Dire need to turn digital access to broadband Internet

In the information and communications technology (ICT) sector and in particular in the field of telecommunications, the government regulators have successfully promoted healthy competition ensuring growth of the sector taking care at the same time of consumer interests. A closer look at some recent tendencies in this field should, however, cause considerable concern.

Though there has been a mobile phone revolution in India, there is hardly anything comparable to write home about, regarding the development of the Internet in the country. This may surprise many because the usual shout we hear from the rooftops is that in 2014, India, with 214 million Internet users, was a close second in this regard to the country where the Internet originated – the USA – which had 280 million users.

What is conveniently forgotten in this chest-thumping is the fact that India’s population is 4 times that of the American population. The point gets driven more home if we consider that the number one country in this regard – China- had 642 million Internet users – three times that of India.

This is despite the fact that China’s population being just 10% higher than that of India.  A clearer picture in this regard can be obtained by comparing, between the different countries, the Internet penetration defined as the number of Internet users divided by the population. India with Internet penetration of 19.19 ranked as low as 139 among the 198 countries for which such data were available.

We cannot think of holding a candle to one of the world leaders on this front – Norway where the penetration is four times that of India at 96.15. The Internet penetration in the developed nations hover around 85 with South Korea standing as high as 91.52.

It is poor consolation to argue that there are 59 countries where Internet penetration is lower than that of India because a large number of these are from sub-Saharan Africa. Add to this the finding that against the target set in 2011 of optic fibre connectivity in 2.5 lakh village panchayats by December 2016. As on December 6, 2015, it was completed only in 32,272 gram panchayats. There is thus no doubt that Internet connectivity has to improve by leaps and bounds if the present dispensation’s dream of making e-governance prevail all over the country has to have any meaning.

An analysis of the composition of Internet connections in terms of bandwidth makes the position even worse. Bandwidth can be looked upon as the amount of data that can be transferred from one point to another in a given time-period. It is one of the important factors affecting network performance. Since data being communicated through the Internet include not only text messages, but also voice and even images, it is necessary that most Internet connections are broadband ones. But the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) figures clearly indicate that this is actually not so. Broadband subscribers constitute only one-third of the total number of Internet subscribers in India.

Connection speeds
This is so because the spectrum auctioned before 2010 was technology specific and was restricted to the provision of 2G and 2.5G. The downlink speed using such technology can at the most be 144 kbps, whereas the corresponding broadband speed has to be at least 256 kbps.

Further, the overwhelming majority (94%) of Internet subscribers in India access the net through a mobile device. The technology used these days is such that connection speeds in these cases are lower. Moreover, public policy these days is barking up the wrong tree in the sense that it is focused on encouraging fixed broadband and not mobile broadband.

There is a dire need to turn digital and universal access to broadband Internet. To attain this goal, it may be necessary to have a relook at some of the policies and also plug the many slips between the policy decision and its faithful implementation.
All this has to be done with great care to ensure that basic issues are not compromised on the basis of mere names or appearances. This is particularly so because as pointed out by the World Bank in its latest annual World Development Report, the economics of Internet may enable firms with monopolistic power to hurt consumers and adversely affect economies in the long term.

In a shining example of this kind, the Trai had asked for views from stake holders regarding differential pricing of data services. Facebook, the monopoly social networking platform, was eyeing the huge untapped Indian market for some time. It used this as an opportunity to market an earlier product, Internet.org, modified slightly and termed Free Basics. Swearing by Net Neutrality, it tried to force the policy makers accept Free Basics as a substitute for universal Internet access.

This was done in a somewhat bizarre manner. There was a reported Rs 100 crore campaign with double full-page advertisements, bill-boards and television asking people to send messages to the Trai supporting Free Basics.

The Trai rightly accused the Facebook group of reducing ‘a meaningful consultative exercise designed to produce informed decisions in a transparent manner’ into ‘a crudely majoritarian and orchestrated opinion poll’. After due consultations with all stake-holders, Trai refused permission for Free Basics in India, forcing the Facebook to close shop on this front in the country.

This is not the first attempt nor will it be the last by multinational corporate giants to use all tricks of the trade to capture the vast Indian market. One distinctly remembers how the portfolio of a sincere minister batting for Indian enterprise got his portfolio changed to accommodate a foreign Cola giant. To nullify such efforts and to help Indian entrepreneurship to blossom out further, the regulators have to be eternally vigilant. It is hoped that the present dispensation continues to remember that if India is to become a manufacturing hub, communication holds the key.

(The writer is former Professor of Business Economics, University of Delhi)