Policy, 1994

Before the implementation of the policy the telephone density in India was about 0.8 per hundred persons compared to world average of 10 per hundred persons. The telephone density in India was lower than that of other developing countries such as China, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Value Added Services

The sub-sector of value added services was opened for private investment in July, 1992 for the following services:

electronic mail,
voice mail,
data services,
audio text services,
video text services,
video conferencing,
radio paging and
cellular mobile telephone.

In case of services from (i) to (vi), companies registered in India were allowed to operate under a non-exclusive licence. Under the policy, limited number of companies may be granted licence for radio paging and cellular mobile telephone services. Selection of such companies shall be on the basis of a policy and a system of tendering. There were criteria which were applied for selection of companies for grant of licence. The criteria were:

Track record of the company.
Compatibility of the technology.
Usefulness of technology being offered for future development.
Protection of national security interests.
Ability to give best service to the customer at the most competitive cost.
Attractiveness of the commercial terms to the Department of Telecommunication.[2]

Hardware and Technological Aspects

India had already developed that capacity to manufacture necessary telecom equipment. For example, capacity for manufacture of switching equipment had exceeded 1.7 million lines per year in 1993 and was projected to exceed 3 million and the capacity was projected to exceed 3 million lines per year by 1997. The capacity to manufacture telephone instruments was claimed to be more than the requirement. Manufacturing units were also established to build capacity around production of wireless terminal equipment, Multi Access Radio Relay (MARR) for rural communication, optical fibre cables, underground cables, etc.

The Policy also advocated that there should be substantial investment in development of technology related to telecommunication.

Basic Services

The private companies registered in India may also assist the Department of Telecommunication in expanding the telecommunication by providing basic telephone services in rural areas. The Policy stated that such companies have to maintain a balance between urban and rural services and also confirm with the agreed revenue sharing and tariff arrangements.

Method of Implementation under the National Telecom Policy, 1994

The Policy laid down that it has to be implemented with keeping in mind interests of the consumers and there should be suitable arrangements to ensure fair competition.

Outcomes of the National Telecom Policy

In order to implement the NTP, 1994, licences were granted to eight Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (CMTS) operators. Two licences were granted in each of the metropolitan cities. In the second phase of implementation of the policy in December 1995 through a competitive bidding process and more than 14 CMTS licences were issued in 18 state circles and 6 Basic Telephone Service licences were issued in 27 cities and 18 state circles.

The Policy did not produce intended results because the revenue recovered by the cellular and basic operators was less than the expected return. Moreover, the operators were not able to arrange finance to fund their projects.

[1].National Telecom Policy, 1994, available at http://bit.ly/N4dlEk
[2].Para 9, National Telecom Policy, 1994 available at http://bit.ly/N4dlEk

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/resources/national-telecom-policy-1994

Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995

snehashish — 2013-03-15T06:10:46Z

In this module, Snehashish examines the purpose of the legislation, the persons affected by it, the administrative bodies which come under the Act, the penalties (including the consequences in case of non-compliance), appeal process and the debates surrounding the legislation.

Before the introduction of cable television in India, broadcasting was solely under the control of the State. The Government of India was caught unprepared with the emergence of cable networks and broadcasting through satellites in the early 1990s. The Government was not able to put a check on transmission and broadcast of television through foreign satellites.

The necessity of procuring licence for operating cable networks was first mentioned by the Rajasthan High Court in the case of Shiv Cable TV System v. State of Rajasthan.[1] In this case, the district magistrate ordered a ban on cable networks as they were being operated without licence. Subsequently the order of the district magistrate was challenged in the Rajasthan High Court on the ground that the order was in violation of fundamental right to freedom trade and profession. The high court held that there was no violation of the right to freedom of trade because cable networks fall within the definition of “wireless telegraph apparatus” under the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act and therefore it necessary to have licence to operate such network. This highlighted the need for having a framework for the regulation of cable networks in India which led to the enactment of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995.

Object of the Act

The object of the Act was to regulate the ‘haphazard mushrooming of cable television networks’. Due to the lack of licensing mechanism for cable operators; this resulted in large number of cable operators, broadcasting programmes without any regulation. The Act aimed at regulating content and operation of cable networks. This was due to the availability of signals from foreign television networks via satellite communication. The access to foreign television networks was considered to be a “cultural invasion” as these channels portrayed western culture. It also wanted to lay down the "responsibilities and obligations in respect of the quality of service both technically as well content wise, use of materials protected under the copyright law, exhibition of uncertified films, and protection of subscribers from anti-national broadcasts from sources inimical to national interests".

There were three amendments made to the Act.

The Act is divided into five chapters. The first chapter discusses the scope and extent of the Act and meaning of the terms used in the Act. The second chapter deals with "Regulation of Cable Television Network". The third chapter relates to "Seizure and Confiscation of certain Equipments". The fourth chapter focuses on "Offences and Penalties". The fifth chapter covers other miscellaneous provisions.

Regulation of Cable Television Network

The regulation of cable television network under the Act is ensured through a two step process. In order to keep track of cable operators, it has mandate a compulsory registration for cable operators. It also lays down provisions to regulate content to be broadcasted by the cable operator.

Registration of Cable Operators

In order to regulate cable television networks, it was made mandatory for cable television network operators to be registered.[2] Procedure for registration is laid down is section 5 of the Act. Any person who is operating or desires to operate a cable network may apply for registration to the registering authority.

An application for registration of cable operator has to be made under Form 1 along with the payment of fees of Rs.50 to the head post master within whose territorial jurisdiction the office of cable operator is situated. The registration certificate which is issued by the registering authority after inspection is valid for 12 months and can be renewed.

The registering authority may also refuse the registration of a cable operator. The reason for such refusal has to be recorded in writing and communicated to the applicant.

Section 4A was inserted into the Act by the TRAI (Amendment) Act, 2002. Section 4A deals with "transmission of programmes through addressable system". [Refer to section on “2003- Amendment to the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 (Amendment Act)"].

Content Regulation

The Central Government, in public interest can put an obligation on every cable operator to transmit or retransmit a programme[3] of any pay channel through addressable system. In public interest the central government may also ‘specify one or more free-to-air channels to be included in the package of channels’ (basic service tier). The Central Government may also, in public interest specify the maximum amount which can be charged by the operator to the subscriber for receiving the programmes transmitted in the basic service tier provided by such cable operators. The cable operators have to publicize to subscribers the subscription rates of each pay channel at regular intervals.

Sections 5 and 6 of the Act deal with advertisement code and programme code. All cable services should be in conformity with the codes. Under section 7, cable operators have to maintain a register as to the content transmitted or retransmitted. All cable operators shall compulsorily re-transmit Doordarshan channels.

Section 9 of the Act mandates ‘use of standard equipment in cable television network’. It is the duty of the cable operator to make sure that the cable television networks do not interfere with authorized telecommunication systems.

Offences and Penalties

Section 11 gives power to the authorized government authority to seize any cable operator’s equipment, if such officer has reason to believe that the cable operator is using the equipment without proper registration.

Sections 16, 17 and 18 of the Act deal with offences under the Act. They lay down punishments for any act which is in contravention with the provisions of the Act.

Section	Ingredients of the Offence	Penalty/ Fine
16	Anyone who is held to be in violation of the provisions of this Act	For the first offence: Imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years or with fine which may extend to Rs. 1000 or with both. For every subsequent offence: Imprisonment for a term which may extend to 5 years and with fine which may extend to Rs. 5000.

Section 17 deals with when an offence under this Act is committed by a company; in this case the person in charge will be liable.

The Act also gives power to the authorized officer[4] to prohibit the transmission of certain programmes in public interest under section 19 of the Act.

Under section 20 of the Act, the Central Government in public interest may prohibit the operation cable television network. The Central Government may make such an order in the interest of the (i) sovereignty and integrity of India; or (ii) security of India; or (iii) friendly relations of India with any foreign state; or (iv) public order, decency or morality.

2003- Amendment to the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 (Amendment Act)

Numerous complaints were received by the Government stating that there has been unreasonable price hike in cable television by the cable operators. Moreover, the cable operator were not paying appropriate revenue by concealing there income and under-reporting their income. The cable operators defended themselves by stating that the broadcasting industry is unregulated and they are forced to increase the price for proving cable television services as the broadcasting companies can increase the charges as per their wish. In order to address these problems, the government appointed a specialized task force.

Special task force in its study noted that the consumers do not have the choice to select the premium channels they wanted to watch rather it is provided to them in a bundle irrespective of the fact they want to subscribe to such channel or not. In order to give choice to the consumer it recommended the introduction of conditional access systems (CAS). This would require the consumers to set up set-top boxes which will allow the consumers to view all the free to air channel and he can choose to watch any of the premier channels for a charge.

This recommendation of the task force was introduced through the 2003 amendment to the Act. The main objective of the Amendment Act was to address to the frequent and arbitrary increase in cable charges. This was introduced section 4A which allowed operators to transmit pay channels through an addressable system[5]apart from basic package of free-to-air channels.

There was a lot controversy with respect to implementation of the CAS. In order to explain the controversy, it is important to understand the structure of the cable market. The cable market is divided into three categories. Broadcasters, who are at the top of the pyramid, the Multi-System Operators are in the middle and the local cable operators are at the bottom of the pyramid.

The 2003 Amendment introduced to CAS was welcomed by the broadcasters and the MSOs. But the consumer and the local cable service providers were unhappy with this decision because the consumers feared that they have to pay special rates for pay channels whereas the local operators were outraged because they believed that CAS would affect their revenue. Due to the adverse reaction from the consumers and the local cable operator, the government delayed the implementation of CAS indefinitely. This finally culminated in a case[6] before the Delhi High Court.

The Delhi High Court decided that implementation of CAS cannot be delayed. Subsequently to this, the government announced in 2004 that Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will be handling the problems regarding CAS and make recommendations on the same. TRAI recommended that CAS should be denotified and it can be re-introduced later when there is adequate regulation to properly implement it.

The government on the recommendation of TRAI withdrew the implementation of CAS. However, this decision was faced with a new challenge[7]and this time the single judge bench of the Delhi High Court held that the Government does not have any ground to suspend the CAS and it has disregarded the previous decision of the Delhi High Court in Jay Polychem case. Finally, the government re-introduced CAS but after issuing rules as to its working and implementation.

[1]. AIR 1993 Raj. 1997
[2]. Section 4 of the Act: "No person shall operate a cable television network unless he is registered a cable operator under this Act..."
[3]. Section 2(g): “programme means any television broadcast and includes –
i exhibition of films, features, dramas, advertisements and serials through video cassette recorders or video cassette player;
ii any audio or visual or audio-visual live performance or presentation and the expression “programming service” shall be construed accordingly
[4]. Section 2(a): authorized officer means within his local limit of jurisdiction
i a District Magistrate, or
ii a Sub Divisional Magistrate, or
iii a Commissioner of Police, and includes any other officer notified in the Official Gazette, by the Central Government or the State Government, to an authorized officer for such local limits of jurisdiction as may be determined by the Government.
[5]. Section 4-A, Explanation (a), Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995; Addressable system is defined as, "an electronic device or more than one electronic devices put in an integrated system through which signals of a cable television network can be sent in encrypted or unencrypted form, which can be decoded by the device or devices at the premises of the subscriber within the limits of authorisation made, on the choice and request of such subscriber, by the cable operator to the subscriber."
[6]. Jay Polychem v. Union of India, (2004) IV AD 249 (Del)
[7]. Hathaway Cable Datacom v. Union of India, 128 (2006) DLT 180

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/resources/cable-television-networks-regulation-act

The Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933

snehashish — 2013-03-15T06:16:55Z

In this module, Snehashish Ghosh throws light on the main objective of the Act — that of regulating the possession of wireless telegraphy apparatus.

The main objective of the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933 is ‘to regulate the possession of wireless telegraphy apparatus’. One of the major sources of revenue for the Indian State Broadcasting Service was revenue from the licence fee from working of wireless apparatus under the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.

The Indian State Broadcasting Service was losing revenue due to lack of legislation for prosecuting persons using unlicensed wireless apparatus as it was difficult to trace them at the first place and then prove that such instrument has been installed, worked and maintained without licence. Therefore, the current legislation was proposed, in order to prohibit possession of wireless telegraphy apparatus without licence.

Presently the Act is used to prosecute cases, related to illegal possession and transmission via satellite phones. Any person who wishes to use satellite phones for communication purposes has to get licence from the Department of Telecommunications. Recently foreign tourists were charged under this Act for illegal possession of satellite phones.[*]

The extent of the Act, definitions and key concepts are covered under sections 1 and 2 of the Act. Section 3 prohibits any person from possessing a ‘wireless telegraphy apparatus’ without a licence. Under section 2(2) of the Act, ‘wireless telegraphy apparatus’ is defined as:

"any apparatus, appliance, instrument or material used or capable of use in wireless communication, and includes any article determined by rule made under section 10 to be wireless telegraphy apparatus, but does not include any such apparatus, appliance, instrument or material commonly used for other electrical purposes, unless it has been specially designed or adapted for wireless communication or forms part of some apparatus, appliance, instrument or material specially so designed or adapted, nor any article determined by rule made under section 10 not to be wireless telegraphy apparatus."

The key ingredients of the definition are:

The definition covers all types of apparatus, appliance, instrument or material which can be used or utilized for the purpose of wireless communication.
It also covers all articles which are determined to be a wireless apparatus according to the rules made by the government.
The definition excludes any apparatus, appliance, and instrument or materials which are generally used for other electrical purposes. However, if such devices are designed or modified for wireless communication or is used as a part of such wireless communication device.
It also excludes articles determined by the government not to be wireless apparatus. The government may make rules to that effect.

The Central Government under section 4 has the power to make rules to exempt persons from the provision of the Act. Such exemption given by the Central Government may be a general exemption or based on certain conditions. It may exempt certain persons from the application of the Act, for certain wireless telegraphy apparatus only.

Under section 5, the telegraph authority constituted under the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 shall be the competent authority to issue licences under this Act.

Section 6 deals with offences and penalties under the Act.

Section	Ingredients	Penalty/Fine
6(1)	Whoever possesses any wireless telegraphy apparatus, other than a wireless transmitter, without a licence	In the case of the first offence: Fine which may extend to Rs. 100. In the case of a second or subsequent offence: Fine which may extend to two hundred and fifty rupees.
6(1A)	Whoever possesses any wireless transmitter without a licence	Imprisonment: extend to three years, or with fine which may extend to Rs. 1000 or with both.

In the context of evidentiary value, the court might presume that a person is in possession of a wireless telegraphy apparatus under the circumstances that such apparatus is under his ostensible charge or it is present in a place or premise over which he as effective control.

In a trial of an offence under section 6, if the accused is convicted then the court shall also decide whether the apparatus used or involved in the offence should be confiscated. If the court decides in favour of confiscation then it must also pass an order of confiscation.

Under section 7 the Act, gives power to any officer specially empowered by the Central Government to search any building, vessel or place if he has reason to believe that there is any wireless telegraphy apparatus which has been used to commit offence under section 6 of the Act, is kept or concealed. The office also has the power to confiscate the apparatus.

Under section 8, all wireless telegraphy apparatus which has been confiscated by the Central Government under section 6(3) shall be considered as the property of the Central Government. All wireless telegraphy apparatus which does not have any ostensible owner shall also belong to the Central Government.

Section 9 was repealed by the India Wireless Telegraphy (Amendment) Act, 1940.

Section 10 gives power to the Central Government to make rules through notification in the official gazette with respect to give effect to provisions under the Act. The Act lays down few general subjects on which the Central Government has the power to make rules under the Act. They are:

Rules to determine whether any article or class of article shall fall within the definition of ‘wireless telegraphy apparatus’ under the Act.

Rules regarding licences. (manner, conditions, issue, renewal, suspension and cancellation of licence).

Eligibility for the purpose of being exempted from the application of this Act (Sec.4).

Maintenance of records as to sale, acquisition of wireless telegraphy apparatus by dealers.

Conditions with respect to sale of wireless telegraphy apparatus by dealer and manufactures of such apparatus.

The Central Government may impose a fine of upto hundred rupees in the case of breach of such rules.

Section 11 expressly mentions that no provision under the Act shall authorise any person to do any act which is prohibited under the India Telegraph Act, 1885. It also mentions that any licence under the Act shall not authorise any act in contravention of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.

[*].Rajeev Dikshit, DoT nod for use of satellite phones a must, The Times of Inda Jun 27, 2012 available at http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-27/varanasi/32440227_1_satellite-phone-thuraya-dot-nod

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/resources/indian-wireless-telegraphy-act

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997

snehashish — 2013-03-15T06:21:43Z

The main objective of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997 (TRAI Act) was to establish the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT). The main purpose of these two institutions established under the TRAI Act is to regulate telecommunication services, adjudicate disputes, dispose appeals and protect the interest of the service providers as well as the consumers. The Act also aims at promoting and ensuring orderly growth of the telecom sector.

A bill to establish a non-statutory telecom regulator was proposed in the Parliament by the Government through an amendment to the Indian Telegraph Act, 1985. However, this proposal was dropped by the Parliament because several Members of the Parliament argued for a statutory telecom regulator. TRAI was then constituted under the presidential ordinance[1] issued in 1997, later it was ratified by the Parliament by enacting the TRAI Act. Subsequently, TRAI Act went through major amendments in the year 2000.

Amendment to the TRAI Act

The TRAI Act was amended through the TRAI (Amendment) Act, 2000 (“Amendment Act”). Before the amendment, TRAI exercised both regulatory and dispute resolution functions. The Amendment Act established the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal to solely deal with relevant disputes. There was ambiguity in the Act as to whether TRAI recommendations are binding upon the Government; this was clarified by the Amendment Act.

Independent Telecom Regulatory Authority

In Delhi Science Forum v. Union of India, the Supreme Court while deciding on the constitutionality of the National Telecom Policy, 1994 observed that it is necessary that the telecom regulator should be an independent body. National Telecom Policy, 1994 allowed for private participation in the telecommunication sector, and in the light of this policy change the Supreme Court also emphasized on the necessity of an independent statutory authority in a deregulated and competitive telecom market.

Government Control over TRAI

TRAI is not a completely independent telecom regulator. The Government exercises certain amount of control over TRAI. Under section 25 of the Act it has the power to issue directions which are binding on TRAI. The TRAI is also funded by the Central Government. Moreover, under section 35 of the TRAI Act, the Central Government has the power to make rules on various subjects and such rules are binding upon TRAI. Therefore, TRAI is not a completely independent telecom regulator as envisioned by the Supreme Court.

Scheme of the TRAI Act

The TRAI Act contains six chapters. Chapter 1 deals with applicability of the Act, key concepts and definitions. Chapter 2 contains provisions for constitution of the TRAI. Chapter 3 deals with the powers and functions of TRAI. Chapter 4 deals with establishment of appellate tribunal, TDSAT and the procedure of the appellate tribunal. Chapter V deals with finance, accounts and audit of the two institutions established under the Act. Chapter 6 consists of miscellaneous provisions for the purpose of smooth functioning of the two institutions created under the Act.

Constitution of TRAI

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) was established as a corporation under Section 3 of the Act. The head office of TRAI is in New Delhi. TRAI constitutes of a chairperson and less than two, full time and part-time members. The chairperson and the members of TRAI are appointed by the Central Government and the duration for which they can hold their office is three years or until they attain the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier. The persons who are appointed should have special knowledge and prior experience in the field of telecommunication, industry, finance, accountancy, law, management or consumer affairs. If someone, who has been in the service of the Government prior to appointment then he should have served the Government in the capacity of a Secretary or Additional Secretary for a period more than three years.

Section 8 deals with procedure to be followed with respect to meetings of TRAI. All questions before TRAI will be decided by a majority vote of the members, present and voting. The person who is presiding the meeting will entitled to a second or casting vote.

The TRAI may also appoint officers and employees in order to carry out its function under this Act. Currently the officers and employees of TRAI are divided into nine divisions. The divisions are:

Mobile network division;
Fixed network division;
Converged network division; (iv) quality of service division;
Broadcast and cable services division;
Economic division (vii) financial analysis and internal finance and accounts division;
Legal division and (ix) administration and personnel division.

Powers and Functions of TRAI

The functions of the TRAI are enumerated under section 11 of the TRAI Act. The function mentioned under the provision has an overriding effect on any provision of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.

The 2000 Amendment classified the TRAI’s functions into four broad categories:

Making recommendations on various issues;
General administrative and regulatory functions;
Fixing tariffs and rates for telecom services; and
Any other functions entrusted by the Central Government.

The functions of the TRAI are:

The recommendations made by the TRAI are not binding on the Central Government. However, the Central Government has to mandatorily ask for recommendations from TRAI with respect to need and timing of new service provider and terms and conditions of the licence to be granted to the service provider. TRAI has the obligation to forward the recommendation to the Central Government within 60 days from the date of the request for recommendation. TRAI may also request for relevant information or documents from the Central Government to make such recommendations and the Central Government has to furnish such information within seven days from the date of the request.

The Central Government can issue licence to the service provider, if TRAI fails to give any recommendation within the stipulated period. Where the Central Government is of the opinion that the recommendations made by TRAI cannot be accepted or need modification, then it can send them back to TRAI for reconsideration. TRAI may reply within a period of 15 days from the date of reference.

TRAI also has the power to notify in the official gazette the rates at which telecommunication services are being provided in and outside India. TRAI shall ensure transparency while exercising its powers and discharging its functions.

TRAI under section 12 has the power to call for information and conduct investigation. It also has got powers to issue directions under section 13.

Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal

The Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal (Tribunal) is established under section 14 of the Act. It is the sole dispute resolution body in the communication sector. It can adjudicate upon any dispute between:

Licensor (Central Government) and a licensee.
Two or more service providers.
Between a service provider and a group of consumers.

However, the Tribunal does not have any jurisdiction to try any matter which deals with anti-competitive trade practices or any consumer complaint.

Grounds and Procedures for Appeal to the Tribunal (Section 14A)

The Central Government, State Government, any local authority or any person can approach the Tribunal for adjudication on matters related to dispute between parties mentioned above.

It can make recommendation either on its own accord or on the request of the Government on the following matters:
- Need and timing of new service provider.
- Terms and conditions of the licence which may be granted to the service provider.
- Revocation of licence for not following the term and conditions of the licence.
- Measures to facilitate competition in the market and promote efficiency and growth in the telecom sector.
- Type of equipment to be used by service provider.
- Technological improvements in the services.
- Measure for development of telecommunication technology.
- Spectrum management.
The TRAI also has to discharge certain functions apart from making recommendations to the Government:
- Ensure compliance with the terms and conditions of the licence.
- Fix the terms and conditions of inter-connectivity between service providers.
- Ensure technical compatibility and effective inter-connection between different service providers.
- Regulate any arrangement between service providers for sharing of revenue derived from providing telecommunication services.
- Lay down standards for quality of service and also ensure and conduct periodal survey as to implementation of standards for quality of service.
- Lay down and ensure the time period for implementing local and long distance circuits of telecommunication between different service providers.
- Maintain register of interconnect agreements between service providers and such register should be made available to any member of the public for inspection on payment of a fee.
- Ensure effective compliance with the universal service obligations.
- Levy fees and charges at such rate and for services as determined by regulations.[2]

TRAI under section 12 has the power to call for information and conduct investigation. It also has got powers to issue directions under section 13.

Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal

Licensor (Central Government) and a licensee.
Two or more service providers.
Between a service provider and a group of consumers.

However, the Tribunal does not have any jurisdiction to try any matter which deals with anti-competitive trade practices or any consumer complaint.

Grounds and Procedures for Appeal to the Tribunal (Section 14A)

The Central Government, State Government, any local authority or any person can approach the Tribunal for adjudication on matters related to dispute between parties mentioned above.
An appeal can be referred to the Tribunal in case any party [3] is aggrieved by the decision of TRAI. However, such appeal has to be made to the Tribunal within 30 days from the date on which the party receives a copy of the decision or direction given by TRAI. However, the Telecom Tribunal may condone the delay provided that there is a reasonable ground justifying the delay.[4]
The Tribunal will pass an order after giving an opportunity to be heard, to the parties to the dispute.
The Tribunal is also obligated to send a copy of the order passed by it to TRAI.
In case of appeal from the decision of TRAI, the Tribunal should try to dispose of the case at the earliest and try to give a decision within 90 days from the date of appeal.

Composition of the Tribunal (Section 14B)

The Tribunal consists of a chairperson and two other members, appointed by the Central Government. Selection of chairperson and the two members is done in consultation with Chief Justice of India.

Qualification and term of office of the Chairperson and Members

The minimum qualification for a Chairperson is that he is or has been a judge of the Supreme Court or a Chief Justice of a High Court and the minimum qualification for a member is that he should have been at the post of a secretary to the Central Government or at any equivalent post in the Central Government. A person can also be qualified as a member of the Tribunal if he has held the position of Secretary under the State Government for a period more than two years and has knowledge and experience in technology, telecommunication, industry, commerce or administration.

Term of Office

The Chairperson can hold office till he attains the age of 75 or completes three years, whichever is earlier. The members of the Tribunal can hold office till they attain the age of 65 years or complete three years, whichever is earlier.

Procedure of the Tribunal

Procedure and powers of the Tribunal is laid down under section 16 of the TRAI Act. The Civil Procedure Code, 1908 which lays down the procedure of the conventional courts is not applicable to the Tribunal.

An appeal from the Tribunal’s final order in a matter can be directly referred to the Supreme Court under section 18 of the TRAI Act. However, in the circumstance where the Tribunal has passed an order with the consent of the parties to the dispute, no appeal can be made to any court or tribunal.

Within five years of its creation the Tribunal has already decided 400 cases consisting of complex questions of law.

[1].Presidential ordinance is TRAI Ordinance (No. 11 of 1997).
[2].Regulation means regulations made by the TRAI under this Act.
[3].Any party includes the Central Government, State Government, any local authority or any person.
[4].Bharati Telnet v. Union of India, (2005) 4 SCC 72.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/resources/trai-act-1997

Spectrum Management

snehashish — 2013-03-15T07:07:47Z

Snehashish takes us through the entire process of spectrum management — auctioning and allocation process for all kinds of spectrum, the initial process of auctioning, how the bidders are selected, criterion for allocation, time taken to allocate, selection of band, interference issues, spectrum refarming, and spectrum reallocation.

3.5.1. Unit 1: Auctioning and allocating process for all kinds of spectrum
3.5.2. Unit 2: The initial process of auctioning
3.5.3. Unit 3: How are the bidders selected
3.5.4. Unit 4: Criterion for allocation
3.5.5. Unit 5: Time taken to allocate
3.5.6. Unit 6: Selection of band
3.5.7. Unit 7: Interference issues
3.5.8. Unit 8: Spectrum Refarming
3.5.9. Unit 9: Spectrum Reallocation

3.5.1: Auctioning and allocating process for all kinds of spectrum

Auction of spectrums was introduced in the telecommunication market after the failure of the administrative process of allocating spectrum. In auction theory, an auction takes place when there is a seller who wishes to allocate an object to one of ‘n’ buyers.[1] Auctions use a price mechanism to allocate spectrum. Auction of spectrum can be used to increase efficiency and earn maximum revenue. However, auctions of spectrum also have certain drawbacks such as collusion and higher price of telecom services due to high licence fees.

Some of the different types of auction formats are:

First-price sealed bid auction: The highest bidder wins the auction. Such highest bidder pays an amount equal to the bid amount and it is not essential that the bidder with the highest value will place the highest bid. The bid is based on the speculation what other bidders will be bidding.
Second-price sealed bids auction (Vickery auction): This procedure of auction is similar to first price sealed bid auction. The highest bidder wins the auction but he has to pay the price equal to the second highest bid.
Dutch auction: The auctioneer quotes the highest price for the subject matter of the auction and gradually decreases price. The first one to bid for it wins the auction.
English or Japanese auction: In English auction, the auctioneer quotes the minimum price and the buyer bids an amount higher than the minimum price. The bidding is closed when there is no increase in the amount and the highest bidder wins the auction. The other variant of English auction is Japanese auction. In this format, the auctioneer quotes a low price and gradually increases the price which is pre-determined. The bidders should show willingness to buy at the price quoted by the auctioneer. The bidding closes when only one bidder is left, who is willing to buy the object at the price quoted by the auctioneer.

Minimum Reserve Price

The minimum reserve price is generally fixed with the purpose of increasing revenue. Minimum reserve price is the minimum amount which the auctioneer is ready to auction the object for. The computing of minimum reserve price is a complicated affair. The computing of minimum reserve price requires knowledge about the distribution of valuations of bidders.[2]

Beauty Contest

The other mode of allotment of spectrum is through beauty contest. In a beauty contest, generally a committee is constituted which sets a certain standard and requirements which has to be fulfilled for the allocation of the spectrum. Contenders for the spectrum allocation is then evaluated and decided upon an entity which has the best capabilities to carry out functions.

“In the case of spectrum allocation for mobile services, criteria set out beforehand can include general criteria such as financial resources, reliability and investment in research, as well as more specific criteria such as the speed of network rollout, the requirement for geographic and/or population coverage, pricing, quality, technology and competitiveness.”

In case of auction the price mechanism to be implemented is crucial whereas in a beauty contest it is one of the requirements.[3]

3.5.2. & 3.5.3.: The initial process of selection of operators for allocation of spectrum

This selection will explore the changes in the selection process for allocation of spectrum with changes in the policy. This will look at

Auctioning of spectrum under the National Telecom Policy, 1994
Bundling of spectrum with the service licence
Delinking of spectrum from the licence and return to the auction format for allocation of licence

India had an early start in the field of auctioning of spectrum. Initially, under the 1994 policy, spectrum was included within the telecom licence. The licences were auctioned by the Department of Telecommunication, the incumbent regulator, policy maker and enforcer.

The National Telecom Policy, 1994, acknowledged the fact that it was not possible for the Government, alone to achieve targets under the Policy and there was a need for private participation. As a result, in 1995, the Government invited bids for private investment through a competitive process in the field of basic telecom services sector.

For the implementation of the service the country was divided into 20 circles. It was further categorized in A, B and C on the basis of the potential of the region to generate revenue. The Department of Telecom awarded licences to two operators per service area for cellular mobile telephone services and in case of basic telephone services.

The potential service providers in order to be eligible for bidding for licences had to partner up with a foreign company. It was considered that a standalone Indian company will not have the financial capability and technical know-how to provide cellular/basic telecom services at a large scale.

The bidding was a two stage process for all licences. The first stage was to fulfill the criteria, which was based on the financial net worth of the company (in relation to the category of circle) and the experience of the company in providing telecom services. The second stage was with respect to the valuation of bids. The licence was awarded to the telecom service provider, which has fulfilled the pre-requisites and is the highest bidder for the licence. Single stage bidding process was followed in circles. There were separate licences issued for the four metropolitan cities (Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, and New Delhi). The licences were awarded through beauty contest in metros.

The technology preferred for cellular services was GSM and for basic telephone service, a combination of fibre optics and wireless in local loop technology was implemented. In 1995, Government auctioned 2*4.4. MHz of startup spectrum for the GSM based mobile services.

Drawbacks in the mechanism of issuing telecom licence

The problem which arose due to the implementation of the above model is that multiple licences were awarded to a single entity. A single company was able to secure licences for nine circles and had a very high bid. This created problems as to the ability of the company to pay the licence amount for all the circles. In figures the annual turnover of the company was $0.06 billion where as the estimated licence fee was $15 billion. There were also concerns with respect to replacing the public monopoly on telecom services with a private one. In order to counter these problems the Government changed its policy and allowed the winning bidder to choose 3 circles out of the nine circles. There was rebidding in 15 circles with the government specifying a reserve price. This was due to the change in policy as the highest bidder was not able to operate in more than 3 circles. The response to this was very poor and it was perceived by the bidders that the reserve price was too steep.

Spectrum Management under New Telecom Policy, 1999

The policy on spectrum management under the NTP, 1999:

With the immense growth in new technologies there has been an increase in demand for telecommunication services. This has led to increase in demand for spectrum and therefore it is necessary that the spectrum should be utilized efficiently, economically, rationally and optimally.
Transparent process of allocation of frequency spectrum.
Revision of the National Frequency Allocation Plan (NFAP) and such a Plan to be made public by the end of year 1999. The NFAP will detail information about allocation of frequency bands.
NFAP is to be reviewed no later than every two years and it should be in tune with regulation under the International Telecommunication Union.
Adequate spectrum should be available, to meet the increase in need of telecommunication services.
Revision of spectrum allocation, in a planned manner in order to make available required frequency bands to the service providers.
Allocation of spectrum of frequency should be in conformity with the ITU guidelines. The following action will be adopted:

Spectrum usage fee shall be charged
Inter-Ministerial Group to be constituted, it will be known as Wireless Planning Coordination Committee. It will be a part of the Ministry of Communication for the purpose of review of spectrum availability.
Computerization of WPC wing

Implementation of the Spectrum Management Policy under NTP, 1999

With the advent of the 1999 Policy, cellular mobile service providers were allowed to provide all kinds of mobile services (voice, non-voice messages, data services and PCOs), which would utilize any type of network equipment that meets the ITU/TEC (International Telecommunication Union/ Telecommunication Engineering Centre) standards. It is also to be noted that the mandate of only using GSM was done away with and the cellular licence was made technology neutral. The New Telecom Policy, 1999 allowed the migration of the licensees from a Fixed Licensee Fee Regime to a Revenue Arrangement Scheme (w.e.f. 1/08/1999). The National Telecom Policy also laid down that the licences will be awarded for a period of 20 years and it can be extended for a period of another 10 years. The Government entered the telecom market as the third mobile operator. It granted licence to MTNL in 1997 for two metros (Delhi and Mumbai). In 2000, cellular mobile operator licence was granted to BSNL, as the third operator for all areas except Mumbai and Delhi. The 900 MHz band was given to the government operator on a pro-bono basis. In 2001, a fourth cellular mobile service operator was allowed in the telecom sector. The licence for the fourth operator was issued through a three stage auction. A start-up spectrum of 2*4.4 MHz in 1800 MHz was allotted to the winner of the auction. The licensees were also required to pay a percentage of annual revenue as spectrum charge. This was collected in addition to the entry fees.[6]

The other licences which were rolled out under the NTP, 1999 are licences for National Long Distance Service operators (without any bar on number of operators), International Long Distance Service and Internet Service Providers.

Unified Access Service Licence

In 2003, TRAI proposed a Unified Licensing Regime which was introduced by the Government in November, 2003. The unified access service licence “permitted an access service provider to offer both fixed and/or mobile services under the same licence, using any technology.” [8] An entry fee was charged, which was based on the bid price paid by the fourth mobile operator.[9]

The TRAI reviewed the spectrum allocation process in the year 2005. It took into account spectrum availability and also considered efficient techniques for the utilization of already allocated spectrum. The consultation paper prepared by the TRAI in 2005 stated that the spectrums allocated by the GSM and CDMA operators are well below the international averages. TRAI recommended that the existing operators should be allocated sufficient spectrum before allocating spectrum to new service providers.

Allocation of 3G and Broadband Wireless Spectrum

Spectrum for 3G and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) was auctioned using the simultaneous ascending auction process. It involved a two stage process. A clock stage in order to indentify the winner for each circle which was followed by a assignment stage, for identification of specific frequency band. The auction of spectrum for 3G and BWA generated a gross revenue of Rs. 106262 crores for the Department of Telecom, across the 22 telecom circles.

3.5.4 & 3.5.6.: Selection of Band and Criterion for further allocation of spectrum

This section will go into the details of the allocation of specific bandwidth across various frequency bands and also analyze the change in allocation criterion for allocation of spectrum. This will also look at the process of allocation followed by India which has been quite different from the international practices due to hoarding of spectrum by the defense forces. It will also bring out the concern showed by TRAI as to scarcity of spectrum and shortcomings in the allocation of spectrum as compared to the international practices.

Start-up Allocation of Spectrum (1995- 2001)

Before the liberalization of the telecom sector, the bandwidth intended for commercial exploitation was under the control of the Defence forces in India. This consisted of 800 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz frequency bands. The commercial exploitation of the spectrum started with the grant of the Cellular Mobile Telephone services in the metro cities.

As discussed in Module 3.5.1(add link), the first round of auction of spectrum was for two CMTS licences in each circles. The DoT auctioned 2*4.4 MHz (paired frequency division duplex spectrum assignment) for GSM technology in the frequency band of 890-915 MHz paired with 935-960 MHz in each circle.

Subsequently, the Government entered the market as the third cellular operator in the 2001. A bandwidth of 2*4.4 was allocated to the start up government cellular operators free of charge in the 900 MHz band. The fourth cellular operator entered the market in 2001 and a start up spectrum of bandwidth 2*4.4 MHz was allocated to the operators in the frequency band 1710-1785 MHz paired with 1805-1880 MHz.

The Department of Telecom also allowed further allocation of spectrum apart from the start up spectrum allocations. This was based on the availability and justification provided by the operator for allocation of more bandwidth. In 2002, the Department of Telecom introduced the Subscriber Based Criterion for the allocation of spectrum. According to this criterion, surplus spectrum would be allocated to the operator, with a certain amount of subscriber base. This was followed by allocation of 2*12.5 MHz bandwidth to each operator within each circle.

However, this method of allocation of spectrum was totally different from the allocation of spectrum in the other countries. A sizeable bandwidth of 2*15 MHz was allocated as start-up spectrum in various countries. This was not the case in India and the Department of Telecom cited that due to non-availability and hoarding of spectrum by defence such a policy had to be adopted.

Table 1: Allocation of Spectrum on the basis of the “Subscriber Based Criterion”, 2002

Quantum of Spectrum Allotted	Minimum Subscriber Base Required (in millions)	Annual Spectrum Charges (per cent of the adjusted gross revenue)
2*4.4 MHz	-	2
2*6.2 MHz	-	3
2*8.0 MHz	0.5	3
2*10 MHz	1.0	4
2*12.5 MHz	1.2	5

*Source: Vardharajan Sridhar, The Telecom Revolution in India: Technology, Policy and Regulation, Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 112

Post UASL Regime (2003-2005)

After the implementation of the Unified Access Service Licence, the basic telecom service operators were allowed to provide full mobility service for a payment of a entry fee which was equivalent to that paid by the fourth cellular operator. However, such operators migrating to UASL regime were not promised any start up spectrum but it would allocate as and when available.

Review of Spectrum Allocation Process by TRAI and setting up of new Subscriber Base Criterion (2006-2008)

TRAI reviewed the spectrum allocation process in 2005 with the intent to account for unused spectrum and optimum and efficient utilization of scarce resource such as spectrum. The TRAI found that the maximum spectrum allocated to an operator is 2*10 MHz whereas the international average is around 2*20 MHz.

The main problem faced by allocation of spectrum was due to use of spectrum by defence forces and the railways.

Ministry of Defence and Railways uses sizeable portion of the 900 MHz frequency band for navigation and other purposes. It also uses the 1900 MHz band. The Defence Forces utilize 2*20 bandwidth at 1880-1900 MHz paired with 1970-1990 MHz for fixed wireless local loop technology.
The 1900 MHz could not be utilized because the Air Force uses the frequency band.

The TRAI also commented that in the 800 MHz band only a maximum of 2*5 MHz had been allocated to the CDMA operators whereas the world average standards stand at 2*15 MHz for CDMA operations.

The TRAI while observing that the allocation of the spectrum for both GSM and CDMA operators was way below international average spectrum allocation standards recommended that the existing service operators should be provided with more spectrum than before allowing new players to enter the market as there was already a fair amount of competition in the market.

The 2006, TRAI Recommendations on implementation 3G, noted that the Ministry of Defence will vacate 2*20 MHz frequency band in the 1800 MHz band along with 25 MHz in the 2.1 GHz UMTS band. In its recommendation TRAI suggested that the additional spectrum vacated by the defence forces in the 1800 MHz band should be allocated to the operators providing 2G services and it specifically recommended that the Department of Telecom should not treat the allocation of 3G spectrum as a continuation of 2G spectrum allocation.

TRAI recommendations in 2007 suggested that there should not be any limitation on the number of players in the telecom sector. The grant of new licences resulted in a list of license holders who were to be assigned spectrum as and when available. TRAI in its 2007 recommendation noted that the spectrum allocation criteria should be formulated in such a manner so that maximum and efficient utilization of the spectrum can be achieved. This led to the tightening of the Subscriber Base Criterion previously laid down by the DoT (Table 1).

Quantum of Spectrum Allotted	Minimum Subscriber Base Required (in millions)	Annual Spectrum Charges (percentage of the adjusted gross revenue)
For GSM Services
2*4.4 MHz	-	2
2*6.2 MHz	0.5 – 0.8	3
2*7.2 MHz	1.5 – 3.0
2*8.2 MHz	1.8 – 4.1	3
2*9.2 MHz	2.1 – 5.3
2*10.2 MHz	2.6 – 6.8	4
2*11.2 MHz	3.2 – 6.8
2*12.2 MHz	4.0 – 9.0	5
2*14.2 MHz	5.7 – 10.7	5
2*15 MHz	6.5 – 11.6	6
For CDMA Services
2*3.75 MHz	0.15 – 0.40	2
2*5.0 MHz	0.5 – 1.2	2

*Source: Vardharajan Sridhar, The Telecom Revolution in India: Technology, Policy and Regulation, Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 115

Allocation of 3G Spectrum (2010-Current)

In 2008, the Department of Telecom announced its policy on 3G mobile services. Pursuant to the 2006 TRAI Recommendations on Allocation and pricing of spectrum for 3G and Broadband Wireless Access, the Department of Telecom decided on a simultaneous ascending auction for allocation of spectrum. According to the recommendation, the Department of Telecom would allot 2*5 MHz bandwidth in the 2.1 GHz band.

3.5.5.: Time taken to allocate

This section will look at the issues with respect to time taken by the Department of Telecom to allocate spectrum to the winning bidders. The Department of Telecom on various occasions has delayed the process of assigning specific frequency bands after allocation of spectrum. This has in turn resulted in delay in rolling out of services by the telecom operators.

There has been substantive delay in allocation of spectrum due to various other reasons, which has been listed in the Report on Examination of Appropriateness of Procedures followed by Department of Telecommunications in Issuance of Licences and Allocation of Spectrum during the Period 2001- 2009. However, according to the Report, the main reasons for the delay are:

Deviation from laid down procedures
Inappropriate application of laid down procedures
Violation of underlying principles of laid down procedures[9]

For instance:

Ongoing litigation with respect to allocation of spectrum
During the first instance of allocation of spectrum for the metro cellular licences; the process was marred by litigation which resulted in delay in allocation of spectrum. Subsequently, there was delay in rolling out of service and the operators suffered huge losses and most of the telecom companies were rendered bankrupt.
Lack of availability/co-ordination with the defence for vacation of spectrum
Initial as well as additional spectrum was allocated as per availability. Such delays were sometime more than a year, which amounted in not only loss of profit for the licence holder but also huge losses in revenue for the Department of Telecom.
Delay in processing of application
For example in allocation of additional spectrum for Idea Cellular Limited in the Maharashtra Service Area, there was a delay of four months given that co-ordination with the Defence was done by December 10, 2004. Spectrum was only allocated by April 1, 2005.

3.5.7. Interference issues

This section will deal with the issues regarding interference in the telecommunication sector. Interference can be defined as noise or unwanted signals which are received by a reception device while receiving the wanted signals. Interference causes degradation of quality of service in the telecommunication.

There is no specific policy in India which deals with interference issues. Interference issues in the telecom sector in India, is generally addressed by Wireless Monitoring Organization which functions under the Wireless Planning Coordination Committee. Telecom operator licences also carries covenant which states:

"The licensee shall not cause or allow causing harmful interference to other authorized users of radio spectrum. For elimination of harmful interference to other user, licensee shall abide by all instructions and orders issued by the Government."[10]

Under the Use of low power Equipment in the frequency band 2.4 GHz to 2.4835 GHz (Exemption from Licensing Requirement) Rules, 2005, interference is defined as, "The effect of unwanted energy due to one or a combination of emissions, radiations or induction upon reception in a radio communication system, manifested by any performance degradation, misinterpretation, or loss of information which could be extracted in the absence of such unwanted energy."[11]

A licensee can approach the Wireless Monitoring Organization (WMO) and lodge a complaint if such operator is facing problems due to interference with other radio signals. In such a circumstance the WMO, enquires in to the matter and finds the source of interference addresses the issues accordingly. The WMO also has wireless monitoring stations which look in to and investigates any issue related interference. The WMO has introduced mobile monitoring vans to effectively find out the source of signals causing interference. The wireless monitoring stations intercepts the interfering signal to determine the source of the signal.

3.5.8. & 3.5.9.: Spectrum Refarming and Spectrum Reallocation

This section will look at the process of refarming of spectrum and also analyze the current (2012) debates on spectrum refarming in India.

Refarming of spectrum is defined as a process which is used to bring about any basic change in the use of different frequency band in the radio spectrum. This can be due to

Change in technology
Change in application and used of the frequency band
Change in Government policy on allocation of spectrum.

Refarming of spectrum entails freeing up of spectrum which is in use and reallocation of such spectrum for some other purpose. It can happen due to change in technology which allows more efficient use of spectrum and hence results in vacation of spectrum. The two main instruments which effects spectrum refarming and reallocation are

Market Driven
Policy or Regulation Driven

Market Driven

A need for spectrum refarming may arise due to the changes in the market such a entry of new players in the market. A market driven refarming and reallocation will take in to consideration financial and business related factors. For example a new entrant in the telecom market will always welcome refarming of spectrum in the 800 MHz or 900 MHz because it will bring down the infrastructure costs incurred by the new player in the market.[12]

Policy or Regulation Driven

The policy driven change is an administrative changes. The main aspects which are taken into consideration by the policy maker or regulator are:

Market Structure: The regulator may implement refarming of spectrum to allow refarming and reallocation of spectrum for facilitating competition in the market. The regulator has to take into consideration the costs incurred by the telecom operators or users of the spectrum for relocating to a different frequency band.
Access: The regulator may allow refarming of spectrum in order to implement new technologies which allows for better access and efficient use of spectrum.
Revenue: The regulator may consider refarming and reallocation of spectrum in order to earn revenue and also allow equity in distribution of spectrum. Spectrum being a scarce resource has to be judiciously allocated by the regulator. Spectrum which was previously allocated for almost two decade ago holds more value in the market due to change in technology as well as the market structure. Therefore, in order to earn revenue the government may refarm and reallocate spectrum.

The main challenge with respect to refarming and reallocation of spectrum is that who will bear the cost for such changes in the spectrum usage and allocation and the transition to a different frequency band. Normally, such a change in spectrum usage is compensated by the:

Telecom companies who have to re-buy the spectrum at a higher price
New telecom companies
Government may set up a refarming fund for such reallocation from the spectrum revenue. For example, such a fund exists in France and it is managed by the Agence Nationale Des Fréquences. (National Frequency Agency).

Refarming and Reallocation in India

According to TRAI in its Recommendation Auction of Spectrum, 2012 discusses the concept of spectrum refarming and states:

"Refarming of spectrum involves re-planning and reassigning of spectrum over a period of time for services with higher value. A key motive for refarming of spectrum is to use the refarmed frequency bands for communications services that yield greater economic or social benefit than existing use as well as to enable the introduction of new or emerging technologies." (para 2.6)

Previously the TRAI in its Recommendation on Licensing Framework and Spectrum Management, 2010 had pointed out that 800 MHz and 900 MHz should be refarmed for use of new technology (UMTS 900), which would allow more efficient use of the spectrum.

In the 2012 Recommendation, TRAI has made detailed suggestions by taking into consideration international practices, different methodologies of refarming of spectrum and comments from the stakeholders. The main recommendations are:

Spectrum in the 900 MHz band is a valuable asset both technologically and economically. Use of 900 MHz spectrum should be liberalized and restriction on the use of technology in the licence should be done away with.
It advises the government to take back 900 MHz from the licensees, who were granted licence in 1994-1995 and the two government operators. These licensees should be granted licence for liberalized spectrum at 1800 MHz frequency band at a price relevant in November, 2014
It also recommended that the 1800 MHz is not completely open for commercial exploitation and the government agencies should vacate the frequency band for successful refarming of 900 MHz.
The licence holder in the 800 MHz band should be reallocated to 1900 MHz band and it strongly recommends that the government should make immediate arrangements to refarm 800 MHz and reallocate licence holder to the 1900 MHz band.

Recently in October, 2012, The Telecom Commission under the Department of Telecom has also recommended refarming of all spectrum used by the telecom companies in the 900 MHz frequency bands during the next phase of renewal of licence. The Commission’s recommendation implies that the complete 900 MHz band has to be reallocated.

In the light of the above recommendation, the telecom companies will have the option of shifting from 900 MHz to 1800 MHz, for which auctions are happening in 2012m or it can bid for 900 MHz auctions schedule to happen in early 2013.These recommendations, if implemented may result in huge investments by the telecom companies and would affect the end users. In 2012, the minimum reserve for auction of 1800 MHz spectrum is set at Rs. 14000 crores and the minimum reserve price for auction of 900 MHz would be twice the amount. The existing licence holder in the 900 MHz band, who migrate to the 1800 MHz band would have not only make huge investment to procure spectrum but also have to install 1.5 times more cell sites to ensure adequate coverage. This would result in further investment and in turn affect the tariff rates.

However, this has been welcomed by the new players in the market, who will have the opportunity to bid for 900 MHz spectrum band which economically and technologically more viable and if liberalized it can also introduce new technologies such as UMTS 900 which would ensure better utilization of the spectrum.

Therefore, it is quite evident that the main challenge so far has been who is liable to compensate for refarming and reallocation. On one hand refarming will ensure deployment of new technology and efficient use of spectrum and also create level playing field for all the telecom companies on the other hand, reallocation or re-auction of spectrum would hit the incumbent telecom companies.

Bibliography

TRAI Recommendations and Consultations available at http://trai.gov.in
Ashok V. Desai, India’s telecommunications industry: history, analysis and diagnosis, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., 2006
Vikram Raghavan, Communications Law in India (Legal Aspects of Telecom, Broadcasting and Cable Services), Lexis Nexis Butterworths, 2007
Varadharajan Sridhar, The Telecom Revolution in India: Technology, Regulation and Policy, Oxford University Press, 2012

Notes
[1]. Andrea Prat, Tommaso Valletti, Spectrum Auctions versus Beauty Contests: Costs and Benefits, Prepared for the OECD - Working Party on Telecommunications and Information Services Policies, (First draft - November 2000) available at http://istituti.unicatt.it/economia_impresa_lavoro_OECD-draft.pdf (last visited on 7/06/2012).
[2]. Consultation Paper on Auction of Spectrum , Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, (7^th March, 2012) available at http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReaddata/ConsultationPaper/Document/consultation paper spectrum of auction.pdf (last visited on 4/6/2012).
[3]. Id.
[4]. Rohit Prasad and V. Sridhar, A Critique of Spectrum Management in India, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 43, No. 38 (Sep. 20 - 26, 2008), pp. 13-17.
[5]. See, R.S. Jain, Spectrum auctions in India: lessons from experience, Telecommunications Policy 25 (2001) 671–688 available at http://rru.worldbank.org/Documents/PapersLinks/spectrum_auctions_india.pdf (last visited on 05/06/2012) "The bidders could apply for any number of service areas, subject to the fulfillment of the specified entry conditions. The existing licensees could not bid for the same service area. Rollout obligations would be imposed on the winning bidders such as covering at least 10% of the district headquarters in the first year and 50 percent within 3 years of the effective date of the license. Having been criticized for the single round highest bid mechanism that caused inflated licence fee in earlier rounds, the government produced a bidding process which it called the informed ascending bidding process. The bidding process would have three rounds. The highest pre-qualified offer in the first financial bid would be treated as the reserve price for subsequent rounds of bidding. The lowest bidder in any round would not be allowed to participate in the next round, provided there were four or more bidders in any round. In case there were only two short listed bidders, both would qualify. The highest bidder in the third round would be declared successful for the grant of a licence."
[6]. Id.
[7]. Recommendations on Spectrum Management and Licensing Framework, TRAI, 11th May, 2010
[8]. Supra note iv at pp.14, "The fixed fee based licence (as opposed to auction based) theoretically allowed any number of mobile licences to be provided and implicitly de- linked spectrum allocation from licensing."
[9]. Justice Shivraj V. Patil (Former Judge, Supreme Court of India), Report on Examination of Appropriateness of Procedures followed by Department of Telecommunications in Issuance of Licences and Allocation of Spectrum during the Period 2001- 2009. (One man committee report), Published on January 31, 2011, pp. 100 available at http://www.dot.gov.in/miscellaneous/OMC/report.pdf
[10]. Clause 43.6, Licence Agreement for Provision of Unified Access Services after Migration from CMTS.
[11]. Rule 5, Use of low power Equipment in the frequency band 2.4 GHz to 2.4835 GHz (Exemption from Licensing Requirement) Rules, 2005
[12].Lower frequencies bands such as 800 MHz or 900 MHz have a greater wavelength and covers larger areas as opposed to higher frequency bands such 1800 MHz or 2.1 GHz. Therefore the telecom company with lower frequency spectrum has to set up less telecom infrastructure to provide adequate network coverage.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/resources/spectrum-management

Centre for Internet and Society

“OTTs Eating Into Our Revenue”: Telcos in India

Those Dropped Calls

Contrast with China

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS

Agenda

May 20, 2013

May 21, 2013

May 22, 2013

May 23, 2013

About the Speakers

The Artists

Locations

Bangalore

Delhi

Event Brochure

Event Posters/Banners and Videos

Accessibility

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

Openness

Internet Governance (Free Speech)

Internet Governance (Privacy)

Telecom

RAW Monographs

News and Media

From Open Citizen Radio Networks to the Race for .RADIO gTLD

An Overview of Open Radio Networks

Impedances and Emerging Trends in Commercial radio webcasting:

The .RADIO TLD competition

Key References

December 2012 Bulletin

Accessibility

Feedback

Media Coverage

Blog Entry

Access to Knowledge

Event Organised

Research for the Global Congress

Openness

Event Report

Events Participated

Events Organised

Blog Entries

News / Media Coverage

Videos

Upcoming Event

Internet Governance

Analysis of Central Motor Vehicle Rules

Columns/Op-eds

Event Organised

Upcoming Events

Events Participated

Blog Entries

Video

Media Coverage

Telecom

Newspaper Column

Digital Natives

Book Review

Media Coverage

About CIS

Connectivity: Let's Apply What We Know

Breaking into the Closed Circle: Domestic High-Tech Manufacturing Needs Access To Markets

The Bogey of Protectionism

Deferring PMA to Assess Domestic Capabilities

Closed Circle of Buyers & Sellers

Markets & Demand

Security Screening/Auditing of Imports

Domestic Producers vs Other Lobbies

Remedial Action

TRAI Consultation Paper on Spectrum

Net subs grow significantly but public Wi-Fi idea flayed

Public Wi-Fi condemned

Different forms of Video Communication

Video Calling

Video Conferencing

Telepresence

Video Sharing

National Telecom Policy, 1994