Musings over the crossroads

The Indian Internet industry needs to shed some of the ambivalence and empower itself to be more effective, once again, in policy and regulatory development work.

I personally, and on behalf of the ISP industry in particular, congratulate the entire Voice & Data team on completing 25 years of being in publication. This Silver Jubilee Anniversary is truly unique, not only for the Cyber Media group, but also for the telecommunications industry in India, since it also signifies the completion of 25 years or the Silver Anniversary of the National Telecom Policy of 1994, which opened the doors for the first time ever, for domestic and foreign investments to enable development of our telecom sector with the aim and objective of providing world class telecom services in India.

Journey of togetherness

In many ways it’s been a journey of togetherness for Indian telecom industry and V&D. Truly epochal, since I can vouch for the important role V&D has played all along in lending a critical supporting hand to the telecom sector, from its nascent stages to becoming the second largest mobile and Internet using country in the world.

V&D has been there through thick and thin, trials and tribulations, triumphs and failures of the all the actors and stakeholders in the Indian telecom saga. Kudos!

For those reasons as above, I also do not doubt that V&D could very well be one of the finest repository of knowledge and a chronicler of the evolution and coming of age of the Indian telecom industry, (with due respect to other past and present publications as well). Coming to the specific industry segment which I once had the opportunity and the privilege to represent right from the inception stages i.e., the Email service providers and then the Internet service providers from even before the inception stage, this is a story of so many pioneering efforts and milestones.

Another anniversary

I want to remind ourselves that this year also marks 25 years of signing and issuance of the first few telecom VAS licenses (to provide X.400 protocol based Email, electronic data interchange and file transfer protocol services). The E-mail service providers from 1994 onwards paved the way for establishment of some of the first privately set up and managed X.25 protocol based Wide Area Networks in the country.

Those days, the links came from the monopoly providers DoT/MTNL and the new private telecom operators were still some time away from building their own bandwidth capacities. What a tough time we had obtaining those links then. Those tribulations, which can make up another separate story, did however motivated us and firmed up our resolve to fight ever more vigourously for reforms in our sector that had just been started then.

Anyhow, the E-mail networks of those days, to my mind, were a pre-cursor to the future extensive networking infrastructure that continues to be built in the country and without which life of anyone, business and the government is unthinkable today. During those early days, 64 kbps to 2 Mbps bandwidth capacity networks were the most common denominators (which then came at a phenomenal price: Rs 24 lakh plus for 64 kbps links and Rs 2.5 crore for a 2 Mbps international link).

Compare that to Gigabits of bandwidth that we are routinely used to today and a 100 Mbps connection comes for under Rs 1,000 per month or even less now. It has taken a lot of hard work and many factors came into play to make telecom and internet prices come down and make the services amongst the most affordable ones compared to any other country.

V&D, I know for sure has the archival treasure trove of those days gone by and which would be of immense interest for telecom historians wanting to track those beginnings.

It is also important to note that a couple of months ago, on 8 November 1998, the licensed ISP industry's completed its 21 years – from the day when the first ISP licenses were signed and issued after the ISP policy and draft ISP license was approved by the then Prime Minister, late Atal Behari Vajpayee himself. VSNL enjoyed sole monopoly before that from 1995 even before which a select group from the science and academic community had been using email services using dial up modems since 1986 and over TCP/IP links in early 90's.

To me 8 November every year, will always be India's Internet Freedom Day. This is the day when India's internet industry could truly open its door for business. To me personally, this milestone means a lot since I had proactively intervened, along with phenomenal support of my fellow co-founders and colleagues at Email and Internet Service.

The Providers Association (EISPAI), which we set up towards end 1994, which we then turned into ISPAI (Internet Service Providers Association of India). As EISPAI, we not only pushed the government levers for almost three years to open up and privatise the Internet industry, but once the government announced its intention to open up, we took the lead also to draft in key elements in the ISP License conditions, while giving shape to the Internet policy. My personal efforts to draft a set of license conditions was met with some reservation and maybe even derision from certain quarters then.

V&D has one of my first interviews and quotes, which came about when we took a stay from TRAI, in early 1998, on an ISP license which the DoT announced, but which did not meet with our expectation of an open and consumer friendly ISP license. The result of next 6-7 months of work was the least restrictive and open license compared to any other telecom licenses at that time, which came in November the same year.

During the entire pull and push process, engagement with the government, regulator and other industry segments and through a spate of litigations, it was V&D which provided us a highly effective platform and helped carry our voices, our issues and concerns from time to time.

Lot of credit for our successful policy and regulatory interventions goes to V&D and to the extent of its outreach and impact, enabling us to be heard effectively by the powers that be.

Policy development

From those days at EISPAI when we began, amongst other issues, with a formal request to the Department of Telecom to open up Internet services and were refused (I may still have a hard copy of this Minutes of Meeting, containing the refusal, somewhere in my personal archives), I look back at all the foundational policy and regulatory development work that we were able to achieve, which could arguably be the basis of powering India to have the second highest Internet using population, about 550 million at present and growing.

It was approximately 50,000 users or so in 1998 and almost none (except the select science and academia folks, who were behind setting up ERNET, etc. who I referred to earlier) when NTP 1994 came and V&D began operations.

Future of Internet in India

Today, in comparison to earlier times, the Internet eco-system is admittedly much more larger, more complex with issues ranging and emanating from the stupendous rise of social media, security, trust, privacy, data protection, abuse and so on. These need to be dealt with in a way that internet remains free, open and accessible to everyone.

There are a larger number of stakeholders now, including many civil society players and activists who make their presence felt through various internet governance platforms at least in the domestic arena. In short, it is a more robust ecosystem than before, but still, a developing one, and I think, it needs to keep growing.

All stakeholders must remember that internet is still evolving and there are technical, policy and other management related developments being taken up, discussed, debated, considered and worked upon by a very large multi-stakeholder group globally on various regional and international platforms such as APNIC, APRICOT, IETF, ICANN, IGF, etc.

Over the years, my observation is that even though a few people from India have started to visit these platforms, active involvement, participation and effective contribution from us is still pretty rare and nowhere in proportion to and reflective of the size, scale and economic and linguistic diversity of our Internet user base.

For example, I see our presence in the Nomcom group (nominates and selects a few ICANN Board seats) and in the UASG group ( working on Universal Acceptance - related to the ability of users to be inter-operable and use all ASCII and non ASCII language gTLDs on any browser, email or web application. There are so many other constituencies where we need to develop our participation levels.

Somehow, we have to build this capacity for an increasingly robust participation, to be able to open up and share experiences, discuss and debate and in turn learn from others, like the Americans, Europeans and other Eastern Asian countries. And, participants do at all these forums, regularly and frequently, so as to be seriously counted in the global Internet multi-stakeholder governance milieu.

This brings me to NIXI as India's first set of Internet Exchanges and a critical internet infrastructure that I helped set up. There is no reason for it to remain insular after being there for almost 16 years. It could, along with newer exchanges now operating, connect to and with neighbouring countries Internet infrastructure to begin with. We have this latent capacity lying there to be a South Asian connectivity hub and subsequently a global internet peering hub. But, I don't see anyone doing anything in that direction.

No one really seems to represent NIXI at regional and global forums sharing technical or policy expertise or learning from others outside on how to better use and upgrade this infrastructure and a global resource for the benefit of the community at large. Globally, folks wonder about its role and function and why it remains in the state it does.

There is no reason why we should not build on what we have. Maybe it needs new and better stewardship to make that leap. I have, personally, made suggestions a few times in the past. I hope someday something will happen for the better and soon.

- Amitabh Singhal

-- The author is Director, Telxess Consulting Services, Board Director, .ORG, Public Interest Registry and Founder and Past President/DG of ISPAI.