The Centre for Internet and Society
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December 2015 Bulletin
http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2015-bulletin
<b>Our newsletter for the month of December 2015 is below.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is happy to share the twelfth issue of CIS newsletter (December 2015). Previous editions of the newsletter can be accessed at <a href="http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters">http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters</a>.</p>
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<li>The <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/press-release-india-to-host-4th-global-congress-on-intellectual-property-and-the-public-interest">4th edition of the Global Congress</a> themed around "Three Decades of Openness, Two Decades of TRIPS" was organized in New Delhi from December 15 - 17, 2015. The largest ever in Asia, the Congress was jointly organised by CIS, NLU-D, Open A.I.R., CREATe, Columbia University and American University.</li>
<li>Nehaa Chaudhari <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/4th-global-congress-on-ip-and-the-public-interest-statement-of-conclusion-for-the-ip-and-development-track">summarized the developments of the 4th Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest in a blog post</a> that was originally published on the Global Congress blog.</li>
<li>Sunil Abraham wrote a blog entry stating the <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-position-on-net-neutrality">institutional position of CIS on the Net Neutrality</a> discussion going on in India.</li>
<li>Catch News interviewed Sunil Abraham about the recent advertisement by Facebook titled <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-shares-10-key-facts-about-free-basics-heres-whats-wrong-with-all-10-of-them"> "What Net Neutrality Activists won't Tell You or, the Top 10 Facts about Free Basics" </a> . Sunil argued against the validity of all the 'top 10 facts'.</li>
<li>Odia author and cultural historian Jagannath Prasad Das <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/discover-bhubaneswar-30-books-of-odia-author-and-historian-jagannath-prasad-das-to-come-online-on-odia-wikisource"> has recently permitted 30 volumes of his notable works to be re-license under an open license (Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 or CC-BY-SA 4.0) </a> . Subhashish Panigrahi wrote a blog post on this in Discover Bhubaneswar, a web portal in Odisha.</li>
<li>CIS has established institutional partnerships with University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs for furthering Wikipedia growth. Tanveer Hasan <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/analysis-of-institutional-partnerships-university-of-mysore-and-guru-g-learning-lab">analyses the developments and lists out the possible future plans</a> in this regard.</li>
<li>CIS along with Observer Research Foundation, Centre for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and Internet Policy Observatory <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/net-neutrality-across-south-asia"> organized an event in New Delhi on Net Neutrality across South Asia </a> .</li>
<li>Today the quantity of data being generated is expanding at an exponential rate. From smartphones and televisions, trains and airplanes, sensor-equipped buildings and even the infrastructures of our cities, data now streams constantly from almost every sector and function of daily life, <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/benefits-and-harms-of-big-data">stated Scott Mason in a blog post</a>.</li>
<li>The Government of India is in the process of developing 100 smart cities in India which it sees as the key to the country's economic and social growth. Vanya Rakesh <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/smart-cities-in-india-an-overview">gave an overview of the Smart Cities project currently underway in India in a blog post</a>.</li>
<li>For the second part of the Smart City podcast series, Sruthi Krishnan and Harsha K from Fields of View spoke with Sumandro Chattapadhyay on data, people, and smart cities. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/fov-podcast-data-people-and-smart-cities">Fields of View has produced and shared the recording</a>.</li>
<li>An extended survey of digital initiatives in arts and humanities practices in India was undertaken last year. The 'mapping digital humanities in India' enquiry began with the term 'digital humanities' itself, as a 'found' name for which one needs to excavate some meaning, context, and location in India at the present moment. P.P Sneha published the <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/reading-from-a-distance-data-as-text">third</a>,<a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/the-infrastructure-turn-in-the-humanities">fourth</a>, and <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/living-in-the-archival-moment">fifth</a> sections of the study this month.</li>
<li>The RAW programme has initiated a new annual conference series titled Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC). The <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-call">first edition of the Conference</a>, organised around the theme of "studying internet in India" will be held in Delhi in February 2016</li>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>----------------------------------------------<br /><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility">Accessibility and Inclusion<br /></a>----------------------------------------------</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing a project on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/nvda-text-to-speech-synthesizer">here</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►NVDA and eSpeak</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Monthly Updates</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">● <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/december-2015-report">December 2015 Report</a> (Suman Dogra; December 31, 2015).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>-----------------------------------------------------------<br /><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k">Access to Knowledge<br /></a>-----------------------------------------------------------</b><br />As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Copyright and Patent</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/abuse-of-dominant-position-in-indian-competition-law-a-brief-guide">Abuse of Dominant Position in Indian Competition Law: A Brief Guide </a> (Sarthak Sood; December 9, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/gcip2015-notes-from-the-inaugural-session">GCIP2015: Notes from the Inaugural Session</a> (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 14, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/gcip-day-1-session-3-challenges-in-re-articulating-public-interest">GCIP Day 1 Session 3: Challenges in Re-Articulating Public Interest </a> (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 17, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/gcip-15-day-2-discussions-on-health-technology-innovation-and-access">GCIP 15 Day 2: Discussions on Health Technology, Innovation and Access </a> (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 17, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions-in-abeyance">Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions in abeyance </a> (Anubha Sinha; Anubha Sinha; December 21, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/4th-global-congress-on-ip-and-the-public-interest-statement-of-conclusion-for-the-ip-and-development-track">4th Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest: Statement of Conclusion for the IP and Development track </a> (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 25, 2015). <i>This was also published on the Global Congress Blog</i>.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Event Organized</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/call-for-participation-global-congress-on-intellectual-property-and-the-public-interest">Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest </a> (Organized by National Law University, Delhi, American Assembly, Columbia University, Open A.I.R., American University, and CIS; New Delhi, December 15 - 17, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participation in Event</p>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/code-session">CODE Session</a> (Organized by IDRC; December 17, 2015; New Delhi). Nehaa Chaudhari and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/nlsiu-conference-on-access-to-copyrighted-works-for-persons-with-disability-an-enriching-experience">NLSIU Conference on Access to Copyrighted Works for Persons with Disability: An enriching experience </a> (Abolee Vaidya and Nuhar Bansal; SINAPSE; December 14, 2015). <i> This is an event report on a one-day national conference on the 'Access to Copyrighted Works for Persons with Disability' for which Pranesh Prakash was a speaker </i> .</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Wikipedia</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of the <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation</a> we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Articles</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/discover-bhubaneswar-30-books-of-odia-author-and-historian-jagannath-prasad-das-to-come-online-on-odia-wikisource">30 Books of Odia Author and Historian Jagannath Prasad Das to Come Online on Odia Wikisource </a> (Subhashish Panigrahi; Discover Bhubaneswar; December 4, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sambada-rabibara-subhashish-panigrahi-december-6-2015-odia-wikisource">ଓଡ଼ିଆ</a> <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sambada-rabibara-subhashish-panigrahi-december-6-2015-odia-wikisource"> </a> <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sambada-rabibara-subhashish-panigrahi-december-6-2015-odia-wikisource"> ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର </a> (Subhashish Panigrahi; Sambad; December 6, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december-3-open-access-in-marathi-language-expands-by-thousand-books">Open access in the Marathi language expands by a thousand books </a> (Subhashish Panigrahi and Abhinav Garule; December 3, 2015). <i>This was published on Wikimedia Blog</i>.</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guru-g-learning-labs-and-cis-a2k-institutional-partnership">Guru-G Learning Labs and CIS A2K Institutional Partnership </a> (Tanveer Hasan; December 3, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/community-prioritisation-content-donation-kannada-wikisource">Community Prioritisation of Content Donation: Kannada Wikisource </a> (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/analysis-of-institutional-partnerships-university-of-mysore-and-guru-g-learning-lab">Analysis of Institutional Partnerships: University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs </a> (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/department-of-tourism-studies-christ-university-st-aloysius-college">Touch Point Report: Department of Tourism Studies, Christ University and St. Aloysius College, Mangalore </a> (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ttt-2015">TTT 2015</a> (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-at-mangaluru">Kannada Wikipedia Editathon at Mangaluru</a> (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; December 29, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Events Organized</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/discussion-on-bringing-peshwa-culture-on-marathi-wikipedia">Talk on bringing 1000 books about the culture of Maharashtra on Marathi Wikipedia </a> (The Energy and Resources Institute; Bangalore; December 1, 2015). Avinash Chaphekar, Joint Secretary, Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha gave a talk.</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/odia-wikimedia-community-meetup-at-cuttack">Odia Wikimedia community meetup</a> (Organized by Odia Wikipedia Community and CIS; Cuttack; December 3, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/events/sau-dhuni-teen-project-december-edit-a-thon-at-womens-studies-centre-university-of-pune">Sau Dhuni Teen Project: December Edit-a-thon </a> (Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune; December 3, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Events</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/telugu-wikipedia-day-2015-photo-walk">Telugu Wikipedia Day 2015, Photo Walk</a> (Organized by Telugu Wikipedians; Dr. YSR State Archaeological Museum, Hyderabad; December 13, 2015). Pavan Santhosh attended the event. One of the popular Telugu news channel TV9 covered the event and telecasted the same. <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/telugu-wikipedia-day-2015-eenadu-coverage">Eenadu published a special item on photo walk</a> on December 13, 2015.</li>
<li>English Wikipedia and the Telugu Wikipedia joint meetup and edit-a-thon (Organized by Wikipedia community; Golden Threshold, Hyderabad; December 20, 2015). The event was covered in<a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/english-wikipedia-and-the-telugu-wikipedia-joint-meetup-and-edit-a-thon-sakshi">Sakshi</a> and <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/english-wikipedia-and-the-telugu-wikipedia-joint-meetup-and-edit-a-thon-andhra-jyoti">Andhra Jyoti</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/post-more-articles-on-kannada-wikipedia">Post More Articles on Kannada Wikipedia</a> (Indian Express; Mangaluru edition; December 12, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p>A Kannada Wikipedia Editathon was conducted in Mangalore on December 10, 2015. The following are the media coverage for the same:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-udayavani-coverage">Kannada Wikipedia Editathon</a> (Udayavani; December 7, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-vijayavani">Kannada Wikipedia Editathon</a> (Vijayavani; December 11, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-vijaya-karnataka">Kannada Wikipedia Editathon</a> (Vijaya Karnataka; December 11, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-in-mangalore-udayavani">Kannada Wikipedia Editathon</a> (Udayavani; December 11, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-prajavani-mangal">Kannada Wikipedia Editathon</a> (Prajavani; December 10, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-in-prajavani">Kannada Wikipedia Editathon</a> (Prajavani; December 13, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>-----------------------------------------------<br /><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance">Internet Governance<br /></a>-----------------------------------------------</b><br />As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Free Speech and Expression</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Interview</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-shares-10-key-facts-about-free-basics-heres-whats-wrong-with-all-10-of-them">Facebook shares 10 key facts about Free Basics. Here's what's wrong with all 10 of them </a> (Shweta Sengar; Catch News; December 24, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entry</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-position-on-net-neutrality">CIS's Position on Net Neutrality</a> (Sunil Abraham; December 4, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Event Organized</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/net-neutrality-across-south-asia">Net Neutrality across South Asia</a> (Organized by Observer Research Foundation, Centre for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Internet Policy Observatory and CIS; New Delhi; December 12, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Event</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/consultation-on-understanding-the-freedom-of-expression-online-and-offline">Consultation on "Understanding the Freedom of Expression Online and Offline" </a> (Organized by Digital Empowerment Foundation and Association for Progressive Communications; YMCA, New Delhi; December 10, 2015). Jyoti Panday was a speaker at this event.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Big Data</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entry</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/benefits-and-harms-of-big-data">Benefits and Harms of "Big Data"</a> (Scott Mason; December 30, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Cyber Security</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entry</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ground-zero-summit">Ground Zero Summit</a> (Amber Sinha; December 22, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Events</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom/news/second-regional-conference-on-connectivity-for-all-future-technologies-markets-and-regulation">Second Regional Conference on Connectivity for All: Future Technologies, Markets and Regulation </a> (Organized by International Telecommunications Society, IIMA IDEA Telecom Centre of Excellence and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; New Delhi; December 13 - 15, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Event Organized</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/bangalore-chapter-meet-dsci">Bangalore Chapter Meet - DSCI</a> (CIS, Bangalore; December 1, 2015). CIS hosted the Bangalore Chapter Meet of DSCI. Pronab Mohanty, Inspector General of Police gave a talk on Cybercrimes. Sunil Abraham presented the outcome of his study "Anonymity in Cyberspace".</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Privacy</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/uid-research">UID Research</a> (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-research">DNA Research</a> (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-policy-research">Privacy Policy Research</a> (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/sectoral-privacy-research">Sectoral Privacy Research</a> (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/security-research">Security Research</a> (Vanya Rakesh; December 3, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/eight-key-privacy-events-in-india-in-the-year-2015">Eight Key Privacy Events in India in the Year 2015 </a> (Amber Sinha; December 31, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Events</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/kick-off-meeting-for-the-politics-of-data-project">Kick Off Meeting for the Politics of Data Project</a> (Organized by Tactical Tech; Phnom Penh; December 7-8, 2015). Amber Sinha participated in the event.</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/unbundling-issues-of-privacy-data-security-identity-matrics-for-financial-inclusion">Unbundling Issues of Privacy, Data Security, Identity Matrics, for Financial Inclusion </a> (Organized by Indicus Foundation and MicroSave; December 10, 2015; Metropolitan Hotel and Spa, New Delhi). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Miscellaneous</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entry</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/smart-cities-in-india-an-overview">Smart Cities in India: An Overview</a> (Vanya Rakesh; December 21, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p><br /><b>Participation in Event</b></p>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/elite-capture-of-governance-in-bangalore">Elite Capture of Governance</a> (Organized by Forum for Urban Governance and Commons; December 16, 2015; Bangalore). Vanya Rakesh participated in the event.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>--------------------------------<br /><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom">Telecom</a><br />--------------------------------</b><br />CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Articles</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/the-free-basics-debate-trai-has-a-point-in-imposing-temporary-ban-on-net-neutrality">The Free Basics debate: Trai has a point in imposing temporary ban on net neutrality </a> (Sunil Abraham; FirstPost; December 24, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/millions-of-indians-slam-facebooks-2018free-basics2019-app">Millions of Indians Slam Facebook's 'Free Basics' App </a> (Subhashish Panigrahi; December 29, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>--------------------------------<br /><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw">Researchers at Work</a><br />--------------------------------</b><br />The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Upcoming Events</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/ai-hype-cycles-and-artistic-subversions">A.I. Hype Cycles and Artistic Subversions</a> (CIS, Bangalore; January 22, 2016). Gene Kogan will give a talk.</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-call">First Edition of Internet Researchers' Conference</a> (IRC) 2016 - Studying Internet in India: Call for Sessions (Organized by CIS; New Delhi; February 25 - 27, 2016).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/raw-lecture-01-nishant-shah-video">RAW Lecture #01: Nishant Shah on 'Stories and Histories of Internet in India' - Video </a> (P.P. Sneha; December 1, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/fov-podcast-data-people-and-smart-cities">FOV Podcast - Data, People, and Smart Cities</a> (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; December 2, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/reading-from-a-distance-data-as-text">Reading from a Distance - Data as Text</a> (P.P. Sneha; December 7, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/the-infrastructure-turn-in-the-humanities">The Infrastructure Turn in the Humanities</a> (P.P. Sneha; December 7, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/living-in-the-archival-moment">Living in the Archival Moment</a> (P.P. Sneha; December 14, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>---------------------------------<a href="http://cis-india.org/news"><br />News & Media Coverage<br /></a>---------------------------------</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/india2019s-net-neutrality-debate-is-unique-and-complex">India's net neutrality debate is unique and complex </a> (Pratap Vikram Singh; Governance Now; December 14, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-anita-babu-december-23-2015-start-up-india-turns-the-heat-on-facebook-free-basics">Start-up India turns the heat on Facebook Free Basics </a> (Anita Babu; Business Standard; December 22, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/a-scam-masquerading-as-santa">A Scam Masquerading as Santa</a> (Apurva Venkat & Vandana Kamath; Bangalore Mirror; December 25, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-goes-out-all-guns-blazing-in-push-for-free-basics-net-neutrality-advocates-cry-foul">Facebook goes out all guns blazing in push for Free Basics, Net neutrality advocates cry foul </a> (IBN Live; December 29, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-bhuma-shrivastava-december-30-2015-foreign-media-on-zukerberg-india-backlash">Foreign Media on Zuckerberg's India Backlash </a> (Bhuma Shrivastava; NDTV; December 30, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mark-zuckerberg2019s-india-backlash-imperils-vision-for-free-global-web">Mark Zuckerberg's India backlash imperils vision for free global web </a> (Bhuma Shrivastava; Livemint; December 30, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>---------------------------------<br /><a href="http://cis-india.org/">About CIS<br /></a>---------------------------------</b><br />The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Offices</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Bengaluru - No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560071. <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Centre+for+Internet+and+Society/@12.9644512,77.6374907,19z/data=%214m6%211m3%213m2%211s0x3bae141bb474ca25:0xe88eda6c81771517%212sDomlur+Bus+Stop%213m1%211s0x0000000000000000:0x88cd9bce9a1aa4d8?hl=en"> </a> <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Centre+for+Internet+and+Society/@12.9644512,77.6374907,19z/data=%214m6%211m3%213m2%211s0x3bae141bb474ca25:0xe88eda6c81771517%212sDomlur+Bus+Stop%213m1%211s0x0000000000000000:0x88cd9bce9a1aa4d8?hl=en"> Location on Google Map </a> .</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Delhi - First floor, B 1/8, Hauz Khas, near G Block market, after Crunch, New Delhi, 110016.<a href="http://j.mp/cis-delhi"> </a> <a href="http://j.mp/cis-delhi">Location on Google Map</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Follow Us</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Twitter:<a href="http://twitter.com/cis_india"> http://twitter.com/cis_india</a></li>
<li>Twitter - Access to Knowledge:<a href="https://twitter.com/CISA2K"> https://twitter.com/CISA2K</a></li>
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<li>E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: <a href="mailto:a2k@cis-india.org">a2k@cis-india.org</a></li>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Support Us</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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, 560 071.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Request for Collaboration</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at <a href="mailto:tanveer@cis-india.org">tanveer@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2015-bulletin'>http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2015-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceResearchers at Work2016-01-13T14:07:01ZPageMillions of Indians Slam Facebook's ‘Free Basics’ App
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/millions-of-indians-slam-facebooks-2018free-basics2019-app
<b>It has been less than two months since the nationwide launch of the Free Basics app in India. The smart phone application (formerly known as Internet.org) offers free access to Facebook, Facebook-owned products like WhatsApp, and a select suite of other websites for users who do not pay for mobile data plans.</b>
<p>This was published in <a class="external-link" href="https://globalvoices.org/2015/12/29/millions-of-indians-slam-facebooks-free-basics-app/">Global Voices</a> on December 29, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But the app has already been suspended, at least temporarily, as the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority considers new rules governing network neutrality. Depending on how they're written, the rules could render Free Basics a violation of the policy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Free Basics, which has been deployed in 30 developing countries across the globe, gives users free access to websites that meet Facebook's technical standards for the application. The application does not give users access to the Internet at large. For open Internet advocates, this <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-facebook-marketing-india-20151228-story.html" target="_blank">undercuts consumer choice</a> and violates the principle of network neutrality, under which Internet providers are to treat all Internet traffic equally. Net neutrality allows users equal access to any website they want to visit, and gives website operators equal opportunities to attract visitors.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Polarist.png" alt="Polarist" class="image-inline" title="Polarist" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook has responded to the pending regulation with an <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/17/save-free-basics/" target="_blank">aggressive ad campaign</a> both online and off. Over the last week, Facebook users across India (and <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/tech/facebook-is-accidentally-asking-international-users-to-support-free-basics-in-india/story-CV3pyC5KDOnuJozMWLLWeO.html" target="_blank">some in the US</a>) upon logging into the site have been greeted with notifications urging them to take action. The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/savefreebasics" target="_blank">Free Basics</a> page on Facebook now leads to a pleading form that asks users to contact the <a href="http://www.trai.gov.in/" target="_blank">Telecom Regulatory Authority of India</a> (TRAI) and voice their support for making Free Basics available in India. The company has also purchased a smattering of billboard advertisements across the country and taken out numerous two-page ads in leading national newspapers, as seen above.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">The Indian Internet bites back</h3>
<p>Indian netizens and activists have spoken out against the company's actions en masse, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/12/28/mark-zuckerbergs-latest-bid-to-get-india-on-board-with-free-basics-internet-is-like-a-library/" target="_blank">protesting</a> heavily on social media, blogs and newspapers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The grassroots open Internet group, <a href="http://www.savetheinternet.in/" target="_blank">SavetheInternet.in</a>, that has been advocating for net neutrality in India throughout 2015, has launched an email campaign asking users to send letters to TRAI explaining how Free Basics violates net neutrality principles and propagates an inaccurate picture of the Internet for new users by placing it inside the confines of Facebook's application.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Multiple stand-up comedy groups have created videos explaining the regulatory debate and supporting net neutrality, which have gone viral:</p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AAQWsTFF0BM" width="560"></iframe> <br /> Above, the third in a series of videos created by All India Bakchod, in partnership with SavetheInternet.in. Below, a video by East India Comedy.</p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UCwaKje44fQ" width="560"></iframe> <br /> The issue has also been hotly debated on Twitter, with technology and law experts leading the way.</p>
<p>Internet policy expert and lead staff member of the Center for Internet and Society in Bengaluru Pranesh Prakash tweeted:</p>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/PraneshTweet.png" alt="Pranesh Tweet" class="image-inline" title="Pranesh Tweet" /></p>
<p>New Delhi-based technology lawyer Mishi Choudhary, who leads the legal team at the Software Freedom Law Center, tweeted:</p>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/MishiTweet.png" alt="Mishi" class="image-inline" title="Mishi" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Free Software Movement of India, a non-profit promoting use of free software and its philosophy in India via their local chapters, also has <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/FSMI-Hyderabad-launches-campaign-against-Free-Basics/articleshow/50341156.cms" target="_blank">taken</a><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/FSMI-Hyderabad-launches-campaign-against-Free-Basics/articleshow/50341156.cms" target="_blank"> the campaign</a> to the streets where the volunteers raised public awareness about Free Basic's adverse side.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Apart from local experts and activists, companies like Reddit, Truecaller and Indian e-commerce platform Paytm have <a href="http://mashable.com/2015/12/28/aib-eic-facebook-free-basics/#0Gg8lzzilgqw" target="_blank">publicly shared</a> their opposition to Facebook's actions.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook targets open Web activists</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook is paying close attention to civil society opposition to its activities in India. Across the globe, the company's <a href="https://www.facebook.com/savefreebasics">Free Basics page</a> now opens to a plea for users to contact TRAI, and includes a statement that directly targets open Internet advocates, suggesting that their motives are somehow driven by financial incentives:</p>
<blockquote class="quoted" style="text-align: justify; ">…Free Basics is in danger in India. A small, vocal group of critics are lobbying to have Free Basics banned on the basis of net neutrality. Instead of giving people access to some basic internet services for free, they demand that people pay equally to access all internet services – even if that means 1 billion people can't afford to access any services.</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">SavetheInternet.in explicitly states in their <a href="http://blog.savetheinternet.in/about/" target="_blank">About page</a> that they are entirely volunteer-run and have no affiliation with any political party in India or elsewhere.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Users also have tweeted screenshots alleging that Facebook is restricting access for individuals sending messages opposing Free Basics. This has not been confirmed, but the tweets have only further stoked public frustration with the company.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Facebook.png" alt="Facebook" class="image-inline" title="Facebook" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Zuckerberg vs. SavetheInternet</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On December 28, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg penned a piece in the Times of India arguing that Free Basics will help “achieve digital equality for India,” and claiming that the initiative “isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests.” India represents the world's largest market of Internet users after the US and China, where Facebook remains blocked.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In response, Nikhil Pawa, founder of online portal MediaNama and a volunteer with Savetheinternet.in, <a href="http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/its-a-battle-for-internet-freedom/" target="_blank">authored</a> a critical opinion piece in the same newspaper:</p>
<blockquote class="quoted" style="text-align: justify; ">[…] Why hasn’t Facebook chosen the options that do not violate Net Neutrality? For example, in India, Aircel has begun providing full internet access for free at 64 kbps download speed for the first three months….In Bangladesh, Grameenphone users get free data in exchange for watching an advertisement. In Africa, Orange users get 500 MB of free access on buying a $37 handset…<br /><br /> […]<br /></blockquote>
<blockquote class="quoted" style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook is being disingenuous — as disingenuous as the company’s promotional programmes for Free Basics to its Indian users — when it says that Free Basics is in conformity with Net Neutrality.</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pawa also quoted Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister of Indian state of Odisha, who wrote to TRAI supporting net neutrality. “If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their right to choose what they think is best for them,” he wrote.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">“If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their right to choose what they think is best for them.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Writing for Quartz, technology critic <a href="http://qz.com/582587/mark-zuckerberg-cant-believe-india-isnt-grateful-for-facebooks-free-internet/" target="_blank">Alice Truong expressed similar sentiment:</a> “Zuckerberg almost portrays net neutrality as a first-world problem that doesn’t apply to India because having some service is better than no service.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For Mahesh Murthy, an Indian venture capitalist and self-described net neutrality activist, it all comes down to revenue. <a href="http://thewire.in/2015/12/26/facebook-is-misleading-indians-with-its-full-page-ads-about-free-basics-17971/">On the Wire,</a> Murthy offered untempered criticism of Facebook and Zuckerberg's efforts to appease the country's leaders:</p>
<blockquote class="quoted" style="text-align: justify; ">[..] Unlike Facebook, who tried to silently slime this thing through last year when it was called Internet.org, and then are spending about Rs. 100 crores on ads – a third of its India revenue? – to try and con us Indians this year again. This is after we’d worked hard to ban these kind of products, technically called “zero rating apps” last year.[..] This Facebook ad [spread] doesn’t include the full-on Mark Zuckerberg love event put up for our Prime Minister when he visited the US, aimed again at greasing the way for this Free Basics thing through our government.</blockquote>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/millions-of-indians-slam-facebooks-2018free-basics2019-app'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/millions-of-indians-slam-facebooks-2018free-basics2019-app</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaFree BasicsSocial MediaTelecomInternet Governance2015-12-30T14:37:09ZBlog EntrySecond Regional Conference on Connectivity for All: Future Technologies, Markets and Regulation
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/news/second-regional-conference-on-connectivity-for-all-future-technologies-markets-and-regulation
<b>This conference organized by the International Telecommunications Society, IIMA IDEA Telecom Centre of Excellence and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad was held in New Delhi from December 13 to 15, 2015. Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session "Going beyond Cybersecurity: Internet Governance Issues".</b>
<p align="justify" class="p0">Click to read the conference details published by International Telecommunications Society <a class="external-link" href="http://www.itsindia2015.com/">here</a>. Download the Agenda <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/second-regional-conference-on-connectivity-for-all" class="internal-link">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p align="justify" class="p0">The wide availability of Internet/broadband has been a significant driver of economic growth especially in developed countries. On the contrary, emerging economies lag far behind in Internet/broadband penetration even in urban areas. Further, as emerging economies have poor infrastructure as well as physical service deployment platforms, higher penetration of Internet/broadband could serve as an effective platform for social programmes' delivery. However, the increasing gap in penetration, speed and adoption of Internet/broadband between developed and emerging economies is likely to reduce the ability of the latter to participate in an equitable way in the global knowledge and service economy. As the gap increases, the ability of emerging economies to bridge the digital divide becomes more significantly daunting and is a major cause of concern for policymakers.</p>
<p align="justify" class="p0">The challenges for connectivity in the developed and emerging economies are diverse. While developed countries face issues in providing higher speeds, bandwidth and connectivity among devices to large parts of their population who have basic Internet/broadband, emerging economies still struggle for establishing universal access and providing basic Internet/broadband to their citizens. Even where Internet/broadband is available, adoption may not be adequate especially in the rural and remote areas.</p>
<p>The wired infrastructure in emerging economies is poor, however, the mobile phones are ubiquitous. Therefore, mobile Internet/broadband could be an effective way for increasing Internet/broadband penetration. Technological and regulatory changes, especially those related to spectrum, are necessary to leverage these opportunities.</p>
<p align="justify" class="p0">A related aspect of growth in Internet/broadband is the increasing role of Internet governance frameworks at national, regional and international levels. The challenge for nations is how to leverage this framework for growth of Internet/broadband and play a greater role in Internet governance.</p>
<p align="justify" class="p0">A multi-pronged approach is required to address these diverse issues. A supportive environment for policy, regulatory and technology development is required. This conference provides a platform for dialogue between researchers, industry practitioners, government and regulatory bodies to search for collaborative solutions.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/news/second-regional-conference-on-connectivity-for-all-future-technologies-markets-and-regulation'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/news/second-regional-conference-on-connectivity-for-all-future-technologies-markets-and-regulation</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaTelecomInternet Governance2015-12-27T16:16:09ZNews ItemThe Free Basics debate: Trai has a point in imposing temporary ban on net neutrality
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/the-free-basics-debate-trai-has-a-point-in-imposing-temporary-ban-on-net-neutrality
<b>The argument against net neutrality in India is simple. Regulation cannot be based on dogma – evidence of harm must be provided before you can advocate for rules for ISPs and telecom operators.</b>
<p>The article was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.firstpost.com/india/the-free-basics-debate-trai-has-a-point-in-imposing-temporary-ban-on-net-neutrality-2558884.html"><b>FirstPost</b></a> on December 24, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But net neutrality regardless of your preferred definition is a very complex regulatory question and there is no global or even national consensus on what counts as relevant evidence. To demonstrate the chain of causality between network neutrality violations and a variety of potential harms - expertise in a wide variety of fields such as economics, competition law, telecom policy, spectrum allocation, communications engineering and traffic management is required. Even with a very large research budget and a multidisciplinary team it would be impossible to predict with confidence what the impact of a particular regulatory option will be on the digital divide or innovation. And therefore the advocates of forbearance say that the Indian telecom regulator — Trai — should not regulate unprecedented technical and business model innovations like Facebook's Free Basics since we don't understand them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Till recently I agreed with this empirical line of argument. But increasingly I am less convinced that scientific experiment and evidence is the only basis for regulation. Perhaps there is a small but necessary role for principles or ideology. Like the subtitle of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, we need to ask: How to Live in a World We Don't Understand. Let us take another area of technological regulation – cyber security. Do we really need to build a centralised database containing the passwords of all netizens and perform scientific experiments on it to establish that it can be compromised? A 100 percent centralised system has a single point of failure and therefore from a security perspective centralisation is almost always a bad idea. How are we so sure that such a system will be compromised at some date? To quote Sherlock Holmes: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Decentralisation eliminates the possibility of a single point of failure thereby growing resilience. The Internet is perhaps the most famous example. It is not necessarily true that all decentralized systems are more secure than all centralised system of a decentralized network but it is usually the case. In other words, the principle of decentralisation in cyber security does not require repeated experimental confirmation across<br />markets and technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To complicate matters, the most optimal solutions developed using economics and engineering may not be acceptable to most stakeholders. Professor Vishal Misra has provided a Shapley Value solution using cooperative game theory in the multi-sided market to determine how surplus should be divided between three types of ISPs [eyeball, transit and content] and Internet companies using transparent paid transit arrangements. But a migration from the current opaque arrangement to the Misra solution may never happen because Internet companies will resist such proposals and are increasingly getting into access provision themselves through projects like Google Fibre and Loom. Walter Brown from South African Communications Forum proposes that billing by minutes for phone calls and billing by message for SMSes should be prohibited because on 4G networks voice and text messages are carried as data and price is the best signal to consumers to ensure optimum use of network resources. This according to Walter Brown will eliminate the incentive for telcos to throttle or block or charge differently for VOIP traffic. Again this solution will not be adopted by any regulator because regulators prefer incremental changes with the least amount of disruption.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So given that we only have numbers that we can't trust - what should be some of the principles that form the bedrock of our net neutrality policy? To begin with there is the obvious principle of non-discrimination. The premise is simple – anyone who has gate-keeping powers might abuse it. Therefore we need to eliminate the possibility through regulation. Non-exclusivity is the result of non-discrimination and transparency is its precondition. That can also be considered as a principle and now we have three core principles to work with. Maybe that is sufficient since we should keep principles to the bare minimum to keep regulation and compliance with regulation simple. Some net<br />neutrality experts have also identified fairness and proportionality as additional principles. How do we settle this? Through transparent and participatory policy development as has been the case so far. Once we have principles articulated in law - how can we apply them to a specific case such as Facebook's Free Basics? Through the office of the appropriate regulator. As Chris Marsden advocates, net neutrality regulations should ideally be positive and forward looking. Positive in the sense that there should be more positive obligations and incentives than prohibitions and punitive measures. Forward looking in the sense that that the regulations should not retard or block technological and business model innovations. For example zero-rated walled gardens could be regulated by requiring that promoters such as Facebook also provide 50Mb of data per day to all users of Free Basics and also by requiring that Reliance provides the very same free service to other parties that want to compete with Facebook with similar offerings. Alternatively, users of Free Basics should get access to the whole Internet every other hour. All these proposal ensure that Facebook and it business partners have a incentive to innovate but at the same time ensures that resultant harms are mitigated.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Just to be absolutely clear, my defense of principle based regulation does not mean that I see no role for evidence and research. As regulation gets under way – further regulation or forbearance should be informed by evidence. But lack of evidence of harm is not an excuse for regulatory forbearance. India is the last market on the planet where the walled garden can be bigger than the Internet – and Facebook is sure giving it its very best shot. Fortunately for us Trai has acted and acted appropriately by issuing a temporary prohibition till regulation has been finalised. Like the US, coming up with stable regulation may take 10 years and we cannot let Facebook shape the market till then.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/the-free-basics-debate-trai-has-a-point-in-imposing-temporary-ban-on-net-neutrality'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/the-free-basics-debate-trai-has-a-point-in-imposing-temporary-ban-on-net-neutrality</a>
</p>
No publishersunilTelecomFeaturedNet Neutrality2015-12-25T14:58:30ZBlog EntryGauging Users' Reactions Towards Zero Rating
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/gauging-users-reactions-towards-zero-rating
<b>In the ongoing debate about zero-rated plans and net neutrality, this blog post aims to study the possible effects of a survey conducted in Bangalore to gauge users' reactions towards such plans, and specifically "limited packs" offered by major telecom companies.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I would like to thank Amba Kak, on whose research the survey was conducted.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Zero-rating is the practice of not counting (aka “zero-rating”) certain traffic towards a subscriber’s regular Internet usage. There are different types of zero-rating that exist in the market.<a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1] </a>For example, Facebook Free Basics or Internet.org as it was formerly known is a platform which provides limited content to subscribers, free of cost.<a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2] </a>Airtel Zero is another such platform that provides free content to subscribers. Instead of charging these subscribers, the providers who choose to get on the platform are charged.<a href="#fn3" name="fr3">[3] </a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Social media packs offered by major telecom companies are another variation of zero-rating. For a fraction of the price of regular data plans, users have access to apps like Facebook and Whatsapp. As per the Airtel website, a Whatsapp pack that allows 200 MB of Whatsapp for a month costs INR 46 in Karnataka.<a href="#fn4" name="fr4">[4] </a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I conducted a small survey in Bangalore to determine the effects these limited social media packs have on users. I conducted interviews that were spread over five days in three different localities in Bangalore. I interviewed eight people and five recharge shops about their take on these limited packs.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I targeted two groups of users: new users of the Internet, and early adopters. The group of interviewees comprised of three university students, two shopkeepers, and three watchmen. I also talked to recharge shops in the neighbourhoods of the interviewees.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Through my research, I wanted to understand how users reacted to these social media packs, and gauge the popularity of these packs. This is where feedback from recharge shops would have been useful, however, what was surprising was that none of the shops I talked to offered these plans. Two out of the five shops had not even heard of Facebook or Whatsapp packs.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The fact that recharge shops did not offer these services made it difficult to identify subscribers of limited packs. I instead decided to talk to users of mobile internet, and discern their interest towards such packs. My questions followed a specific format: I’d find out which service provider the user subscribed to, their billing structure, their internet browsing patterns, whether they had heard of limited packs, and their interest towards such packs. Out of the people I interviewed, only three expressed interest towards these packs, Whatsapp in particular. For two of them, Whatsapp was the only service they used on their phones, and a Whatsapp pack seemed more useful to them than a regular data pack.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I also wanted to find out how much of an effect price played on the users while they chose a data plan. Even though a limited pack is substantially cheaper than a regular<a href="#fn5" name="fr5">[5] </a>data plan, six out of the eight users said they would choose an all-access data pack. Three of these six users expressed wariness towards such plans as they found the billing structures confusing. They were nervous about the possibility of being charged unfairly high rates in the accidental case of accessing services that were not provided by the limited packs. Further, three of the others were of the opinion than a regular data pack with full access to the internet was preferable to the limited access services provided by these packs.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">From these interviews, one can assume that knowledge of these limited packs is low among both users and recharge shops, and the takers for the same are minimal. It would be hasty to jump to the conclusions from this admittedly anecdotal evidence, keeping in mind the small pool of interviewees, but it raises interesting questions with no easy answers: how great a factor is price for the users while choosing limited packs over regular internet packs? Perhaps more importantly, do these packs confine users to the walled garden, or will they venture out of it in order to access the whole Internet? <a href="#fn6" name="fr6">[6] </a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">My findings explore a tiny proportion of what users think about these plans. However, there is a long way to go for policy and regulation decisions.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>]. The Background Paper to CIS Submission for TRAI Consultation on Regulatory Framework for OTT Services which can be found here: http://trai.gov.in/comments/24-April/Attachments-75/2015-04-24_CIS-background-paper_Net-neutrality.pdf</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>]. Facebook, Reliance Communications launch Internet.org in India by Nimish Sawant for Firstpost</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr3" name="fn3">3</a>]. Airtel Offers Customers Free Access to Select Apps With 'Airtel Zero'</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr4" name="fn4">4</a>]. The tariff rates can be found <a class="external-link" href="http://www.airtel.in/whatsapp/?cid=social21491444">here</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr5" name="fn5">5</a>]. For example, an Airtel Whatsapp pack is less than half the price of a one month 2G connection</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr6" name="fn6">6</a>]. Zero for Conduct by Susan Crawford for Backchannel</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/gauging-users-reactions-towards-zero-rating'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/gauging-users-reactions-towards-zero-rating</a>
</p>
No publisherAadya MisraTelecomSocial Media2015-11-25T15:30:14ZBlog EntryThe Buzz Around TV White Space
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-november-4-2015-buzz-around-tv-white-space
<b>Large blocks of underused spectrum lie tantalizingly out of reach, waiting for enabling regulation, administration, and to some extent technology, to accelerate our move towards Digital India.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shyam-ponappa-the-buzz-around-tv-white-space-115110401618_1.html">Business Standard</a> on November 4, 2015 was mirrored in <a class="external-link" href="http://organizing-india.blogspot.in/2015/11/the-buzz-around-tv-white-space.html">Organizing India Blogspot</a> on November 5, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>One such category is unused/underused TV spectrum or "TV White Space" (TVWS). Despite growing demand, operators face bleak prospects as they struggle to deliver, starved of spectrum and infrastructure. Their dilemma is how to extend delivery capability without choking on buying spectrum so precious it's like an albatross around their necks, leaving little capital for densifying and extending their networks.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>There's a war brewing around wireless broadband trials using TVWS in India, years after completion in other countries. These frequencies are most effective for long-range broadband. Mobile operators are watchful of developments such as Microsoft getting preferential access, triggered by announcements of its partnership with the Education and Research Network (ERNET) for countrywide rural broadband. Equipment suppliers also seem apprehensive of developments that could lead to swathes of spectrum being "unlicensed", reducing markets for their established products for licensed spectrum.<br /> <br /> This article aims to clear some of the misinformation to facilitate policies for Digital India.<br /> <br /> What is "TV White Space"?<br /> <br /> There's confusion and disinformation about what TVWS is. Quite simply, TVWS is unused TV spectrum, or TV bands devoid of TV signals. The meaning derives from the areas on a page without print or pictures. Microsoft calls [the technology developed for] it "White-Fi", while some call [the technology developed for] it "super Wi-Fi".<br /> <br /> Even bands broadcasting TV programs can have underutilised sections that can carry broadband, as pioneered by researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Rice has a system that uses TV bands for both broadcasting as well as broadband.1 According to researchers, although the 400 to 700MHz band is used for broadcasting TV in many US cities, its capacity is largely underutilised because of alternative ways of accessing TV signals, such as through cable, satellite, or Internet TV. Therefore, incorporating Rice's technology in TV sets or remote equipment could significantly expand the urban reach of "super Wi-Fi", and not restrict it to rural areas.<br /> <br /> Is there any TVWS in India? Some say there isn't!<br /> <br /> Studies across the country show that over most of it, unused TV spectrum (white space) amounts to 85 to 95 per cent of TV spectrum.2,3,4 Studies excluding northern India show that in over a third of the area, a large band -- 470 to 585 MHz -- is available for alternate use.2,4<br /> <br /> An odd controversy has been created about whether this is "white space" or not, precisely because the spectrum is largely unused.5 The convoluted semantics are mystifying, because white space is by definition unused broadcast spectrum. The National Frequency Allocation Plan already designates this band for fixed or mobile wireless, in addition to TV. In other words, without changes in allocation, operators can share TV spectrum on a secondary basis, as in the USA, the UK, and Singapore.<br /> <br /> Regarding spectrum usage charges, as with any infrastructure, it is much more beneficial in the public interest to provide affordable services first and to collect government fees and taxes later, than to front-load auction fees and have no services at all (imagine road systems if up-front charges had to be paid for the right to build them). Overall benefits from Digital India, which is impossible in the foreseeable future without low-cost wireless broadband connections to the NOFN and other backbone networks like ERNET, will far exceed cash collections from auctions.<br /> <br /> Proponents of auctions suggest that TVWS be reallocated as cellular spectrum and auctioned. Their reasons: (a) The transfer of public property to private operators; (b) Transparency and fairness; and (c) Government collections. This reasoning is false and misleading, because: (a) No transfer is required, as all operators can get secondary access equitably through a consortium approach; (b) This ensures transparency and fairness; and (c) Government collections from productive use will far exceed any auction collections, as evidenced by licence fees: in 2005, estimated auction fees lost until March 2007 were Rs 20,000 crore, whereas actual collections were double, at Rs 40,000 crore; collections by March 2010 were Rs 80,000 crore, in addition to the public benefits of better services.<br /> <br /> Should TVWS be used only for 3G & 4G?<br /> <br /> Another negative argument is the insistence that TVWS should be auctioned for 3G and 4G. Whereas Digital India needs low-cost wireless broadband, especially for long-distance links in rural India, because of the high cost and difficulty of building and maintaining fibre or wired networks in difficult terrain, and/or in sparsely populated areas. Therefore, access to TVWS needs to be bundled with the National Optic Fibre Network/BharatNet, and other shared backbone networks like ERNET. Policies should permit different network design scenarios including transmission power and purpose. Point-to-point links are needed over long distances in place of fibre or microwave, and broad coverage is needed for contiguous areas like industrial developments, campuses, commercial complexes, or rural communities. At the user end, TVWS could interface through cellular (3G or 4G) or Wi-Fi transceivers.<br /> <br /> TVWS does need tight radio filters (unlike Wi-Fi) to minimise interference, the underlying consideration that drives spectrum management. There's also need for varying power specifications depending on the network design and purpose as described above, and policies for unlicensed sharing using geolocation databases, as defined by the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission).<br /> <br /> To be most beneficial, it is not important to extract the maximum carrying capacity from TVWS in every location, as in the misplaced number-of-subscribers-linked spectrum policy some years ago. Rather, the objective for Digital India is to use this technology in combination with others for the purposes people need, namely, for affordable broadband wherever they are, while mitigating radiation hazards. This is essential for India to get its basic communications infrastructure.<br /> </span></p>
<hr />
<p>S<a href="http://mail%20to%20shyamponappa@gmail.com" target="_blank">hyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com</a><br /> <br /> <i>1. <a href="http://news.rice.edu/2015/07/13/rice-tests-wireless-data-delivery-over-active-tv-channels-2/" target="_blank">http://news.rice.edu/2015/07/13/rice-tests-wireless-data-delivery-over-active-tv-channels-2/</a>, Jade Boyd, September 5, 2014.<br />2. IIT-Hyderabad studied TVWS in southern India from 2009, shared findings with the government/other IITs from 2011, and published in 2014:<a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-08747-4_3" target="_blank">http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-08747-4_3#</a>, Kalpana Naidu et al.<br />3. <a href="http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/%7Evinay/papers/coral13.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~vinay/papers/coral13.pdf</a>, Pradeep Kumar et al, June 2013, IIT-Delhi.<br />4. arXiv:1310.8540v1 [cs.IT], Gaurang Naik et al, 31 October 2013, IIT-Bombay.<br />5. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tv-whitespaces-how-white-spaces-parag-kar;http://www.financialexpress.com/article/fe-columnist/editorial-beware-the-white-spaces/146355/" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tv-whitespaces-how-white-spaces-parag-kar;http://www.financialexpress.com/article/fe-columnist/editorial-beware-the-white-spaces/146355/</a></i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-november-4-2015-buzz-around-tv-white-space'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-november-4-2015-buzz-around-tv-white-space</a>
</p>
No publisherShyam PonappaTelecom2015-12-16T02:21:19ZBlog EntryDigital India - Now to Work
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-october-1-2015-shyam-ponappa-digital-india-now-to-work
<b>There's a buzz about Digital India again with an Indian PM finally reaching Silicon Valley. So are we close to broadband taking off, or is this just more hype?</b>
<p>The article was published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shyam-ponappa-digital-india-now-to-work-115100101355_1.html">Business Standard</a> on October 1, 2015 and mirrored in <a class="external-link" href="http://organizing-india.blogspot.in/2015/10/digital-india-now-to-work.html">Organizing India Blogspot</a> on October 2, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The announcements are certainly promising. For instance, that Indian Railways will provide Wi-Fi services at 500 railway stations over the next few years. Google's support tendered by CEO Sundar Pichai offers new hope that this will happen. Other promising announcements include Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's announcement of cloud-based services from India, and connectivity at the village level through TV White Space (unused broadcast spectrum), and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacob's $150-million fund for start-ups in India.<br /><br />There have been announcements like these before. For instance, the Railways announced Wi-Fi projects for years, with modest achievements. For details, see "A history of Wi-Fi and Indian Railways from 2006 to Infinity (maybe)". [See <a class="external-link" href="http://www.medianama.com/2015/02/223-a-history-of-wi-fi-and-indian-railways-from-2006-to-infinity-maybe/">http://www.medianama.com/2015/02/223-a-history-of-wi-fi-and-indian-railways-from-2006-to-infinity-maybe/</a>, Riddhi Mukherjee, February 27, 2015].</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What's troubling is that in terms of ground realities, except for TV White Space for broadband, there's little evidence of a systematic approach to problems besetting communications, and changes in policies to solve them. Everyone seems carried away, and this is as true of most of the media and the commentariat as it is of the politicians. But informed, systematic efforts at solutions are absolutely essential to achieve these aspirations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Take the ingenuous comparisons of Silicon Valley with Bengaluru, with the latter being described as "nearly there". Such election rhetoric from former US Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry is one thing, but our savvy media folk should know better. People who visit Silicon Valley from India, or those who are based there and occasionally visit India, can't be blind to the stark differences. One is a place where the basics related to living and functioning effectively actually work well; the other isn't. One has potholed streets with garbage, decrepit or nonexistent sanitation, and chronic power cuts; the other doesn't. It's as simple as that.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This leads to another observation that's tossed off too easily, about less need for government. Blithe statements that government needs to be reduced, or to get out of the way and let the private sector function, are often made with apparently little understanding of what governments do before getting out of the way. Those essential services in Silicon Valley and elsewhere that function seamlessly and are taken for granted? That's what governments can do. In other words, that is government's responsibility: to provide, apart from security and law and order, the infrastructure services and organisation of communities, markets and financial systems that enable citizens to function effectively and live well. Yes, markets are indeed planned and structured in order to function well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The data on broadband at the end of 2014 in the Broadband Report 2015 by the ITU and Unesco suggest that India is not doing too well compared with its developing neighbours in Asia (see chart at <span class="p-content" style="float: none; "><a href="http://www.broadbandcommission.org/%20documents/reports/bb-annualreport2015.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.broadbandcommission.org/ documents/reports/bb-annualreport2015.pdf</a></span>). Our leadership and government need to confront this reality, and apply themselves to reforms to improve conditions. Broadband subscriptions as a percentage of our population trail most countries, and the percentage of individuals using the Internet is at the bottom of the pack, with Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To make Digital India a reality, here's what the government needs to do:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Trials using TV White Space (TVWS, or unused broadcast spectrum) for broadband are finally under way, after years of struggle to get them going. If they work out, policies must be framed quickly for this spectrum to be bundled with fibre backbones such as BharatNet (the erstwhile National Optic Fibre network), and licensed service providers given access at reasonable cost.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Policies need to be formulated with government and operators working together, instead of as adversaries. This will increase the probability of success, as the private sector can be convinced of and contribute to practicable methods that they accept.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Policies for sharing spectrum can be extended to other under-used spectrum held by the government and Defence (secondary sharing, as in the USA), and to networks as well. This will facilitate broad, contiguous spectrum bands that are essential to support rising data usage that is affordable. Policies must also enable authorised operators to access all networks, fostering competition while increasing revenue potential and reducing costs. The data on broadband at the end of 2014 in the Broadband Report 2015 by the ITU and Unesco suggest that India is not doing too well compared with its developing neighbours in Asia. Our leadership and government need to confront this reality, and apply themselves to reforms to improve conditions.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The TVWS devices are manufactured by relatively small companies abroad with the exception of Huawei, which acquired Neul, one of the pioneers in the UK. Indian innovators can produce such devices locally, but only if they have a supportive ecosystem. That means sufficient continuing orders to create revenues for sustainable profits and cash flows. In a market like India, such orders need government support until new policies are in place and the demand is established. Once that happens, private enterprises can compete.<br /><br />For instance, a chip designer start-up in Bangalore with designs for TV and broadband cards using TV White Space has had to scramble to manufacture complete products to bring their prototypes to market. Without sustained buying, they'll languish like other device manufacturers overseas, with episodic sales to narrow markets. That's because developing economies are likely to be bigger markets for these devices than developed economies, but only after policies allow deployment; secondly, there's insufficient support in developed markets. The irony will be if Indian innovators can get only offshore prospects like Huawei as partners or investors.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Unremitting government effort in the systematic development of basic infrastructure services (at the primary level, besides communications, there's power, transportation, water and sanitation, basic health and education; at the secondary level: communities, markets and financial systems) will round out the potential for India as a producer economy as well as a large and growing market.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This is the work that now needs to get done: accept the reality of our infrastructure deficiencies, change our spectrum and network sharing policies, plan step-by-step, and execute for results.</p>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-october-1-2015-shyam-ponappa-digital-india-now-to-work'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-october-1-2015-shyam-ponappa-digital-india-now-to-work</a>
</p>
No publisherShyam PonappaBroadbandTelecomDigital IndiaSpectrum2015-11-10T03:18:15ZBlog EntrySeptember 2015 Bulletin
http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2015-bulletin
<b></b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We are happy to share with you the ninth issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (September 2015). It has been a significant month for public debates on the digital future of governance, citizenship, and economy in India, led by conversations around the draft National Encryption Policy, the Aadhaar number as a basis for provision of welfare services, the investigation of Google for potential abuse of market dominance by the Competition Commission of India, and the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions released by the Indian Patents Office. We were busy engaging with these issues, and more.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at <a href="http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters">http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director</p>
<blockquote><b><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-call">Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 - Studying Internet in India</a></b><br /> With great excitement, we are announcing the beginning of an annual conference series titled Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC), the first edition of which is to take place in Delhi during February 25-27, 2016 (yet to be confirmed). We invite you to propose sessions for the conference by Sunday, November 15, 2015.</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<hr />
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Highlights</h2>
<table class="grid listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>CIS sent an <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-on-intellectual-property-rights-issues-during-your-visit-to-the-united-states-of-america-in-september-2015">Open Letter</a> to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his US visit, requesting him to urge USA to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty.</li>
<li>During the month, NVDA team organized training programmes for the visually impaired at <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/espeak-training-in-hindi-language-1">Kullu</a>, <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-5-day-tot-for-training-in-use-of-espeak-kannada-with-nvda">Bangalore</a> and <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-the-training-in-the-use-of-espeak-hindi-with-nvda">Ranchi</a>.</li>
<li>Nehaa Chaudhari in a <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pervasive-technologies-working-document-series-research-questions-and-a-literature-review-on-actor-network-theory">blog post</a> laid out a series of research questions, potentially seeking to apply actor-network theory as a research methodology.</li>
<li>Recently, the Indian Patents Office released the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions (“2015 Guidelines/ Guidelines”) in an attempt to clarify examination of software related patents in India. Anubha Sinha <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-the-guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions-cris">analysed the 2015 Guidelines</a>. Read on to understand how the new guidelines will potentially lead to an increase in software patenting activity by expanding the scope of patentable subject matter – in negation of the legislative intent of section 3(k) of the Indian Patents Act, 1970.</li>
<li>As a part of its content donation initiative, <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-brings-nadustunna-charithra-magazine-under-by-cc-by-sa-licence">CIS has brought Nadustunna Charithra magazine under CC BY SA licence</a>. CIS-A2K has received 74 issues as of now from the Telugu Jaati foundation.</li>
<li>Sunil Abraham’s article titled Hits and Misses with the Draft Encryption Policy was published in <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-wire-26-09-2015-sunil-abraham-hits-and-misses-with-draft-encryption-policy">The Wire</a> on September 26, 2015.</li>
<li>Vidushi Marda in a blog post titled <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/data-flow-in-unique-identification-scheme-of-india">Data Flow in the Unique Identification Scheme of India</a> analysed the data flow within the UID scheme and highlighted the vulnerabilities at each stage.</li>
<li>Vanya Rakesh in a blog post titled <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/human-dna-profiling-bill-2012-vs-2015">Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 v/s 2015 Bill</a> has analysed the Human DNA Profiling Bill introduced in 2012 with the provisions of the 2015 Bill.</li>
<li>CIS sought information from ICANN on their revenue streams by sending them a second request under their Documentary Information Disclosure Policy. This request and their response have been <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/didp-request-12-revenues">described in a blog post</a> by Aditya Garg.</li>
<li>CIS has <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/wheres-my-data-submission-for-knight-news-challenge-2015">submitted a joint proposal</a> with DataMeet and Oorvani for the Knight News Challenge 2015. We are proposing the development of "an application for users to search for locally-relevant data, discuss missing data, demand data, explore and respond to data demands by others, and start data crowd-sourcing exercises."</li>
<li>CIS made its submission on CCWG-Accountability 2nd Draft Proposal on Work Stream 1 Recommendations to ICANN's CCWG-Accountability.</li>
<li>Pranesh Prakash, on behalf of CIS, <a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/comments-on-dot-panel-report-via-mygov">submitted comments</a> to the Department of Telecom Panel’s report on net neutrality via MyGov. Prakash states that the report displays a far better understanding of the underlying issues than the TRAI consultation paper did, and is overall a good effort at balancing the different sides.</li>
<li>Shyam Ponappa’s monthly column titled More on Those Dropped Calls was <a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-september-3-2015-shyam-ponappa-more-on-those-dropped-calls">published by Business Standard</a>.</li>
</ul>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
</ul>
<hr />
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility">Accessibility and Inclusion</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing a project on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/nvda-text-to-speech-synthesizer">here</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">NVDA and eSpeak</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Monthly Updates</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li>September 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; September 30, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Event Reports</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-the-training-in-the-use-of-espeak-hindi-with-nvda">Training in the use of eSpeak Hindi with NVDA</a> (Organized by CIS and Lakshay for the Differently Abled; September 29 – 30, 2015; Ranchi). The event was conducted online by Dr. Homiyar over skype, with local support from Mritunjay Kumar and Zainab.</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-5-day-tot-for-training-in-use-of-espeak-kannada-with-nvda">5 day TOT for Training in Use of eSpeak Kannada with NVDA</a> (Organized by CIS, Mithra Jyoti, Enable India and NFB, Bangalore; September 21 – 25, 2015; Bangalore).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/espeak-training-in-hindi-language-1">eSpeak Training in Hindi Language</a> (Organized by CIS and National Association for the Blind; Kullu; September 3 – 4, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/training-in-espeak-marathi">Training in eSpeak Marathi</a> (Organized by CIS; Atmadepam Society; August 22 – 23, 2015). <i>The report was published in the month of September.</i></li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k">Access to Knowledge</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Pervasive Technologies</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pervasive-technologies-working-document-series-research-questions-and-a-literature-review-on-actor-network-theory">Pervasive Technologies: Working Document Series - Research Questions and a Literature Review on the Actor-Network Theory</a> (Nehaa Chaudhari; September 5, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/faq-cis-proposal-for-compulsory-licensing-of-critical-mobile-technologies">FAQ: CIS Proposal for Compulsory Licensing of Critical Mobile Technologies</a> (Rohini Lakshané; September 25, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Other (Copyright and Patent)</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Submission</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-the-guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions-cris">Comments on the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions</a> (CRIs) (Anubha Sinha; September 21, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-on-intellectual-property-rights-issues-during-your-visit-to-the-united-states-of-america-in-september-2015">Open Letter to PM Modi on Intellectual Property Rights issues on His Visit to the United States of America in September 2015</a> (Pranesh Prakash and Nehaa Chaudhari; September 23, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Events</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li>National Conference: WTO, FTAs and Investment Treaties: Implications for development policy space (Organized by Focus on the Global South, Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID), Madhyam, MSF Access Campaign, National Working Group on Patent Laws and WTO (NWGPL), Public Services International (PSI) – South Asia, South Solidarity Initiative – ActionAid, Third Word Network (TWN), and Forum against FTAs; September 22 – 23, 2015; Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi). Nehaa Chaudhari made a presentation on <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-access-to-knowledge-in-fta.pdf">Copyright: Access to Knowledge in Free Trade Agreements?</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/ipex-2015">IPEX 2015</a> (Organized by Confederation of Indian Industry, APTDC and TDPC; September 25 - 26, 2015; Chennai). Rohini Lakshané attended the event. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/live-law-apoorva-mandhani-september-23-2015-open-letter-from-cis-to-pm-modi-on-intellectual-property-rights-issues-on-his-visit-to-us">Open letter from CIS to PM Modi on Intellectual Property Rights issues on his Visit to US</a> (Apoorva Mandhani; LiveLaw; September 23, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Wikipedia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of the <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation</a> we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-brings-nadustunna-charithra-magazine-under-by-cc-by-sa-licence">CIS brings Nadustunna Charithra magazine under CC BY SA licence</a> (Tanveer Hasan; September 2, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/education-okfn-subhashish-panigrahi-september-25-2015-ocr-and-oer-update">OCR and OER – update</a> (Subhashish Panigrahi; Open Education Working Group; September 25, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-foundation-blog-as-odia-wikipedia-turns-13-what-happens-next">As Odia Wikipedia turns 13, what happens next?</a> (Subhashish Panigrahi; September 26, 2015). This was originally <a href="https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/08/21/odia-wikipedia-celebrates-13/">published on the Wikimedia Blog</a> on August 21. The post was shared on Wikipedia's official <a href="https://www.facebook.com/wikipedia/posts/10153481749053346">Facebook page</a>, and on Twitter handles [<a href="https://twitter.com/Wikipedia/status/635838494187913216">1</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Wikimedia/status/635838494200438784">2</a>].</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/googles-optical-character-recognition-software-now-works-with-all-south-asian-languages">Google's Optical Character Recognition Software Now Works with All South Asian Languages</a> (Subhashish Panigrahi; September 26, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-source-september-3-2015-subhashish-panigrahi-wikimedia-contributor-shares-his-linux-story">Wikimedia contributor shares his Linux story</a> (Subhashish Panigrahi; September 27, 2015). <i>This article is part of a series called </i><a href="https://opensource.com/tags/my-linux-story"><i>My Linux Story</i></a><i>. To participate and share your Linux story, contact us at: </i><a href="mailto:open@opensource.com"><i>open@opensource.com</i></a><i>. Read the original published by </i><a href="https://opensource.com/life/15/9/my-linux-story-subhashish-panigrahi"><i>Opensource.com</i></a><i> on September 3, 2015.</i></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Events Co-organized</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/events/rare-telugu-religious-and-historical-work-preserved-at-annamacharya-library-to-come-on-wikisource">Annamaya Library edit-a-thon</a> (Organized by CIS-A2K and Telugu Wikipedia Community; August 6, 2015; Andhra Loyola College; Vijaywada).</li>
<li><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/International_workshop_on_digitization_and_archiving,_Jadavpur_University">International Workshop on Digitization and Archiving</a> (Organized by CIS-A2K and Wikipedia Community; August 19 – 21, 2015). Rahmanuddin Shaik was one of the trainers.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS gave its inputs to the following:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/odisha-sun-times-september-28-2015-ruby-nanda-unable-to-read-odia-on-your-android-device">Unable to read Odia on your android device? Don’t fret!</a> (Ruby Nanda; Odisha Sun Times; September 28, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/openness">Openness</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The advent of the Internet has radically redefined what it means to be open and collaborative. The Internet itself is built upon open standards and free/libre/open source software. Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Open Data</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Submission</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li>As one of the general stewards of the process, CIS was invited to take part in the final drafting meeting of the International Open Data Charter held before Con Datos 2015 in Santiago, Chile, but we could not take part in it. Apart from organising two public consultations on the draft Charter in Bengaluru and Delhi, we also submitted our <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/international-open-data-charter-comments-by-cis">detailed comments</a> on the document. The final version of the <a href="http://opendatacharter.net/" target="_blank">Charter document has been launched</a> at the United Nation General Assembly meeting, on September 27.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Free Software</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entry</b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015">Software Freedom Pledge</a> (Pranesh Prakash; September 25, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance">Internet Governance</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Privacy</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Article</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-wire-26-09-2015-sunil-abraham-hits-and-misses-with-draft-encryption-policy">Hits and Misses With the Draft Encryption Policy</a> (Sunil Abraham; The Wire; September 26, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/data-flow-in-unique-identification-scheme-of-india">Data Flow in the Unique Identification Scheme of India</a> (Vidushi Marda; September 3, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/human-dna-profiling-bill-2012-vs-2015">Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 v/s 2015 Bill</a> (Vanya Rakesh; September 6, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/open-governance-and-privacy-in-a-post-snowden-world-webinar">Open Governance and Privacy in a Post-Snowden World: Webinar</a> (Vanya Rakesh; September 26, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Event</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-changing-landscape-of-ict-governance-and-practice-convergence-and-big-data">The Changing Landscape of ICT Governance and Practice - Convergence and Big Data</a> (Co-organized by Innovation Center for Big Data and Digital Convergence, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan; August 24 – 25, 2015). Sharat Chandra Ram was granted the <a href="http://www.cprsouth.org/2015/02/call-for-applications-2015-young-scholar-awards/">Young Scholar Award 2015</a> to attend the <i>Young Scholar Workshop</i> followed by main <a href="http://www.cprsouth.org/"><i>CPRSouth2015 conference</i> (Communication Policy Research South) conference</a>.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Free Speech and Expression</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Submission</b></p>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-submission-on-ccwg-accountability-2nd-draft-proposal-on-work-stream-1-recommendations">CIS Submission on CCWG-Accountability 2nd Draft Proposal on Work Stream 1 Recommendations</a> (Pranesh Prakash; September 13, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/didp-request-11-netmundial-principles">DIDP Request #11: NETmundial Principles</a> (Aditya Garg; September 14, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/didp-request-12-revenues">DIDP Request #12: Revenues</a> (Aditya Garg; September 14, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/peering-behind-the-veil-of-icann2019s-didp">Peering behind the veil of ICANN’s DIDP</a> (Padmini Baruah; September 21, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Event</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/asian-regional-consultation-on-the-wsis-10-review">Asian Regional Consultation on the WSIS+10 Review</a> (Organized by The Internet Democracy Project, Bytes for All, APNIC, the Association for Progressive Communications, ISOC, Global Partners Digital and ICT Watch; September 3 – 5, 2015). Jyoti Panday attended the event.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">IGF</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The tenth annual IGF meeting will be held in João Pessoa, Brazil, on November 10 - 13, 2015. IGF's MAG has decided to retain the title “Evolution of Internet Governance: Empowering Sustainable Development” as the overarching theme. Sunil Abraham will be a panelist for the following workshops:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/understanding-and-mitigating-online-hate-speech-and-youth-radicalisation">Understanding and Mitigating Online Hate Speech and Youth Radicalisation</a> (Organized by Council of Europe, Oxford University, OHCHR, Google and ISOC; November 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/transnational-due-process-a-case-study-in-multi-stakeholder-cooperation">Transnational Due Process: A Case Study in Multi-stakeholder Cooperation</a> (Organized by the United Nations; November 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Cyber Security</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Event Organized</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/bangalore-chapter-meet-of-dsci-september-26-2015">Bangalore Chapter Meet of DSCI</a> (Co-organized by DSCI and CIS; September 26, 2015). Melissa Hathaway, Commissioner, Global Commission for Internet Governance and Sunil Abraham gave a talk at this event.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Miscellaneous</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/sustainable-smart-cities-india-conference-2015-bangalore">Sustainable Smart Cities India Conference 2015, Bangalore</a> (Vanya Rakesh; September 21, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom">Telecom</a></h2>
<p>CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Submission</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/comments-on-dot-panel-report-via-mygov">Comments on the DoT Panel Report via MyGov</a> (Pranesh Prakash; September 26, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Op-ed</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-september-3-2015-shyam-ponappa-more-on-those-dropped-calls">More on those Dropped Calls</a> (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; September 2, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; September 3, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw">Researchers at Work</a></h2>
<p>The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Submission</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/wheres-my-data-submission-for-knight-news-challenge-2015">Where's My Data? Submission for Knight News Challenge 2015</a> (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; September 30, 2015). <i>The text of the proposal was prepared by Nisha Thompson of DataMeet, Meera K of Oorvani, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.</i></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_the-internet-in-the-indian-judicial-imagination">The Internet in the Indian Judicial Imagination</a> (Divij Joshi; September 9, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_the-many-lives-and-sites-of-internet-in-bhubaneswar">The Many Lives and Sites of Internet in Bhubaneswar</a> (Sailen Routray; September 21, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/news">News & Media Coverage</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-hindu-september-1-2015-parshathy-nath-does-this-click-with-you">Does this click with you?</a> (Parshathy J. Nath; The Hindu; September 1, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-september-3-2015-surabhi-agarwal-govt-tie-up-with-global-police-interpol-to-fight-child-pornography">Government may tieup with global police, Interpol to fight child pornography</a> (Surabhi Agarwal; September 3, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-september-3-2015-harjeet-inder-singh-sahi-hiding-behind-rules-on-naming-sites-it-banned-govt-reveals-fears">Hiding behind rules on naming sites it banned, govt reveals fears</a> (Harjeet Inder Singh Sahi; September 3, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindu-nikhil-varma-september-9-2015-outrage-before-sharing">Outrage before sharing</a> (Nikhil Verma; The Hindu; September 9, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-week-september-20-2015-shweta-t-nanda-faking-a-stand">Faking a stand</a> (Shweta T. Nanda; The Week; September 20, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-september-21-2015-arindam-mukherjee-some-key-words-are-missing">Some Key Words Are Missing</a> (Arindam Mukherjee; Outlook; September 21, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-hindu-september-22-2015-atul-kabra-open-sesame">Open sesame</a> (The Hindu; September 22, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-moulishree-srivastava-september-22-2015-india-encryption-policy-draft-faces-backlash">India encryption policy draft faces backlash</a> (Moulishree Srivastava; September 22, 2015)</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/first-post-naina-khedekar-september-23-2015-online-outcry-forces-government-to-withdraw-draft-encryption-policy">Online outcry forces government to withdraw draft encryption policy</a> (Naina Khedekar; First Post; September 23, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/dna-september-23-2015-amrita-madhukalya-encryption-policy-would-have-affected-emails-operating-systems-wifi">Encryption policy would have affected emails, operating systems, WiFi</a> (Amrita Madhukalya; DNA; September 23, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-september-23-2015-govt-presses-undo-button-on-draft-encryption-policy">Govt presses 'undo' button on draft encryption policy</a> (Business Standard; September 23; 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/today-september-24-2015-huge-outcry-forces-india-backtrack-social-media-data-proposal">Huge outcry forces India to backtrack on social media data proposal</a> (Today; September 24, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/wsj-september-24-2015-newley-purnell-resty-woro-uniar-facebook-free-internet-access-program-in-developing-countries-provokes-backlash">Facebook’s Free Internet Access Program in Developing Countries Provokes Backlash</a> (Newley Purnell and Resty Woro Uniar; The Wall Street Journal; September 24, 2015).</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-september-26-2015-ahead-of-hosting-modi-facebook-rebrands-internet-dot-org-as-free-basics">Ahead of hosting Modi, Facebook rebrands internet.org as Free Basics</a> (Business Standard; September 26, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/asian-age-september-27-2015-s-raghotham-and-mayukh-mukherjee-by-weakening-our-security-govt-is-putting-us-at-risk-of-espionage">‘By weakening our security, govt is putting us at risk of espionage’</a> (S. Raghotham and Mayukh Mukherjee; Asian Age; September 27, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/9ad9be9b09a49c7-9aa9be98199a9b69b0993-9ac9c79b69bf-9b89cd99f9c79b69a89c7-9ab9cd9b09bf-9939af9bc9be987-9ab9be987-99a9be9b29c1-9b99ac9c7">ভারতে পাঁচশোরও বেশি স্টেশনে ফ্রি ওয়াই-ফাই চালু হবে</a> (BBC; September 28, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-register-september-29-2015-kieren-mccurthy-do-you-agree-with-our-fee-hike">Do you agree with our fee hike? Press 1 to answer Yes; or 2 for Yes</a> (Kieren McCarthy; The Register; September 29, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-australian-amanda-hodge-september-29-2015-indian-pm-narendra-modi-digital-dream-gets-bad-reception">Indian PM Narendra Modi’s digital dream gets bad reception</a> (Amanda Hodge; September 29, 2015).</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-maya-sharma-september-29-2015-what-bengaluru-thinks-of-big-tech-announcements-in-silicon-valley">What Bengaluru Thinks of the Big Tech Announcements in Silicon Valley</a> (Maya Sharma; NDTV; September 29, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/">About CIS</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the mediation and reconfiguration of social and cultural processes and structures by the internet and digital media technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Follow us elsewhere</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>CIS - Twitter:<a href="http://twitter.com/cis_india"> http://twitter.com/cis_india</a></li>
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</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Support Us</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Request for Collaboration</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, Access to Knowledge, at <a href="mailto:tanveer@cis-india.org">tanveer@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2015-bulletin'>http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2015-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceResearchers at Work2015-11-25T01:55:25ZPageComments on the DoT Panel Report via MyGov
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/comments-on-dot-panel-report-via-mygov
<b>On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society, I must commend the Department of Telecom Panel on its report. Overall, it displays a far better understanding of the underlying issues than the TRAI consultation paper did, and is overall a good effort at balancing the different sides. However, some of its most important recommendations are completely off-mark and would be disastrous if accepted by the government.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is praiseworthy that the panel emphasizes the separation in regulatory terms between the network layer and the service layer. This also means that telecom carriers should be regulated differently from OTT services.</p>
<h3>Licensing of Communication OTT Services</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The proposal by the DoT panel of a licensing regime for communication OTT services is a terrible idea. It would presumptively hold all licence non-holders to be unlawful, and that should not be the case; as the panel itself notes, apps that lower the cost of communication are a welcome development and should be encouraged by the government and not made presumptively unlawful.<br /><br />While it is in India's national interest to want to hold VoIP services to account if they do not follow legitimate regulations, it is far better to do this through ex-post regulations rather than an ex-ante licensing scheme. <br /><br />A licensing scheme would benefit Indian VoIP companies (including services like Hike, which Airtel has invested in) over foreign companies like Viber, or free/open source technologies like WebRTC. The Universal Licence is designed for a world where all the licencees have an operational presence in India. This is not true of communications OTT services. Therefore a licensing regime would unjustly favour some services over others.<br /><br />Further, VoIP services need not be provided by a company: a person can choose to run XMPP, SIP, or Mumble — all of which are protocol that support VoIP — on their own computers. Will a licensing regime force such individuals' many of whom may not be Indian nationals — to become licence-holders if they facilitate domestic communications within India? The DoT panel report doesn't say. This would also result in a licensing regime unjustly favouring some services over others.<br /><br />The report also doesn't say how one would distinguish between OTT communication services and OTT application services, when many apps such as personal assistance apps like HelpChat, are centred around communications. It also does not mention what regulatory distinction exists between text communication services and video/voice communication services, or between purely domestic and international video/voice communications. Stating that certain telecom companies are currently earning most of their revenue from domestic voice traffic will not suffice as a regulatory, just as it did not suffice to say that VSNL's international telephony monopoly earned it a lot of money. Regulatory fairness is the important issue and not protecting specific business models. Thus, there is no rational distinction to be drawn. Even if the panel has some regulatory distinction that it has not stated, this is an impossibility to enforce. Much domestic IP traffic is 'round-tripped', with traffic leaving India and coming back in. How would the regulator propose to regulate that?<br /><br />Will there be a revenue-sharing mechanism, as is currently the case under the Unified Licence? If so, how will it be calculated in case of services like WhatsApp? These questions too find no answer in the report.<br /><br />Given these numerous objections and unanswered questions, the government would be well-advised not seek to license OTT communications services. Instead, it would be useful for the government to hold public consultations about:<br /><br /> 1. What Universal Licence conditions makes sense in the world of IP-based services, and international services?<br /> 2. How can we frame ex-post regulations that address legitimate concerns? Is there overlap with provisions of the IT Act such as s.69, s.69B, s.79, and others?<br /> 3. How can we ensure that the regulatory burden for telecom players with respect to their being able to provide IP-based services that are equivalent to OTT communication services?</p>
<h3>Net neutrality</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While the DoT panel reiterates a number of times that the core principles of Net neutrality should be adhered to, it nowhere defines what these core tenets are. We suggest the following definition:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "> net neutrality is the principle that we should regulate gatekeepers to ensure they do not use their power to unjustly discriminate between similarly situated persons, content or traffic.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The above definition applies to the way the ISPs treat consumers, treat interconnecting networks, as well as the way they treat traffic internally.<br />We agree with the panel that in that while Net neutrality should find place in a new law, for the time being Net neutrality principles can be enforced through the licence agreement between the DoT and telecom providers.</p>
<h3>Traffic Management</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is unclear what precisely the DoT panel means by "application-agnostic" and "application-specific" network management. Different scholars on this issue — such as Barbara van Schewick and Christopher Yoo — mean different things when they use the word "application". Without a definition, it is difficult to say whether the panel's recommendation on that front are sound.<br />Instead, we suggest the following tests:<br />Discrimination between classes of traffic for the sake of network management should only be permissible if:</p>
<ul>
<li>there is an intelligible differentia between the classes which are to be treated differently, and</li>
<li>there is a rational nexus between the differential treatment and the aim of such differentiation, and </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">the aim sought to be furthered is legitimate, and is related to the security, stability, or efficient functioning of the network, or is a technical limitation outside the control of the ISP, and </li>
<li>the network management practice is the least harmful manner in which to achieve the aim.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As for the provision of enterprise and managed services, which we more broadly term "specialized services", we would recommend:</p>
<ul>
<li> Provision of specialized services is permitted if and only if it is shown that</li>
<li>The service is available to the user only upon request, and not without their active choice, and</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The service cannot be reasonably provided with "best efforts" delivery guarantee that is available over the Internet, and hence requires discriminatory treatment, or</li>
<li>The discriminatory treatment does not unduly harm the provision of the rest of the Internet to other customers.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Lastly, we would recommend that the above regulatory guidlines only be applied against ISPs, and not against public providers of Internet connectivity, such as a library, a school, an airport, a hotel, etc.</p>
<h3>Zero-rating</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On the contentious issue of zero-rating, a process that involves both ex-ante and ex-post regulation is envisaged to prevent harmful zero-rating, while allowing beneficial zero-rating. Further, the report notes that the supposed altruistic or "public interest" motives of the zero-rating scheme do not matter if they result in harm to competition, distort consumer markets, violate the core tenets of Net neutrality, or unduly benefit an Internet "gatekeeper".<br /><br />Much of the discussion around zero-rating has been happening around an assumption of common understanding of the phrase. Unfortunately, that is not true. There is no consensus as to whether a "special Facebok pack of 200MB for Rs.20" offered by a telecom company constitutes zero-rating or not. Without a working definition of zero-rating, not much progress can be made.<br /><br />We propose the following as a definition:</p>
<ul>
<li> Zero-rating is the practice of not counting (aka "zero-rating") certain traffic towards a subscriber's regular Internet usage. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><br />The zero-rated traffic could be zero-priced or fixed-price; capped or uncapped; subscriber-paid, Internet service-paid, paid for by both, or unpaid; content- or source/destination-based, or agnostic to content or source/destination; automatically provided by the ISP or chosen by the customer.<br /><br />We believe that zero-rating can be non-discriminatory in nature, and such zero-rating should not be prohibited. Having a system with both ex-ante and ex-post checks is rather heavy-handed regulation, but since the issue is very contentious in India, we believe it might be merited.<br /><br />We thank you for giving us this opportunity to comment.<br />Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at the Centre for Internet and Society</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/comments-on-dot-panel-report-via-mygov'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/comments-on-dot-panel-report-via-mygov</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshTelecomFeatured2015-09-26T10:16:44ZBlog EntryMore On Those Dropped Calls
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-september-3-2015-shyam-ponappa-more-on-those-dropped-calls
<b>A basic problem is that the cost of spectrum and licences relative to earnings is too high, structurally.</b>
<p>The article originally published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shyam-ponappa-more-on-those-dropped-calls-115090201442_1.html">Business Standard</a> on September 2 was mirrored in <a class="external-link" href="http://organizing-india.blogspot.in/2015_09_01_archive.html">Organizing India Blogspot</a> on September 3, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Will the government's variant of "speak softly and carry a big stick" deliver Digital India in a hurry? Unlikely, because the problem is an overloaded system with a too-spare design, and insufficient cash flows. Increasing call drops are a symptom of inadequate carrying capacity for the demands of traffic, from voice to data in 3G<a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=3g" target="_blank"> </a>and 4G. These are structural problems, because the system doesn't generate sufficient investible funds; nor are conditions right to develop such investment capacity; nor are the prospects demonstrably healthy. The situation requires the policy changes outlined below, which only the government can bring about, as it has in the past.<br /><br />A fundamental aspect of the problem is low spectrum availability. India's operators have 12-15 MHz, compared with a global average of 45-50 MHz. Leading countries have even more; for instance, operators in Seoul reportedly have 10 times more spectrum than operators in India. Limiting the spectrum available to operators compels them to invest more to deliver a given level of traffic and quality than if more spectrum were available.<br /><br />There are other aspects as well:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>high charges for licences and for spectrum, 8+4 per cent of (adjusted) revenues in addition to auction payments,</li>
<li>imported equipment paid for with a weak stream of local-currency revenues,</li>
<li>changes in spectrum holdings that require adjustment in equipment after older spectrum assignments lapse and new spectrum has been acquired, and</li>
<li>the burgeoning need for new investments for 3G and 4G<a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=4g" target="_blank"> </a>services. Embedded in the latter is the additional overload caused by tower shut-downs and the difficulties in getting additional sites, apart from the need for more capital.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Add regulations that hinder spectrum trading and sharing, and we have a sector that is structurally weak and restricted in scope.<br /><br />As for call drops, operators in developed markets experienced similar capacity pressures when there was very rapid growth in data usage, for instance AT&T in the US<a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Us" target="_blank"> </a>and O2 in the UK some years ago. The difference is that they were able to invest rapidly to shore up their networks. By contrast, Indian operators had to invest disproportionately in acquiring spectrum, leaving less capacity for investment in networks. For example, in 2014 operators in China reportedly invested $35 billion in 4G equipment, whereas in India, only $3 billion went into equipment. Most of its $32-billion investment - $29 billion, over 90 per cent - was for spectrum. There has also been the diversionary effect because difficult business conditions in the sector led to profits being invested elsewhere, instead of back into communications infrastructure. The difference in approach and functional capacity is stark: China is moving ahead with building high-speed data capability, while the struggle in India is with dropped calls and simply keeping users connected. The government, therefore, needs to facilitate conditions whereby operators invest substantial amounts every year.<br /><br />For this to happen, the structure of high charges for spectrum and licences relative to earnings has to change, as do restrictive regulations. The monthly average revenue per user in India at the end of 2014 was of the order of Rs 110-120. Capital expenditure ranged from 13 to 15 per cent of revenues in 2014, rising to 20 per cent in 2015. The latter exceeds the percentage invested in the US - but the revenue in India is about 25 times less than the $50 revenue in America, and the US has had well-developed networks for decades. Meanwhile, the recent spectrum-sharing guidelines that restrict more than enable effective sharing epitomise our dysfunctional regulations.1 It is baffling why the government would issue such retrograde regulation if the goal is digital development, because these guidelines do exactly the opposite of what is needed.<br /> <br /><b>Government versus Private Sector</b><br /> Meanwhile, there has been an escalating war of words between the government and service providers. The latter are trapped in a vicious circle of heavy investment requirement with low revenue-generation capacity, as explained above. Breaking out of this trap is possible only if the government develops conducive policies, as it did with the path-breaking changes associated with the 1999 New Telecom Policy (NTP-99). The change at that time was from up-front licence fees to revenue-sharing. It fell short because the government's share was too high, and began to work only after 2003, when government charges were reduced. In like manner, the government needs to frame policies applying similar principles to spectrum, and ultimately to network infrastructure, so spectrum and networks become more productive.<br /><br />Our problems arise from three sources: regulations and government charges, operator behaviour and responses, and public opinion and the perceptions and actions of the judiciary. The government can take the initiative through creating policies that facilitate investment and service delivery. Many changes are purely administrative, such as permitting unrestricted spectrum sharing without additional "conversion" charges, or reducing licence and spectrum charges. Surely the department of telecommunications, the finance ministry, and the prime minister's office understand the logic of higher net present values that accrue from incremental revenues to operators. Conversely, any restriction of revenues or opportunity loss reduces the government's share, resulting in lower net present values. For example, restricting 3G roaming or insisting on payments to convert administered spectrum before it can be shared limit revenues, resulting in opportunity losses.<br /><br />The government needs to be persuasive while acting decisively, to influence operators and public opinion through well-formulated systematic initiatives. Tighter monitoring of quality, including dropped calls, and related penalties are needed - but balanced with constructive policies. These could cover enabling regulations such as for roaming and secondary spectrum sharing with the government, and in developing a consortium approach for active network sharing initiated by the government with broad private participation, led by a private-sector partner. Other potential areas include enabling, organising, and facilitating broadband through cable networks, and inducting technologies such as TV White Space and satellites.<br /><br />This is where the rhetoric of leading Team India has to be walked and not just talked, to persuade and lead the sector to collaborate and not undercut institutional development.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-september-3-2015-shyam-ponappa-more-on-those-dropped-calls'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-september-3-2015-shyam-ponappa-more-on-those-dropped-calls</a>
</p>
No publisherShyam PonappaTelecom2015-10-06T02:34:24ZBlog EntryAugust 2015 Bulletin
http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2015-bulletin
<b></b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We are happy to share with you the eighth issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (August 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at <a href="http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters">http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters</a>.</p>
<hr />
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Highlights</h2>
<table class="grid listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Researchers at Work programme has published a book titled <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader"><em>Digital Activism in Asia Reader</em></a> exploring in detail digital activism in Asia. The Reader was edited by Nishant Shah, P.P. Sneha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay with support from Anirudh Sridhar, Denisse Albornoz, and Verena Getahun.</li></ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li>The <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/raw/civil-society-organisations-and-internet-governance-in-india-open-review">pre-publication drafts of two sections</a> written by Sumandro Chattapadhyay for the third volume (2000-2010) of the <em>Asia Internet History</em> series edited by Prof. Kilnam Chon have been posted for open-review process.</li>
<li>As part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series, RAW published blog entries on <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_governing-speech-on-the-internet">Governing Speech on the Internet</a> and <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_mock-calling">Mock-Calling - Ironies of Outsourcing and the Aspirations of an Individual</a>. </li></ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li style="text-align: justify;">NVDA team <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/training-in-e-speak-hindi">conducted a workshop</a> at Jeevan Jyoti School for the Blind, Varanasi from August 26 to 28, 2015. Eighty five students and 13 teachers took part in the training programme. NVDA team had conducted another <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-in-espeak-marathi">workshop</a> earlier in Nashik. The workshop was conducted in June. A batch of 17 Special Educators and teachers of the blind attended the workshop.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Maggie Huang, Arpita Sengupta and Paavni Anand as part of the Pervasive Technologies project <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comparative-transparency-review-of-collective-management-organisations-in-india-uk-usa"> co-authored a research paper </a> that seeks to compare the publicly available information on the websites of music collective management organizations ("CMOs") operating within India, the United States, and the United Kingdom.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">
Amulya Purushothama, Nehaa Chaudhari and Varun Baliga in a blog entry have delved into the question of
what the mandate of the <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/national-ipr-policy-series-what-have-sectoral-innovation-councils-been-doing-on-ipr">Sectoral Innovation Council</a> is, what its activities are, and what vision for IPR development in India has it put forth. An RTI Application has been filed by CIS to attain information on these issues.</li></ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li style="text-align: justify;"> <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mhrd-ipr-chair-series-introduction">In a blog post</a>, Amulya Purushothama announced our new MHRD IPR Chair Series and has charted the sequence of events, starting from the establishment of MHRD IPR Chairs, to discussions surrounding their purpose and functioning, to concerns surrounding the lack of information about the IPR Chairs, the first round of RTIs that CIS had filed in regard to this and the responses it solicited. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"> Subhashish Panigrahi <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kisorachandrananachampu-on-odia-wikisource">interviewed Prateek Pattanaik</a>. Prateek has not just digitized as many as 54 Odia-language poetry dating early 18th century but has also annotated, both poetic and prosaic translation in his blogs "Sri Jagannatha" and "Utkal Sangeet". He has also published a complete book "Kisora chandranana champu" on Odia Wikisource. A recent entrant into the Odia Wikimedia community, Prateek is also the youngest Odia Wikimedian.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Rohan George and Elonnai Hickok in a blog post <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/are-we-throwing-our-data-protection-regimes-under-the-bus">analyzed consent, big data and data protection</a> that examines in detail why the principle of consent is providing us increasingly less of an aegis in protecting our data.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Elonnai Hickok, Vipul Kharbanda and Vanya Rakesh on behalf of CIS submitted a <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-and-recommendations-to-human-dna-profiling-bill-2015">clause-by-clause comments</a> on the Human DNA Profiling Bill that was circulated by the Department of Biotechnology on June 9, 2015.</li>
<li>Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok and Tarun Krishnakumar co-authored an article titled <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/security-privacy-transparency-and-technology">Security: Privacy, Transparency and Technology</a>. The article was published by Observer Research Foundation, Digital Debates 2015: CyFy Journal Volume 2.</li>
<li>Elonnai Hickok in a blog post titled <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/review-of-policy-debate-around-big-data-and-internet-of-things"> A Review of the Policy Debate around Big Data and Internet of Things </a>has done an analysis as to how regulators and experts across jurisdictions are reacting to Big Data and Internet of Things.</li>
<li>The Supreme Court of India has deemed it fit to refer the question of the very existence of a fundamental right to privacy to a Constitution Bench to finally decide the matter, and define the contours of such right if it does exist. Vipul Kharbanda analyses this in a <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/right-to-privacy-in-peril">blog entry</a>. </li>
<li>Experts and regulators across jurisdictions are examining the impact of Big Data practices on traditional data protection standards and principles. This will be a useful and pertinent exercise for India to undertake as the government and the private and public sectors begin to incorporate and rely on the use of Big Data in decision making processes and organizational operations. Elonnai Hickok has <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/big-data-and-information-technology-rules-2011">provided an initial evaluation of how Big Data could impact India's current data protection standards</a>. </li></ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li> Elonnai Hickok <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comparison-of-the-human-dna-profiling-bill-2012-with-cis-recommendations-sub-committee-recommendations-expert-committee-recommendations-and-the-human-dna-profiling-bill-2015">has provided a comparison of Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 vs. the Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015</a>, CIS's main recommendations vs. the 2015 Bill, Sub-Committee Recommendations vs. the 2015 Bill, and the Expert Committee Recommendations vs. the 2015 Bill. </li>
<li> CIS <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-submission-to-unga-wsis-review">submitted its comments</a> to the non-paper on the UNGA Overall Review of the Implementation of the WSIS outcomes, evaluating the progress made and challenges ahead.</li>
<li>In a policy brief, Vipul Kharbanda <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/policy-paper-on-surveillance-in-india">has analyzed the different laws regulating surveillance at the state and central level in India and calls out ways in which the provisions are unharmonized</a>. The brief then provides recommendations for the harmonization of surveillance law in India. </li>
<li>Hardnews interviewed Sunil Abraham about the future of the internet in India. The <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hardnewsmedia-august-10-2015-abeer-kapoor-net-neutrality-india-is-a-keybattle-ground">article was published in their August edition</a>.</li></ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li> Shyam Ponappa in an <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-august-6-2015-shyam-ponappa-those-dropped-calls"> Op-ed published by Business Standard </a> has given an analysis on the reasons of the number of dropped calls on our mobile phones. </li></ul>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility">Accessibility and Inclusion</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing a project on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/nvda-text-to-speech-synthesizer">here</a>. The project on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India got over and the compilation has been printed.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">NVDA and eSpeak</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Monthly Updates</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/august-2015-nvda-report.pdf">August 2015 Report</a> (Suman Dogra; July 31, 2015). </li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Event Reports</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-in-espeak-marathi">Training in eSpeak Marathi</a> (Organized by NVDA team; National Association for the Blind; Nashik; June 22 - 23, 2015). <em>The workshop was held in the month of June but the report got published later in August.</em> </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/training-in-e-speak-hindi">Training in eSpeak Hindi</a> (Organized by NVDA team; Jeevan Jyoti School for the Blind; Varanasi; August 26 - 28, 2015). </li></ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k">Access to Knowledge</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Pervasive Technologies</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Blog Entries</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/patent-landscaping-in-the-indian-mobile-device-market"><strong> </strong>Methodology: Patent Landscaping in the Indian Mobile Device Market </a> (Rohini Lakshané; November 10, 2014). <em>This blog post published last year has been recently updated</em>. </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comparative-transparency-review-of-collective-management-organisations-in-india-uk-usa"> Comparative Transparency Review of Collective Management Organisations in India, United Kingdom and the United States </a> (Maggie Huang, Arpita Sengupta and Paavni Anand; August 1, 2015). </li></ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Other (Copyright and Patent)</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Blog Entries</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cci-participation-at-the-upcoming-3rd-international-conference-on-ipr-and-competition" class="external-link">CCI Participation at the Upcoming 3rd International Conference on IPR and Competition</a> (Amulya Purushothama; August 5, 2015). CIS wrote to the Competition Commission of India Chairman on August 5, 2015 about participation at a conference organised by Ericsson and concerns regarding conflict of interest. We also had several other NGOs sign on to the letter. </li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mhrd-ipr-chair-series-introduction">MHRD IPR Chair Series: Introduction</a> (Amulya Purushothama; August 10, 2015). Aditya Garg assisted in research and writing. </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/national-ipr-policy-series-what-have-sectoral-innovation-councils-been-doing-on-ipr"> National IPR Policy Series: What Have the Sectoral Innovation Councils Been Doing on IPR </a> (Nehaa Chaudhari and Varun Baliga; August 13, 2015). Amulya Purushothama assisted with research and writing. </li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Media Coverage</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-rema-nagarajan-august-6-2015-competition-commission-of-india-chairman-participation-in-assocham-conference-raises-conflict-of-interests">Competition Commission of India chariman's participation in Assocham conference raises conflict of interests</a> (Rema Nagarajan; The Times of India; August 6, 2015).</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/business-standard-august-6-2015-dilasha-seth-and-deepak-patel-assocham-event-sparks-row-over-conflict-of-interest-by-cci">Assocham event sparks row over conflict of interest by CCI</a> (Dilasha Seth and Deepak Patel; Business Standard; August 6, 2015).</li></ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Wikipedia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As part of the <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation</a> we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Blog Entry</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kisorachandrananachampu-on-odia-wikisource"><strong> </strong>Odia Wikisource has a new Wikisourcer, and he is the youngest in the Odia Wikimedia community! </a> (Subhashish Panigrahi; August 21, 2015). </li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Events Co-organized</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/events/rare-telugu-religious-and-historical-work-preserved-at-annamacharya-library-to-come-on-wikisource"><strong> </strong>Annamaya Library edit-a-thon </a> (Organized by CIS-A2K and Telugu Wikipedia Community; August 6, 2015; Andhra Loyola College; Vijaywada). </li>
<li> <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/International_workshop_on_digitization_and_archiving,_Jadavpur_University"> International Workshop on Digitization and Archiving </a> (Organized by CIS-A2K and Wikipedia Community; August 19 - 21, 2015). Rahmanuddin Shaik was one of the trainers. </li></ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">FOSS</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Participation in Events</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/events/workshop-on-digital-collaborations-in-tamil-language-tamil-virtual-university-chennai">Workshop on digital collaborations in Tamil-language, Tamil Virtual Chennai</a> (Organized by Tamil Virtual University, Anna University Campus, Chennai; August 8 - 9, 2015). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja atttended this event. </li>
<li><a href="http://pn.ispirt.in/event/open-innovation-entrepreneurship-and-our-digital-future/">Open Innovation, entrepreneurship, and our digital future </a> (Organized by iSpirit; Bangalore; August 13, 2015). Rohini Lakshané attended the event. Rohini wrote a <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/we-need-to-proactively-ensure-that-people-cant-file-representatives-of-the-creativity-of-a-foss-community"> report on this </a> . </li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Media Coverage</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS gave its inputs to the following:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/telugu-wiki-edit-a-thon-at-alc">Telugu Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at ALC</a> (Eenadu; August 6, 2015)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/telugu-wiki-editathon-alc">Telugu Wiki Edit-a-thon in ALC</a> (Eenadu; August 6, 2015)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-08-07/Rare-Telugu-religious-and-historical-work-preserved-at-Annamacharya-library-to-come-on-Wikisource-168454">Rare Telugu religious and historical work preserved at Annamacharya library to come on Wikisource! </a> (The Hans India; August 7, 2015). </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/mangalorean-dotcom-august-13-2015"> ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣ ಪ್ರದೇಶದ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿಯಿಂದ ದೇಶದ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿ ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. </a> (Mangalorean.com; August 13, 2015). </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/karavali-karnataka-august-14-2015"> ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯ ಮುಕ್ತವಾಗಿ ಬಳಸಿ: ಡಾ.ಪವನಜ </a> (Karavali Karnataka; August 14, 2015). </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/sahil-online-august-14-2015"> ಬೆಳ್ತಂಗಡಿ:ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಕಾಲಕ್ಕೂ ಲಭ್ಯ ಇರುವ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ಹಾಗೂ ಮುಕ್ತ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾ-ಪವನಜ </a> (SahilOnline; August 14, 2015). </li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-hindu-august-23-2015-talamaddale-on-august-23">Talamaddale on August 23</a> (Hindu; August 16, 2015).</li></ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance">Internet Governance</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Privacy</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Article</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/security-privacy-transparency-and-technology">Security: Privacy, Transparency and Technology</a> (Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok and Tarun Krishnakumar; Observer Research Foundation, <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/security-privacy-transparency-technology.pdf">Digital Debates 2015: CyFy Journal Volume 2</a> ; August 19, 2015). </li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Submission</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-and-recommendations-to-human-dna-profiling-bill-2015"><strong> </strong>CIS Comments and Recommendations to the Human DNA Profiling Bill, June 2015 </a> (Elonnai Hickok, Vipul Kharbanda and Vanya Rakesh; August 27, 2015). </li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Blog Entries</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/policy-paper-on-surveillance-in-india">Policy Paper on Surveillance in India</a> (Vipul Kharbanda; August 3, 2015). </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"> <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comparison-of-the-human-dna-profiling-bill-2012-with-cis-recommendations-sub-committee-recommendations-expert-committee-recommendations-and-the-human-dna-profiling-bill-2015"> Comparison of the Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 with: CIS recommendations, Sub-Committee Recommendations, Expert Committee Recommendations, and the Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015 </a> (Elonnai Hickok; August 10, 2015). </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/right-to-privacy-in-peril">Right to Privacy in Peril</a> (Vipul Kharbanda; August 13, 2015). </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/responsible-data-forum"> Responsible Data Forum: Discussion on the Risks and Mitigations of releasing Data </a> (Vanya Rakesh; August 26, 2015). </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/are-we-throwing-our-data-protection-regimes-under-the-bus"> Are we Throwing our Data Protection Regimes under the Bus? </a> (Elonnai Hickok and Rohan George; August 29, 2015). </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/supreme-court-order-is-a-good-start-but-is-seeding-necessary"> Supreme Court Order is a Good Start, but is Seeding Necessary? </a> (Elonnai Hickok and Rohan George; August 29, 2015). </li></ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Big Data</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Blog Entries</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/big-data-and-information-technology-rules-2011"><strong> </strong>Big Data and the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules 2011 </a> (Elonnai Hickok; August 11, 2015). </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/review-of-policy-debate-around-big-data-and-internet-of-things"> A Review of the Policy Debate around Big Data and Internet of Things </a> (Elonnai Hickok; August 17, 2015). </li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Participation in Event</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-changing-landscape-of-ict-governance-and-practice-convergence-and-big-data"><strong> </strong>The Changing Landscape of ICT Governance and Practice - Convergence and Big Data </a> (Co-organized by Innovation Center for Big Data and Digital Convergence, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan; August 24 - 25, 2015). Sharat Chandra Ram was granted the <a href="http://www.cprsouth.org/2015/02/call-for-applications-2015-young-scholar-awards/">Young Scholar Award 2015</a> to attend the<em>Young Scholar Workshop</em> followed by main <a href="http://www.cprsouth.org/"><em>CPRSouth2015 conference</em> (Communication Policy Research South) conference</a>. </li></ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Free Speech and Expression</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Submission</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-submission-to-unga-wsis-review">CIS submission to the UNGA WSIS+10 Review</a> (Jyoti Panday; August 9, 2015), </li></ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Cyber Security</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Upcoming Event</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/bangalore-chapter-meet-of-dsci-september-26-2015">Bangalore Chapter Meet of DSCI</a> (Co-organized by DSCI and CIS; September 26, 2015). Melissa Hathaway, Commissioner, Global Commission for Internet Governance and Sunil Abraham will be speaking at this event. </li></ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom">Telecom</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Op-ed</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-august-6-2015-shyam-ponappa-those-dropped-calls">Those Dropped Calls</a> (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; August 5, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; August 6, 2015). </li></ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw">Researchers at Work</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Books</strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader">Digital Activism in Asia Reader</a> (edited by Nishant Shah, P.P. Sneha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay, with support from Anirudh Sridhar, Denisse Albornoz, and Verena Getahun; August 8, 2015).</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Books Chapters</strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/civil-society-organisations-and-internet-governance-in-asia-open-review">Civil Society Organisations and Internet Governance in Asia - Open Review </a> (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; Asia Internet History Vol. 3, edited by Prof. Kilnam Chon). Comments are invited.</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/civil-society-organisations-and-internet-governance-in-india-open-review">Civil Society Organisations and Internet Governance in India - Open Review </a> (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; Asia Internet History Vol. 3, edited by Prof. Kilnam Chon). Comments are invited.</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Accepted Paper Abstract</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/studying-the-emerging-database-state-in-india-accepted-abstract"><strong> </strong>Studying the Emerging Database State in India: Notes for Critical Data Studies </a> (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; August 2, 2015). <em>The paper has been provisionally accepted</em>. </li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Blog Entries</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<strong> </strong>
<li><strong> </strong><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_mock-calling">Mock-Calling - Ironies of Outsourcing and the Aspirations of an Individual</a> (Sreedeep; August 6, 2015). </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_governing-speech-on-the-internet"> Governing Speech on the Internet: From the Free Marketplace Policy to a Controlled 'Public Sphere' </a> (Smarika Kumar; August 28, 2015). </li></ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/news">News & Media Coverage</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-kanika-datta-august-1-2015-why-the-dna-bill-is-open-to-misuse-sunil-abraham">Why the DNA Bill is open to misuse: Sunil Abraham</a> (Kanika Datta; Business Standard; August 1, 2015) </li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-august-2-2015-karthikeyan-hemalatha-porn-ban">Porn ban: People will soon learn to circumvent ISPs and govt orders, expert says </a> (Karthikeyan Hemalatha; The Times of India; August 2, 2015). </li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/idg-news-service-august-2-2015-indian-govt-orders-isps-to-block-857-porn-websites">Indian government orders ISPs to block 857 porn websites</a> (John Ribeiro; IDG News and PC World; August 2, 2015)</li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bbc-news-august-3-2015-india-blocks-access-to-857-porn-sites"> India blocks access to 857 porn sites </a> (BBC; August 3, 2015). </li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-times-james-crabtree-august-3-2015-india-launches-crackdown-on-online-porn"> India launches crackdown on online porn </a> (James Crabtree; Financial Times; August 3, 2015). </li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-august-3-2015-siladitya-ray-proxies-and-vpns">Proxies and VPNs: Why govt can't ban porn websites?</a> (Siladitya Ray; August 3, 2015; Hindustan Times)</li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-august-4-2015-anahita-mukherji-nanny-state-rules-porn-bad-for-you"> Nanny state rules porn bad for you </a> (Anahita Mukherji; The Times of India; August 4, 2015). </li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-august-4-2015-ban-on-pornography-temporary-says-government">Ban on pornography temporary, says government</a> (Business Standard; August 4, 2015)</li>
<li> <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-australian-news-august-5-2015-amanda-hodge-porn-block-in-india-sparks-outrage"> Porn block in India sparks outrage </a> (Australian; August 5, 2015). </li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-wall-street-journal-august-5-2015-sean-mclain-indian-porn-ban-is-partially-lifted-but-sites-remain-blocked">Indian Porn Ban is Partially Lifted But Sites Remain Blocked</a> (Sean Mclain; Wall Street Journal; August 5, 2015)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/open-magazine-august-7-2015-ullekh-np-genetic-profiling">Genetic Profiling: Is it all in the DNA?</a> (Ullekh N.P.; The Open Magazine; August 7, 2015)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/desi-blitz-august-7-2015-nazhat-khan-india-partially-lifts-porn-ban">India partially lifts Porn Ban?</a> (Nazhat Khan; DESI blitz; August 7, 2015)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hardnewsmedia-august-10-2015-abeer-kapoor-net-neutrality-india-is-a-keybattle-ground">Net Neutrality: India is a Key Battleground</a> (Abeer Kapoor; Hardnews; August 10, 2015)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-august-20-2015-aloke-tikku-stats-from-2014-reveal-horror-of-scrapped-section-66-a-of-it-act">Stats from 2014 reveal horror of scrapped section 66A of IT Act</a> (Aloke Tikku; Hindustan Times; August 20, 2015).</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-times-of-india-sandhya-soman-august-23-2015-the-seedy-underbelly-of-revenge-porn">The seedy underbelly of revenge porn</a> (Sandhya Soman; The Times of India; August 23, 2015).</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-hindu-businessline-august-28-p-anima-the-new-tattler-in-town">The new tattler in town</a> (P. Anima; Hindu Businessline; August 28, 2015).</li></ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/">About CIS</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the mediation and reconfiguration of social and cultural processes and structures by the internet and digital media technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">► Follow us elsewhere</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
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<p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">► Request for Collaboration:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:sunil@cis-india.org">sunil@cis-india.org</a> (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:sumandro@cis-india.org">sumandro@cis-india.org</a> (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, Access to Knowledge, at <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tanveer@cis-india.org">tanveer@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects. </em></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2015-bulletin'>http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2015-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceResearchers at Work2015-10-27T00:25:02ZPageThose Dropped Calls
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-august-6-2015-shyam-ponappa-those-dropped-calls
<b>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. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Op-ed was first published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shyam-ponappa-those-dropped-calls-115080501878_1.html">Business Standard</a> on August 5 and mirrored in <a class="external-link" href="http://organizing-india.blogspot.in/2015_08_01_archive.html">Organizing India Blogspot</a> on August 6, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>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 </span><span>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?</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span>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.</span><br /> <br /> <span>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.</span><br /> <br /> <span>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.<a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1]</a></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><span>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.</span></span></span><a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2] </a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>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.</span><br /> <br /> <span>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.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span>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.</span></span><a href="#fn3" name="fr3">[3]</a> <span>This results in higher costs relative to revenues.</span></p>
<h3><span>Contrast with China</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span>Comparing the approaches taken by China </span><span>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 </span><span>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.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><span>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.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><span><span><b>Capacity Increases with Broader Bands</b></span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><span><span><b><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Broadband1.png" alt="Broadband 1" class="image-inline" title="Broadband 1" /></b></span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><span><span><b><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Broadband1.png" alt="Broadband 2" class="image-inline" title="Broadband 2" /></b></span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><span><span><b><b><span>Possible solutions</span></b></b></span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><span><span><span><span>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.<br /><br />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.</span></span><b><b><span><span></span></span></b></b></span></span></span></span></p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>]. <i><span>An assessment of spectrum management policy in India, 2008; p 10: <a href="http://www.aegis-systems.co.uk/">http://www.aegis-systems.co.uk</a></span></i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>]. <i><span>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.</span></i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr3" name="fn3">3</a>]. <i><span>Ibid.,28.</span></i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-august-6-2015-shyam-ponappa-those-dropped-calls'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-august-6-2015-shyam-ponappa-those-dropped-calls</a>
</p>
No publisherShyam PonappaTelecom2015-09-04T14:59:22ZBlog EntryJuly 2015 Bulletin
http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2015-bulletin
<b>Our newsletter for the month of July is below:</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We are happy to share with you the seventh issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (July 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at <a href="http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters">http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters</a>.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Highlights</h2>
<table class="grid listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<ul>
<li>NVDA team <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-in-e-speak-marathi">conducted a training at SIES College, Sion, Mumbai</a>. Thirty-four delegates attended the training programme.</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>A training workshop was held at <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-using-espeak-tamil-with-nvda-training-tirunelveli">Anne Jane Askwith Higher Secondary School</a> for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli by NVDA team. Sixteen delegates participated in this.</li>
<li>Konkani Wikipedia is the second Wikimedia project after Odia Wikisource that has gone live out of incubation. The project stayed in the incubation for nine long years and the community has gone through a long debate to have a Wikipedia of their own. Subhashish Panigrahi has <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live">blogged on this highlighting the three Konkani Wikimedians</a>.</li>
<li>The 30<sup>th</sup> Session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights was held in Geneva from June 29 to July 3. Nehaa Chaudhari prepared a statement about the negotiations on the <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/statement-by-the-centre-for-internet-and-society-india-on-the-broadcast-treaty-at-sccr-30">Proposed Treaty for Broadcasting Organisations</a>.</li>
<li>Sumandro Chattapadhyay <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-july-15-2015-sumandro-chattapadhyay-iron-out-contradictions-in-the-digital-india-programme">wrote an article in the Hindustan Times</a> about India’s “Digital India” initiative to develop communication infrastructure, government information systems, and general capacity to digitise public life in India.</li>
<li>CIS published the <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/technology-business-incubators">first draft of its analysis on technology business incubators</a> ("TBI") in India. The report prepared by Sunil Abraham, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Anumeha Karnatak looks at operating procedures, success stories and lessons that can be learnt from TBIs in India.</li>
<li>Pranesh Prakash did a <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/clearing-misconceptions-dot-panel-net-neutrality">brief analysis</a> about the Department of Telecommunications Panel Report on Net Neutrality.</li>
<li>CIS has participated in the Expert Committee for DNA Profiling constituted by the Department of Biotechnology in 2012 for the purpose of deliberating on and finalizing the draft Human DNA Profiling Bill and appreciates this opportunity. <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-dissent">CIS has prepared a dissent note to the Expert Committee on DNA Profiling</a>.</li>
<li>In the last few decades, all major common law jurisdictions have decriminalised non-procreative sex – oral and anal sex (sodomy) – to allow private, consensual, and non-commercial homosexual intercourse. Bhairav Acharya <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-autonomy-sexual-choice-common-law-recognition-of-homosexuality">brought out the developments from across the world in a blog entry</a>. </li>
<li>As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia, CIS conducted interviews with a <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-cybersecurity-series-part-22-anonymous">Tibetan security researcher and information activist</a> and <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-cybersecurity-series-part-24-2013-shantanu-ghosh">Shantanu Ghosh, Managing Director, Symantec Product Operations, India</a>.</li>
<li>CIS, the Observer Research Foundation, the Internet Policy Observatory, the Centre for Global Communication Studies and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania had organized a conference in April in New Delhi. The findings have been condensed in a report titled “<a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/freedom-of-expression-in-a-digital-age">Effective research, policy formulation, and the development of regulatory frameworks in South Asia</a>”.</li>
<li>Pranesh Prakash in a research paper titled <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/regulatory-perspectives-on-net-neutrality">Regulatory Perspectives on Net Neutrality</a> gives an overview on why India needs to put in place net neutrality regulations, and the form that those regulations must take to avoid being over-regulation.</li>
<li>Rakshanda Deka undertook an analysis <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/anti-spam-laws-in-different-jurisdictions">on the anti-spam laws in different jurisdictions</a>. This analysis is a part of a larger attempt at formulating a model anti-spam law for India by analysing the existing spam laws across the world.</li>
<li style="text-align: left; ">As part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series, RAW has published blog entries on <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_whatsapp-and-the-creation-of-a-transnational-sociality">WhatsApp and the Creation of a Transnational Sociality</a>; <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_users-and-the-internet">Users and the Internet</a>; <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_effective-activism">Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi</a>; <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_studying-the-internet-discourse-in-india-through-the-prism-of-human-rights">Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights</a>; and <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_understanding-tagores-music-on-youtube">'Originality,' 'Authenticity,' and 'Experimentation': Understanding Tagore’s Music on YouTube</a>.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The National Optic Fibre Network, a part of the Government's Digital India Initiative, has been in the news since the recent Expert Committee Report. Aditya Garg in a blog entry <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/funding-of-national-optic-fibre-network-who-is-accountable">examined the accountability of the funding of the project</a>.</li>
</ul>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility">Accessibility and Inclusion</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/national-resource-kit-project">project page</a>. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed <a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/nvda-text-to-speech-synthesizer">here</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">NVDA and eSpeak</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Monthly Updates</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/july-2015-report.pdf">July 2015 Report</a> (Suman Dogra; July 31, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Event Reports</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>The training programmes were held in June and the reports were published in July</i>:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-using-espeak-tamil-with-nvda-training-tirunelveli">Tamil Computing with NVDA Training Workshop</a> (Organized by NVDA team: Anne Jane Ask with Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli; June 3 – 7, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-in-e-speak-marathi">Training in eSpeak Marathi</a> (Organized by NVDA team; SIES College, Sion, Mumbai; June 28, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k">Access to Knowledge</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Submission / Comment</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/statement-by-the-centre-for-internet-and-society-india-on-the-broadcast-treaty-at-sccr-30">Statement by the Centre for Internet and Society on the Broadcast Treaty at SCCR 30</a> (Nehaa Chaudhari; July 2, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Wikipedia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of the <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation</a> we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/reading-devanagri-konkani-wikipedia-in-kannada-script">Reading Devanagari Script based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada Script</a> (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; July 13, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live">Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation</a> (Subhashish Panigrahi; July 18, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Events Co-organized</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li>Christ University Undergraduate Programme (Organized by CIS-A2K; Bangalore; July 1 - 8, 2015). Students were initiated into the Wikimedia activities with hands on sessions of typing on Wikisource. Faculty of the Christ University helped the A2K team in deciding on the texts that were to be typed. These texts will provide much needed impetus for Wikisource related activities in Indian Languages. Wikipedia Education Programme at Christ University received support from Ravishankar.A of the Tamil Wikimedia community and Sayant Mahato from Sanskrit Wikimedia community.</li>
<li>Aloysius College (Organized by CIS-A2K; Mangalore; July 1 – 4, 2015). Tulu and Kannada Wikipedia workshops were conducted in St. Aloysis College, Mangalore. Tulu Wikipedia is in Incubator and a small community is growing in Mangalore. Pavanaja U.B. and Rahmanuddin Shaik participated in this events.</li>
<li>Media Wiki Train the Trainer Program (Organized by CIS-A2K; Bangalore; June 24 – 27, 2015): A four-day long train-the-trainer program aimed at building leadership among technical contributors to Indic language Wikimedians in the areas of bugs, bots--Pywikipedia and Auto Wiki Browser, various MediaWiki tools, and translations. Ravishankar A. from Wikimedia India, MediaWiki developers Pavithra H., Yogesh Omshivaprakash H.L. and Harsh Kothari, and Tamil Wikimedian Dineshkumar Ponnusamy provided support for the event.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Events</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania">Wikimania 2015</a> (Organized by Wikimedia Foundation; Mexico City; July 15 - 19, 2015): A whole day was dedicated for evaluation of strategies and activities by various major stakeholders of the Wikimedia movement. Community members who lead major activities, Wikimedia chapters, affiliate organizations and Wikimedia Foundation itself took part in the discussions. There were several group activities, exchange of ideas focused on project and community level outreach and other activities, tools and techniques, and best practices. Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this event and gave a talk on <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:How_to_do_Guerrilla_GLAM_-_presentation_in_Wikimania_2015,_Mexico_City.pdf">How to do Guerrilla GLAM</a>. Subhashish Panigrahi was a panelist along with Rohini Lakshané in the session “<a href="https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Edit-a-thons_for_bridging_the_gender_gap_on_Wikimedia">Edit-a-thons for Bridging the Gender Gap on Wikimedia: A Panel Discussion</a>”. An Indic Meet-up was also organized. Wikimedians from India, Bangladesh and Nepal representing various language communities, Wikimedia India, Wikimedia Bangladesh, Wikimedia Nepal, and Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) gathered to discuss about various challenges, cross-community collaborative projects, organizing larger events, and strategies to grow the Wikimedia movement in South Asia.</li>
<li>Classical Languages in the Digital Era Conference (Organized by Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore; July 17, 2015) Tanveer Hasan participated in this conference aimed at discussing about the future of Indian classical languages in the digital era. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<b> </b>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-times-of-india-july-5-2015-not-many-contributors-for-kannada-centric-wiki-page">Not many contributors for Kannada-centric Wiki page</a> (The Times of India, July 5, 2015)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/indian-express-july-5-2015-upload-more-kannada-articles-on-wikipedia">Upload More Kannada Articles on Wikipedia</a> (Indian Express, July 5, 2015)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-july-4-2015-coverage-in-udayavani">Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru</a> (Udayavani; July 5, 2015)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/news/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-july-5-2015-coverage-in-prajavani">Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru</a> (Prajavani; July 5, 2015)</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Staff Movement</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li>Tito Dutta, Luis Gomes and Abhinav Garule have joined the CIS-A2K team as Programme Associates from March this year. Tito is working for internal documentation and resource building, and Luis and Abhinav are implementing the Konkani and Marathi work plan respectively along with community liaison.</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance">Internet Governance</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Free Speech and Expression</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/regulatory-perspectives-on-net-neutrality">Regulatory Perspectives on Net Neutrality</a> (Pranesh Prakash; July 8, 2015). Vidushi Marda and Tarun Krishnakumar assisted Pranesh Prakash in this.</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/policy-in-india-community-custom-censorship-and-future-of-internet-regulation">Free Speech Policy in India: Community, Custom, Censorship, and the Future of Internet Regulation</a> (Bhairav Acharya; July 13, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-neutrality-and-law-of-common-carriage">Net Neutrality and the Law of Common Carriage</a> (Bhairav Acharya; July 14, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/freedom-of-expression-in-a-digital-age">Freedom of Expression in a Digital Age</a> (Geetha Hariharan and Jyoti Panday; July 14, 2015). CIS, the Observer Research Foundation, the Internet Policy Observatory, the Centre for Global Communication Studies and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania organized this conference on April 21, 2015 in New Delhi. Elonnai Hickok edited the report.</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/clearing-misconceptions-dot-panel-net-neutrality">Clearing Misconceptions: What the DoT Panel Report on Net Neutrality Says</a> (and Doesn't) (Pranesh Prakash; July 21, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/role-of-intermediaries-in-counting-online-abuse">Role of Intermediaries in Countering Online Abuse</a> (Jyoti Panday; July 31, 2015). This got published as two blog entries in the NALSAR Law Tech Blog. Part 1 can be accessed <a href="https://techlawforum.wordpress.com/2015/06/30/role-of-intermediaries-in-countering-online-abuse-still-a-work-in-progress-part-i/">here</a> and Part 2 <a href="https://techlawforum.wordpress.com/2015/06/30/role-of-intermediaries-in-countering-online-abuse-still-a-work-in-progress-part-ii/">here</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Event Co-organized</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/a-public-discussion-on-criminal-defamation-in-india">A Public Discussion on Criminal Defamation in India</a> (Organized by CIS, the Network of Women in Media, India; and Media Watch; Bangalore; July 29, 2015). The event was a public discussion about the continued criminalisation of defamation in India.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Event</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/round-table-discussion-on-whois">Roundtable discussion on WHOIS</a> (Organized by Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India; July 28, 2015; New Delhi). Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda participated in the discussion remotely. Aditya Garg attended in person.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Privacy</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/anti-spam-laws-in-different-jurisdictions">Anti-Spam Laws in Different Jurisdictions: A Comparative Analysis</a> (Rakshanda Deka; July 2, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-dissent">A Dissent Note to the Expert Committee for DNA Profiling</a> (Elonnai Hickok; July 17, 2015). Click for <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-bill-functions.pdf">DNA Bill Functions</a>, <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-list-of-offences.pdf">DNA List of Offences</a>, and <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-note-on-dna-bill.pdf">CIS Note on DNA Bill</a>. A modified version was published by <a href="http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/dna-bill-problems-issues-inputs-from-bangalore">Citizen Matters Bangalore</a> on July 28.</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-autonomy-sexual-choice-common-law-recognition-of-homosexuality">Privacy, Autonomy, and Sexual Choice: The Common Law Recognition of Homosexuality</a> (Bhairav Acharya; July 18, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/aadhaar-vs-social-security-number">Aadhaar Number vs the Social Security Number</a> (Elonnai Hickok; July 21, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Event</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/best-practices-meet-2015">7th Best Practices Meet 2015</a> (Organized by Data Security Council of India; Bangalore; July 9 – 10, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session "Architecting Security for transformation to Digital India". Elonnai Hickok was a panelist in the session "Steering privacy in the age of extreme innovation technology & business models."</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Cyber Security</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Videos</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-cybersecurity-series-part-22-anonymous">Cyber Security Series Part 23</a> (Purba Sarkar; July 13, 2015). CIS interviews a Tibetan security researcher and information activist.</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-cybersecurity-series-part-24-2013-shantanu-ghosh">Cyber Security Series Part 24</a> (Purba Sarkar; July 15, 2015). CIS interviews Shantanu Ghosh, Managing Director, Symantec Product Operations, India, as part of the Cybersecurity Series.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Miscellaneous</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Article</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-july-15-2015-sumandro-chattapadhyay-iron-out-contradictions-in-the-digital-india-programme">Iron out contradictions in the Digital India programme</a> (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; Hindustan Times; July 28, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Research Paper</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/technology-business-incubators">First draft of Technology Business Incubators: An Indian Perspective and Implementation Guidance Report</a> (Sunil Abraham, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Anumeha Karnatak; July 25, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom">Telecom</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Op-ed</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-op-ed-july-2-2015-shyam-ponappa-centrality-of-cash-flows">The Centrality of Cash Flows</a> (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; July 1, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; July 2, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entry</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/funding-of-national-optic-fibre-network-who-is-accountable">Funding of National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) - Who's Accountable?</a> (Aditya Garg; July 17, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw">Researchers at Work</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_whatsapp-and-the-creation-of-a-transnational-sociality">WhatsApp and the Creation of a Transnational Sociality</a> (Maitrayee Deka; July 1, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_users-and-the-internet">Users and the Internet</a> (Purbasha Auddy; July 10, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_effective-activism">Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi</a> (Sarah McKeever; July 16, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_studying-the-internet-discourse-in-india-through-the-prism-of-human-rights">Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights</a> (Deva Prasad M.; July 22, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/blog_understanding-tagores-music-on-youtube">'Originality,' 'Authenticity,' and 'Experimentation': Understanding Tagore’s Music on YouTube)</a> (Ipsita Sengupta; July 27, 2015).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/news">News & Media Coverage</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/cio-july-1-2015-irctc-aadhaar-play-can-violate-sc-order-and-derail-national-security">'IRCTC’s Aadhaar play can violate SC order and derail National Security'</a> (Shubhra Rishi; CIO.IN; July 1, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/catch-news-july-2-2015-the-digital-divide-pros-and-cons-of-modi-s-latest-big-initiative">The Digital Divide: pros and cons of Modi's latest big initiative</a> (Suhas Munshi; July 2, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-statesman-rakesh-kumar-july-13-2015-corporate-push-modis-billion-digital-dream">Corporate push to Modi’s Rs.4.5-billion digital dream</a> (Rakesh Kumar; The Statesman; July 13, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/huffington-post-july-16-2015-betwa-sharma-criminal-defamation-the-urgent-cause-that-has-united-rahul-gandhi-arvind-kejriwal-and-subramanian-swamy">Criminal Defamation: The Urgent Cause That has United Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal and Subramanian Swamy</a> (Betwa Sharma; Huffington Post; July 15, 2015).</li>
<li><a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/five-nations-one-future">Five Nations, One Future?</a> (Bjorn Ludtke, Ellen Lee, Jaideep Sen, Gwendolyn Ledger, David Nicholson, and Jesko Johannsen; Voestalpine; July 18, 2015).</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-scariest-bill-in-parliament-is-getting-no-attention-2013-here2019s-what-you-need-to-know-about-it">The scariest bill in Parliament is getting no attention – here’s what you need to know about it</a> (Nayantara Narayanan; Scroll.in; July 24, 2015)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-nikita-mehta-july-29-2015-regulation-misuse-concerns-still-dog-dna-profiling-bill">Regulation, misuse concerns still dog DNA profiling bill</a> (Nikita Mehta; Livemint; July 29, 2015)</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/">About CIS</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the mediation and reconfiguration of social and cultural processes and structures by the internet and digital media technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Follow us elsewhere</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>CIS - Twitter:<a href="http://twitter.com/cis_india"> http://twitter.com/cis_india</a></li>
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</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Support Us</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Request for Collaboration</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, Access to Knowledge, at <a href="mailto:tanveer@cis-india.org">tanveer@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2015-bulletin'>http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2015-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceResearchers at Work2015-11-21T16:23:52ZPageFunding of National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) - Who's Accountable?
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/funding-of-national-optic-fibre-network-who-is-accountable
<b>The National Optic Fibre Network, a part of the Government's Digital India Initiative, has been in the news since the recent Expert Committee Report. In this Blog, the author examines the Accountability of the funding of the project.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) is a project launched by the Government under their 'Digital India' initiative. Implementation of the project is being undertaken by Bharat Broadband Nigam Limited (BBNL), a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) created for the project. <a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a> The project, launched in 2011, has seen multiple delays. The recent Expert Committee report on the project has now set an end-date for December 2016. It has also proposed an increase in the funding from 20,000 crore to 72,000 crore approximately. This is greater than a threefold increase.<a href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a> The Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) provides all the funding for the implementation of the project under an agreement between them and BBNL. <a href="#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3"><sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup></a> The close relationship between the two entities through their parent entity, however, can lead to a lax oversight of the entire process.</p>
<h3>Universal Service Obligation Fund</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">USOF, established in 2002, provides effective subsidies to ensure telegraph services are provided to everyone across India, especially in the rural and remote areas. It is headed by the USOF Administrator who reports to the Secretary, Department of Telecommunications (DoT). <a href="#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4"><sup><sup>[4]</sup></sup></a> Funds come from the Universal Service Levy (USL) of 5% charged from all the telecom operators on their Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) which are then deposited into the Consolidated Fund of India, and require prior parliamentary approval to be dispatched.<a href="#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5"><sup><sup>[5]</sup></sup></a> The USOF works through a bidding process, where funds are given to the enterprise quoting the lowest bid. However, the funds for NOFN were made an exception to this process since BBNL was the sole party involved in the implementation having being specifically created for it.<a href="#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6"><sup><sup>[6]</sup></sup></a></p>
<h3>Agreement to Transfer Funds between USOF and BBNL</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The agreement<a href="#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7"><sup><sup>[7]</sup></sup></a> between USOF and BBNL provided for USOF to cover all the expenses of BBNL undertaken while working on NOFN project. It empowered USOF, amongst other things, to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Revoke the Agreement in Public Interest within 5 years from signing; and to re-new the agreement or not to re-new it</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Enforce Operating and Technical Condition upon BBNL while implementing the NOFN project</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Have the Right to Inspect, Test and Monitor the enforcement of such Conditions so imposed</li>
</ul>
<h3>Conflict of Interest between both parties</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Administrator of USOF functions as an attached office to the Ministry of Dot, and is required to report to them,<a href="#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8"><sup><sup>[8]</sup></sup></a> while BBNL is an SPV established under the DoT<a href="#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9"><sup><sup>[9]</sup></sup></a> and has an Memorandum of Understanding <a href="#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10"><sup><sup>[10]</sup></sup></a> with them. Since the parent entity of both the parties is the same, there is a definite conflict of interest. An analysis of USOF's largest and most ambitious program for mobile provisioning in rural areas showed slow progress due to<a href="#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11"><sup><sup>[11]</sup></sup></a>:</p>
<ul>
<li>Lack of Accountability arising from the relationship between the Government owned incumbent and the USOF Administrator</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>No proper evaluation of USOF</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Non-ring fencing of the fund</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Poor quality project management</li>
</ul>
<h3>Lack of Review Mechanism with effective power</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Similarly in NOFN, if no effective review mechanism is evolved to check the progress of the timeline and implementation of the projects, it may prove ineffective.<a href="#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12"><sup><sup>[12]</sup></sup></a> 3rd party review mechanisms have been suggested as an alternative to USOF mechanisms to ensure neutrality and efficiency<a href="#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13"><sup><sup>[13]</sup></sup></a> since the the agreement gives USOF the Right to 'Inspect, Test and Monitor', but there is no effective Review Mechanism available with the USOF to actually undertake the task. The ones available would also be working under the DoT and hence operate under a conflict of interest which may be misused to disburse funds even though they are not being used efficiently or in a timely fashion.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Other Funding Options - Private Actors and State Govts.</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Expert Committee also looked into two other funding options. Bringing Private Actors on Board in implementation of Phase II of the Project was the first.<a href="#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14"><sup><sup>[14]</sup></sup></a> This has been criticized as being unfair to Public Enterprises since they have been allotted the 'hard' areas while the Private Actors will get the 'soft' ones. <a href="#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15"><sup><sup>[15]</sup></sup></a> The abysmal record of Private Actors in Rural Areas has also been mentioned as a factor against them.<a href="#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16"><sup><sup>[16]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second suggestion is to bring in State Governments. Andhra Pradesh has already decided to opt for its own SPV to implement NOFN while Kerala and Tamil Nadu are considering it.<a href="#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17"><sup><sup>[17]</sup></sup></a> The problems with having multiple implementing bodies are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Transferring Funds to multiple bodies</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Having to track their work separately</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Lack of accountability for work done by them individually</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since a criticism of the current implementation mechanism has been based on the fact that 3 PSUs (BSNL, RailTel and PowerGrid) have been involved, having multiple SPVs would only add to the woes.<a href="#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18"><sup><sup>[18]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The project, having been delayed multiple times, is now set for a December-2017 end. The funding for it has also been tripled. Hence, when we see that the funds are being given away so easily to BBNL and without any effective procedure to maintain the efficacy of the work done, it raises questions on the accountability of the Government regarding the fund which has been collected through revenue from all telecom operators (via USL). Therefore, a more open mechanism has to be ensured to reduce chances of bias towards BBNL by USOF, both having the same parent entity leading to conflict of interest between the two. This should be the focus right now, rather than introducing new funding options.</p>
<div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="100%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a> 'Objectives, About BBNL' <a href="http://www.bbnl.nic.in/content/page/objectives.php">http://www.bbnl.nic.in/content/page/objectives.php</a> accessed 2 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a> Yuthika Bhargava, 'National Opic Fibre Network - Revamp on Cards' (<i>The Hindu</i>, 30 May 2015) <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/national-optical-fibre-network-revamp-on-cards/article7261346.ece"> http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/national-optical-fibre-network-revamp-on-cards/article7261346.ece </a> accessed 2 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3"><sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup></a> 'Agreement For Support from USO Fund For Creation, Operation and Maintenance of the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) for Provision of Broadband Connectivity to the Panchayats to be executed by Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) Under Universal Services Obligation Fund, The Indian Telegraph (Amendment) Rules, 2012' <a href="http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/GagendaPdf/NOFN_Agreement.pdf">http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/GagendaPdf/NOFN_Agreement.pdf</a> accessed 2 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<p><a href="#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4"><sup><sup>[4]</sup></sup></a> 'About USOF' <a href="http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/usof_home_contd.htm">http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/usof_home_contd.htm</a> accessed 2 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<p><a href="#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5"><sup><sup>[5]</sup></sup></a> 'USOF Brochure' <a href="http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/USOF-Brochure.pdf">http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/USOF-Brochure.pdf</a> accessed 2 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<p><a href="#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6"><sup><sup>[6]</sup></sup></a> 'Indian Telegraph (Amendment of 2012) Rules, 1951' <a href="http://usof.gov.in/usof-cms/ActsRules/Indian%20Telegraph%20Rules%202012.PDF"> http://usof.gov.in/usof-cms/ActsRules/Indian%20Telegraph%20Rules%202012.PDF </a> accessed 3 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7"><sup><sup>[7]</sup></sup></a> 'Agreement For Support from USO Fund For Creation, Operation and Maintenance of the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) for Provision of Broadband Connectivity to the Panchayats to be executed by Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) Under Universal Services Obligation Fund, The Indian Telegraph (Amendment) Rules, 2012' <a href="http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/GagendaPdf/NOFN_Agreement.pdf">http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/GagendaPdf/NOFN_Agreement.pdf</a> accessed 5 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<p><a href="#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8"><sup><sup>[8]</sup></sup></a> 'Constitution, Powers and Functions of the Office of Universal Service Fund Administrator' <a href="http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/usofsub/Constitution,%20Powers%20and%20Functions%20of%20the%20Office%20of%20Universal%20Service%20Fund%20Administrator.pdf"> http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/usofsub/Constitution,%20Powers%20and%20Functions%20of%20the%20Office%20of%20Universal%20Service%20Fund%20Administrator.pdf </a> accessed 6 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
<p><a href="#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9"><sup><sup>[9]</sup></sup></a> 'Company Profile' <a href="http://www.bbnl.nic.in/content/page/company-profile.php">http://www.bbnl.nic.in/content/page/company-profile.php</a> accessed 5 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn10">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10"><sup><sup>[10]</sup></sup></a> 'Memorandum of Understanding 2015-16 with Department of Telecommunication' <a href="http://www.bbnl.nic.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/BBNL_Signed_Copy%20of%20MoU%202015-16.pdf"> http://www.bbnl.nic.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/BBNL_Signed_Copy%20of%20MoU%202015-16.pdf </a> accessed 6 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn11">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11"><sup><sup>[11]</sup></sup></a> Rekha Jain & G. Raghuram, 'Role of Universal Service Obligation Fund in Rural Telecom Services: Lessons from the Indian Experience' <a href="http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/assets/snippets/workingpaperpdf/2009-06-03Jain.pdf"> http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/assets/snippets/workingpaperpdf/2009-06-03Jain.pdf </a> accessed 2 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn12">
<p><a href="#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12"><sup><sup>[12]</sup></sup></a> <i>Ibid</i></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn13">
<p><a href="#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13"><sup><sup>[13]</sup></sup></a> <i>Ibid</i></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn14">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14"><sup><sup>[14]</sup></sup></a> Mansi Taneja, 'Govt decides to rope in private players for NOFN project' (<i>Business Standard</i>, 15 January 2015) <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/govt-decides-to-rope-in-private-players-for-nofn-project-115011401190_1.html"> http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/govt-decides-to-rope-in-private-players-for-nofn-project-115011401190_1.html </a> accessed 1 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn15">
<p><a href="#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15"><sup><sup>[15]</sup></sup></a> Prabir Purkayastha, 'National Optical Fibre Network Project And the Expert Committee Report' (<i>Peoples Democracy</i>, No. 25, Vol. XXXIX, 28 June 2015).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn16">
<p><a href="#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16"><sup><sup>[16]</sup></sup></a> <i>Ibid</i></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn17">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17"><sup><sup>[17]</sup></sup></a> Mansi Taneja, 'National Optic fibre network: Govt to rope in state govts' (<i>Business Standard</i>, 29 May 2015) <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/national-optic-fibre-network-govt-to-rope-in-state-govts-115052900050_1.html"> http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/national-optic-fibre-network-govt-to-rope-in-state-govts-115052900050_1.html </a> accessed 4 July 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn18">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18"><sup><sup>[18]</sup></sup></a> 'Trai: Optical fibre network project caught in red tape' (<i>The Financial Express</i>, 18 April 2015) <a href="http://www.financialexpress.com/article/economy/trai-optical-fibre-network-project-caught-in-red-tape/64699/"> http://www.financialexpress.com/article/economy/trai-optical-fibre-network-project-caught-in-red-tape/64699/ </a> accessed 2 July 2015.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/funding-of-national-optic-fibre-network-who-is-accountable'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/funding-of-national-optic-fibre-network-who-is-accountable</a>
</p>
No publisherAditya GargTelecom2015-07-17T15:19:51ZBlog EntryRegulatory Perspectives on Net Neutrality
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/regulatory-perspectives-on-net-neutrality
<b>In this paper Pranesh Prakash gives an overview on why India needs to put in place net neutrality regulations, and the form that those regulations must take to avoid being over-regulation.</b>
<p>With assistance by Vidushi Marda (Programme Officer, Centre for Internet and Society) and Tarun Krishnakumar (Research Volunteer, Centre for Internet and Society). <i>I would like to specially thank Vishal Misra, Steve Song, Rudolf van der Berg, Helani Galpaya, A.B. Beliappa, Amba Kak, and Sunil Abraham for extended discussions, helpful suggestions and criticisms. However, this paper is not representative of their views, which are varied.</i></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Today, we no longer live in a world of "roti, kapda, makaan", but in the world of "roti, kapda, makaan aur broadband". <a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a> This is recognized by the National Telecom Policy IV.1.2, which states the need to "recognise telecom, including broadband connectivity as a basic necessity like education and health and work towards 'Right to Broadband'."<a href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a> According to the IAMAI, as of October 2014, India had 278 million internet users. <a href="#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3"><sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup></a> Of these, the majority access Internet through their mobile phones, and the WEF estimates only 3 in 100 have broadband on their mobiles.<a href="#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4"><sup><sup>[4]</sup></sup></a> Thus, the bulk of our population is without broadband. Telecom regulation and net neutrality has a very important role in enabling this vision of Internet as a basic human need that we should aim to fulfil.</p>
<h1><a name="h.49zh04wwxm9l"></a> <b>1. Why should we regulate the telecom sector? </b></h1>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All ICT regulation should be aimed at achieving five goals: achieving universal, affordable access; <a href="#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5"><sup><sup>[5]</sup></sup></a> ensuring and sustaining effective competition in an efficient market and avoiding market failures; protecting against consumer harms; ensuring maximum utility of the network by ensuring interconnection; and addressing state needs (taxation, security, etc.). Generally, all these goals go hand in hand, however some tensions may arise. For instance, universal access may not be provided by the market because the costs of doing so in certain rural or remote areas may outweigh the immediate monetary benefits private corporations could receive in terms of profits from those customers. In such cases, to further the goal of universal access, schemes such as universal service obligation funds are put in place, while ensuring that such schemes either do not impact competition or very minimally impact it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is clear that to maximise societal benefit, effective regulation of the ICT sector is a requirement, which otherwise, due to the ability of dominant players to abuse network effect to their advantage, is inherently prone towards monopolies. For instance, in the absence of regulation, a dominant player would charge far less for intra-network calls than inter-network calls, making customers shift to the dominant network. This kind of harm to competition should be regulated by the ICT regulator. However, it is equally true that over-regulation is as undesirable as under-regulation, since over-regulation harms innovation - whether in the form of innovative technologies or innovative business models. The huge spurt of growth globally of the telecom sector since the 1980s has resulted not merely from advancements in technology, but in large part from the de-monopolisation and deregulation of the telecom sector.<a href="#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6"><sup><sup>[6]</sup></sup></a> Similarly, the Internet has largely flourished under very limited technology-specific regulation. For instance, while interconnection between different telecom networks is heavily regulated in the domestic telecom sector, interconnection between the different autonomous systems (ASes) that make up the Internet is completely unregulated, thereby allowing for non-transparent pricing and opaque transactions. Given this context, we must ensure we do not over-regulate, lest we kill innovation.</p>
<h1 style="text-align: justify; "><a name="h.psqblglrgt68"></a> <b>2. Why should we regulate Net Neutrality? And whom should we regulate?</b></h1>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We wouldn't need to regulate Net Neutrality if ISPs were not "<b>gatekeepers</b>" for last-mile access. "Gatekeeping" occurs when a single company establishes itself as an exclusive route to reach a large number of people and businesses or, in network terms, nodes. It is not possible for Internet services to reach the customers of the telecom network without passing through the telecom network. The situation is very different in the middle-mile and for backhaul. Even though anti-competitive terms may exist in the middle-mile, especially given the opacity of terms in "transit agreements", a packet is usually able to travel through multiple routes if one route is too expensive (even if that is not the shortest network path, and is thus inefficient in a way). However, this multiplicity of routes is not possible in the last mile.</p>
<p>This leaves last mile telecom operators (ISPs) in a position to unfairly discriminate between different Internet services or destinations or applications, while harming consumer choice. This is why we believe that promoting the five goals mentioned above would require regulation of last-mile telecom operators to prevent unjust discrimination against end-users and content providers.</p>
<p>Thus, <b> net neutrality is the principle that we should regulate gatekeepers to ensure they do not use their power to unjustly discriminate between similarly situated persons, content or traffic. </b></p>
<h1><a name="h.79auvw7dxb9s"></a> <b>3. How should we regulate Net Neutrality?</b></h1>
<h2><a name="h.288fq19cym4p"></a> 3.1. What concerns does Net Neutrality raise? What harms does it entail?</h2>
<p>Discriminatory practices at the level of access to the Internet raises the following set of concerns:</p>
<p>1. Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and privacy.</p>
<p>2. Harm to effective competition</p>
<p>a. This includes competition amongst ISPs as well as competition amongst content providers.</p>
<p>b. Under-regulation here may cause harm to innovation at the content provider level, including through erecting barriers to entry.</p>
<p>c. Over-regulation here may cause harm to innovation in terms of ISP business models.</p>
<p>3. Harm to consumers</p>
<p>a. Under-regulation here may harm consumer choice and the right to freedom of speech, expression, and communication.</p>
<p>b. Over-regulation on this ground may cause harm to innovation at the level of networking technologies and be detrimental to consumers in the long run.</p>
<p>4. Harm to "openness" and interconnectedness of the Internet, including diversity (of access, of content, etc.)</p>
<p>a. Exceptions for specialized services should be limited to preserve the open and interconnectedness of the Internet and of the World Wide Web.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It might help to think about Net Neutrality as primarily being about two overlapping sets of regulatory issues: preferential treatment of particular Internet-based services (in essence: content- or source-/destination-based discrimination, i.e., discrimination on basis of 'whose traffic it is'), or discriminatory treatment of applications or protocols (which would include examples like throttling of BitTorrent traffic, high overage fees upon breaching Internet data caps on mobile phones, etc., i.e., discrimination on the basis of 'what kind of traffic it is').</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b> Situations where the negative or positive discrimination happens on the basis of particular content or address should be regulated through the use of competition principles, while negative or positive discrimination at the level of specific class of content, protocols, associated ports, and other such sender-/receiver-agnostic features, should be regulated through regulation of network management techniques </b> . The former deals with instances where the question of "in whose favour is there discrimination" may be asked, while the latter deals with the question "in favour of what is there discrimination".</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In order to do this, a regulator like TRAI can use both hard regulation - price ceilings, data cap floors, transparency mandates, preventing specific anti-competitive practices, etc. - as well as soft regulation - incentives and disincentives.</p>
<h3><a name="h.y84hsu73ibky"></a> 3.1.1 Net Neutrality and human rights</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Any discussion on the need for net neutrality impugns the human rights of a number of different stakeholders. Users, subscribers, telecom operators and ISPs all possess distinct and overlapping rights that are to be weighed against each other before the scope, nature and form of regulatory intervention are finalised. The freedom of speech, right to privacy and right to carry on trade raise some of the most pertinent questions in this regard.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For example, to properly consider issues surrounding the practice of paid content-specific zero-rating from a human rights point of view, one must seek to balance the rights of content providers to widely disseminate their 'speech' to the largest audiences against the rights of consumers to have access to a diverse variety of different, conflicting and contrasting ideas.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This commitment to a veritable marketplace or free-market of ideas has formed the touchstone of freedom of speech law in jurisdictions across the world as well as finding mention in pronouncements of the Indian Supreme Court. Particular reference is to be made to the dissent of Mathew, J. in<i>Bennett Coleman v. Union of India</i><a href="#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7"><sup><sup>[7]</sup></sup></a><i> </i>and of the majority <i>Sakal Papers v. Union of India</i><a href="#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8"><sup><sup>[8]</sup></sup></a> which rejected the approach.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Further, the practice of deep-packet inspection, which is sometimes used in the process of network management, raises privacy concerns as it seeks to go beyond what is "public" information in the header of an IP packet, necessary for routing, to analysing non-public information. <a href="#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9"><sup><sup>[9]</sup></sup></a></p>
<h2><a name="h.yjyiwnikxizu"></a> 3.2 What conditions and factors may change these concerns and the regulatory model we should adopt?</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While the principles relating to Net Neutrality remain the same in all countries (i.e., trying to prevent gatekeepers from unjustly exploiting their position), the severity of the problem varies depending on competition in the market, on the technologies, and on many other factors. One way to measure fair or stable allocation of the surplus created by a network - or a network-of-networks like the Internet - is by treating it as a convex cooperation game and thereupon calculating that game's Shapley value:<a href="#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10"><sup><sup>[10]</sup></sup></a> in the case of the Internet, this would be a game involving content ISPs, transit ISPs, and eyeball (i.e., last-mile) ISPs. The Shapley value changes depending on the number of competitors there are in the market: thus, the fair/stable allocation when there's vibrant competition in the market is different from the fair/stable allocation in a market without such competition. That goes to show that a desirable approach when an ISP tries to unjustly enrich itself by charging other network-participants may well be to increase competition, rather than directly regulating the last-mile ISP. Further, it shows that in a market with vibrant last-mile competition, the capacity of the last-mile ISP to unjustly are far diminished.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In countries which are remote and have little international bandwidth, the need to conserve that bandwidth is high. ISPs can regulate that by either increasing prices of Internet connections for all, or by imposing usage restrictions (such as throttling) on either heavy users or bandwidth-hogging protocols. If the amount of international bandwidth is higher, the need and desire on part of ISPs to indulge in such usage restrictions decreases. Thus, the need to regulate is far higher in the latter case, than in the former case.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The above paragraphs show that both the need for regulation and also the form that the regulation should take depend on a variety of conditions that aren't immediately apparent.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Thus, the framework that the regulator sets out to tackle issues relating to Net Neutrality are most important, whereas the specific rules may need to change depending on changes in conditions. These conditions include:</p>
<p>● last-mile market</p>
<p>○ switching costs between equivalent service providers</p>
<p>○ availability of an open-access last-mile</p>
<p>○ availability of a "public option" neutral ISP</p>
<p>○ increase or decrease in the competition, both in wired and mobile ISPs.</p>
<p>● interconnection market</p>
<p>○ availability of well-functioning peering exchanges</p>
<p>○ availability of low-cost transit</p>
<p>● technology and available bandwidth</p>
<p>○ spectrum efficiency</p>
<p>○ total amount of international bandwidth and local network bandwidth</p>
<p>● conflicting interests of ISPs</p>
<p>○ do the ISPs have other business interests other than providing Internet connectivity? (telephony, entertainment, etc.)</p>
<h2><a name="h.1yozvmhaur7z"></a> 3.3 How should we deal with anti-competitive practices?</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Anti-competitive practices in the telecom sector can take many forms: Abuse of dominance, exclusion of access to specific services, customer lock-in, predatory pricing, tying of services, cross-subsidization, etc., are a few of them. In some cases the anti-competitive practice targets other telecom providers, while in others it targets content providers. In the both cases, it is important to ensure that ensure that telecom subscribers have a competitive choice between effectively substitutable telecom providers and an ability to seamlessly switch between providers.</p>
<h3><a name="h.smm9g46xsi3q"></a> 3.3.1 Lowering Switching Costs</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">TRAI has tackled many of these issues head on, especially in the mobile telephony space, while competitive market pressures have helped too:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">● <b>Contractual or transactional lock-in</b>. The easiest way to prevent shifting from one network to another is by contractually mandating a lock-in period, or by requiring special equipment (interoperability) to connect to one's network. In India, this is not practised in the telecom sector, with the exception of competing technologies like CDMA and GSM. Non-contractual lock-ins, for instance by offering discounts for purchasing longer-term packages, are not inherently anti-competitive unless that results in predatory pricing or constitutes an abuse of market dominance. In India, switching from one mobile provider to another, though initiated 15 years into the telecom revolution, is in most cases now almost as easy as buying a new SIM card.<a href="#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11"><sup><sup>[11]</sup></sup></a> TRAI may consider proactive regulation against contractual lock-in.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">● <b>Number of competitors</b>. Even if switching from one network to another is easy, it is not useful unless there are other equivalent options to switch to. In the telecom market, coverage is a very important factor in judging equivalence. Given that last mile connectivity is extremely expensive to provide, the coverage of different networks are very different, and this is even more true when one considers wired connectivity, which is difficult to lay in densely-populated urban and semi-urban areas and unprofitable in sparsely-populated areas. The best way to increase the number of competitors is to make it easier for competitors to exist. Some ways of doing this would be through enabling spectrum-sharing, lowering right-of-way rents, allowing post-auction spectrum trading, and promoting open-access last-mile fibre carriers and to thereby encourage competition on the basis of price and service and not exclusive access to infrastructure.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">● <b>Interconnection and mandatory carriage</b>. The biggest advantage a dominant telecom player has is exclusive access to its customer base. Since in the telecom market, no telco wants to not connect to customers of another telco, they do not outright ban other networks. However, dominant players can charge high prices from other networks, thereby discriminating against smaller networks. In the early 2000s, Airtel-to-Airtel calls were much cheaper than Airtel-to-Spice calls. However, things have significantly changed since then. TRAI has, since the 2000s, heavily regulated interconnection and imposed price controls on interconnection ("termination") charges.<a href="#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12"><sup><sup>[12]</sup></sup></a> Thus, now, generally, inter-network calls are priced similarly to intra-network calls. And if you want cheaper Airtel-to-Airtel calls, you can buy a special (unbundled) pack that enables an Airtel customer to take advantage of the fact that her friends are also on the same network, and benefits Airtel since they do not in such cases have to pay termination charges. Recently, TRAI has even made the interconnection rates zero in three cases: landline-to-landline, landline-to-cellular, and cellular-to-landline, in a bid to decrease landline call rates, and incentivise them, allowing a very low per call interconnection charges of 14 paise for cellular-to-cellular connections. <a href="#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13"><sup><sup>[13]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">○ With regard to Net Neutrality, we must have a rule that <b> no termination charges or carriage charges may be levied by any ISP upon any Internet service. No Internet service may be discriminated against with regard to carriage conditions or speeds or any other quality of service metric. In essence <i>all</i> negative discrimination should be prohibited. </b> This means that Airtel cannot forcibly charge WhatsApp or any other OTT (which essentially form a different "layer") money for the "privilege" of being able to reach Airtel customers, nor may Airtel slow down WhatsApp traffic and thus try to force WhatsApp to pay. There is a duty on telecom providers to carry any legitimate traffic ("common carriage"), not a privilege. It is important to note that consumer-facing TSPs get paid by other interconnecting Internet networks in the form of <i>transit charges</i> (or the TSP's costs are defrayed through peering). There shouldn't be any separate charge on the basis of content (different layer from the carriage) rather than network (same layer as the carriage). This principle is especially important for startups, and which are often at the receiving end of such discriminatory practices.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">● <b>Number Portability</b>. One other factor that prevents users from shifting between one network and another is the fact that they have to change an important aspect of their identity: their phone number (this doesn't apply to Internet over DSL, cable, etc.). At least in the mobile space, TRAI has for several years tried to mandate seamless mobile number portability. The same is being tried by the European Commission in the EU. <a href="#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14"><sup><sup>[14]</sup></sup></a> While intra-circle mobile number portability exists in India - and TRAI is pushing for inter-circle mobile number portability as well<a href="#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15"><sup><sup>[15]</sup></sup></a> - this is nowhere as seamless as it should be.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">● <b>Multi-SIM phones</b>. The Indian market is filled with phones that can accommodate multiple SIM cards, enabling customers to shift seamlessly between multiple networks. This is true not just in India, but most developing countries with extremely price-sensitive customers. Theoretically, switching costs would approach zero if in a market with full coverage by <i>n</i> telecom players every subscriber had a phone with <i>n </i>SIM slots with low-cost SIM cards being available.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The situation in the telecom sector with respect to the above provides a stark contrast to the situation in the USA, and to the situation in the DTH market. In the USA, phones get sold at discounts with multi-month or multi-year contracts, and contractual lock-ins are a large problem. Keeping each of the above factors in mind, the Indian mobile telecom space is far more competitive than the US mobile telecom space.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Further, in the Indian DTH market, given that there is transactional lock-in (set-top boxes aren't interoperable in practice, though are mandated to be so by law<a href="#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16"><sup><sup>[16]</sup></sup></a>), there are fewer choices in the market; further, the equivalent of multi-SIM phones don't exist with respect to set-top boxes. Further, while there are must-carry rules with respect to carriage, they can be of three types: 1) must mandatorily provide access to particular channels<a href="#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17"><sup><sup>[17]</sup></sup></a> (positive obligation, usually for government channels); 2) prevented from not providing particular channels (negative obligation, to prevent anti-competitive behaviour and political censorship); and 3) must mandatorily offer access to at least a set number of channels (positive obligation for ensuring market diversity). <a href="#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18"><sup><sup>[18]</sup></sup></a> Currently, only (1) is in force, since despite attempts by TRAI to ensure (3) as well.<a href="#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19"><sup><sup>[19]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If the shifting costs are low and transparency in terms of network practice is reported in a standard manner and well-publicised, then that significantly weakens the "<b>gatekeeper effect</b>", which as we saw earlier, is the reason why we wish to introduce Net Neutrality regulation. This consequently means, as explained above in section 3.2, that <b> <i> despite the same Net Neutrality principles applying in all markets and countries, the precise form that the Net Neutrality regulations take in a telecom market with low switching costs would be different from the form that such regulations would take in a market with high switching costs. </i> </b></p>
<h3><a name="h.glaa2bev2dhk"></a> 3.3.2 Anti-competitive Practices</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some potential anti-competitive practices, which are closely linked, are cross-subsidization, tying (anti-competitive bundling) of multiple services, and vertical price squeeze. All three of these are especial concerns now, with the increased diversification of traditional telecom companies, and with the entry into telecom (like with DTH) of companies that create content. Hence, if Airtel cross-subsidizes the Hike chat application that it recently acquired, <a href="#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20"><sup><sup>[20]</sup></sup></a> or if Reliance Infocomm requires customers to buy a subscription to an offering from Reliance Big Entertainment, or if Reliance Infocomm meters traffic from another Reliance Big Entertainment differently from that from Saavn, all those would be violative of the <b>principle of non-discrimination by gatekeepers</b>. This same analysis can be applied to all unpaid deals and non-commercial deals, including schemes such as Internet.org and Wikipedia Zero, which will be covered later in the section on zero-rating.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While we have general rules such as sections 3 and 4 of the Competition Act, <b> we do not currently have specific rules prohibiting these or other anti-competitive practices, and we need Net Neutrality regulation that clearly prohibit such anti-competitive practices so that the telecom regulator can take action for non-compliance </b> . We cannot leave these specific policy prescriptions unstated, even if they are provided for in <a href="http://indiankanoon.org/doc/1153878/">section 3 of the Competition Act</a>. These concerns are especial concerns in the telecom sector, and the telecom regulator or arbitrator should have the power to directly deal with these, instead of each case going to the Competition Commission of India. This should not affect the jurisdiction of the CCI to investigate and adjudicate such matters, but should ensure that TRAI both has suo motu powers, and that the mechanism to complain is made simple (unlike the current scenario, where some individual complainants may fall in the cracks between TRAI and TDSAT).</p>
<h3><a name="h.yd0ptbr561l8"></a> 3.3.3 Zero-rating</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since a large part of the net neutrality debate in India involves zero-rating practices, we deal with that in some length. Zero-rating is the practice of not counting (aka "zero-rating") certain traffic towards a subscriber's regular Internet usage. The <b> zero-rated traffic could be zero-priced or fixed-price; capped or uncapped; subscriber-paid, Internet service-paid, paid for by both, or unpaid; content- or source/destination-based, or agnostic to content or source/destination; automatically provided by the ISP or chosen by the customer </b> . The motivations for zero-rating may also be varied, as we shall see below. Further, depending on the circumstances, zero-rating could be competitive or anti-competitive. All forms of zero-rating result in some form of discrimination, but not all zero-rating is harmful, nor does all zero-rating need to be prohibited.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While, as explained in the section on interconnection and carriage above, negative discrimination at the network level should be prohibited, that leaves open the question of positive discrimination. It follows from section 3.1 that the right frame of analysis of this question is harm to competition, since the main harm zero-rating is, as we shall see below, about discriminating between different content providers, and not discrimination at the level of protocols, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Whether one should allow for any form of positive discrimination at the network level or not depends on whether positive discrimination of (X) has an automatic and unfair negative impact on all (~X). That, in turn, depends on whether (~X) is being subject to unfair competition. As Wikipedia notes, "unfair competition means that the gains of some participants are conditional on the losses of others, when the gains are made in ways which are illegitimate or unjust." <b> Thus, positive discrimination that has a negative impact on effective competition shall not be permitted, since in such cases it is equivalent to negative discrimination ("zero-sum game") </b> . <b> Positive discrimination that does not have a negative impact on effective competition may be permitted, especially since it results in increased access and increases consumer benefit, as long as the harm to openness and diversity is minimized </b> .</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While considering this, one should keep in mind the fact that startups were, 10-15 years ago, at a huge disadvantage with regard to wholesale data purchase. The marketplaces for data centres and for content delivery networks (which speed up delivery of content by being located closer, in network terms, to multiple last-mile ISPs) were nowhere near as mature as they are today, and the prices were high. There was a much higher barrier to startup entry than there is today, due to the prices and due to larger companies being able to rely on economies of scale to get cheaper rates. Was that unfair? No. There is no evidence of anti-competitive practices, nor of startups complaining about such practices. Therefore, that was fair competition, despite specific input costs that were arguably needed (though not essential) for startups to compete being priced far beyond their capacity to pay.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Today the marketplace is very different, with a variety of offerings. CDNs such as Cloudflare, which were once the preserve of rich companies, even have free offerings, thus substantially lowering barriers for startups that want faster access to customers across the globe.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Is a CDN an essential cost for a startup? No. But in an environment where speed matters and customers use or don't use a service depending on speed; and where the startup's larger competitors are all using CDNs, a startup more or less has to. Thankfully, given the cheap access to CDNs these days, that cost is not too high for a startup to bear. If the CDN market was not competitive enough, would a hypothetical global regulator have been justified in outright banning the use of CDNs to 'level' the playing field? No, because the hypothetical global regulator instead had the option to (and would have been justified in) regulating the market to ensure greater competition.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b> A regulator should not prohibit an act that does not negatively impact access, competition, consumer benefit, nor openness (including diversity), since that would be over-regulation and would harm innovation. </b></p>
<h4><a name="h.3j3bch9mpwr2"></a> 3.3.3.1 Motivations for Zero-Rating</h4>
<h5><a name="h.pxa0ovwqncfy"></a> 3.3.3.1.1 Corporate Social Responsibility / Incentivizing Customers to Move Up Value Chain</h5>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There exist multiple instances where there is no commercial transaction between the OTT involved and the telecom carrier, in which zero-priced zero-rating of specific Internet content happens. We know that there is no commercial transaction either through written policy (Wikipedia Zero) or through public statements (Internet.org, a bouquet of sites). In such cases, the telecom provider would either be providing such services out of a sense of public interest, given the social value of those services, or would be providing such services out of self-interest, to showcase the value of particular Internet set the same time.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The apprehended risk is that of such a scheme creating a "walled garden", where users would be exposed only to those services which are free since the <i>search and discovery costs</i> of non-free Internet (i.e., any site outside the "walled garden") would be rather high. This risk, while real, is rather slim given the fact that the economic incentives for those customers who have the ability to pay for "Internet packs" but currently do not find a compelling reason to do so, or out of both a sense of public interest and self-interest of the telecom providers works against this.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="h.gzz6numa7y24"></a> In such non-commercial zero-priced zero-rating, a telecom provider would only make money if and only if subscribers start paying for sites outside of the walled garden. If subscribers are happy in the walled garden, the telecom provider starts losing money, and hence has a strong motivation to stop that scheme. If on the other hand, enough subscribers start becoming paying customers to offset the cost of providing the zero-priced zero-rated service(s) and make it profitable, that shows that despite the availability of zero-priced options a number of customers will opt for paid access to the open Internet and the open Web, and the overall harms of such zero-priced zero-rating would be minimal. Hence, the telecom providers have an incentive to keep the costs of Internet data packs low, thus encouraging customers who otherwise wouldn't pay for the Internet to become paying customers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There is the potential of consumer harm when users seek to access a site outside of the walled garden, and find to their dismay that they have been charged for the Internet at a hefty rate, and their prepaid balance has greatly decreased. This is an issue that TRAI is currently appraised of, and a suitable solution would need to be found to protect consumers against such harm.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All in all, given that the commercial interests of the telecom providers align with the healthy practice of non-discrimination, this form of limited positive discrimination is not harmful in the long run, particularly because it is not indefinitely sustainable for a large number of sites. Hence, it may not be useful to ban this form of zero-priced zero-rating of services as long as they aren't exclusive, or otherwise anti-competitive (a vertical price-squeeze, for instance), and the harm to consumers is prohibited and the harm to openness/diversity is minimized.</p>
<h5><a name="h.2xvaoc7t0zmu"></a> 3.3.3.1.2 Passing on ISP Savings / Incentivizing Customers to Lower ISP's Cost</h5>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Suppose, for instance, an OTT uses a CDN located, in network distance terms, near an eyeball ISP. In this case, the ISP has to probably pay less than it would have to had the same data been located in a data centre located further away, given that it would have fewer interconnection-related charges.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Hence the monetary costs of providing access to different Web destinations are not equal for the ISP. This cost can be varied either by the OTT (by it locating the data closer to the ISP - through a CDN, by co-locating where the ISP is also present, or by connecting to an Internet Exchange Point which the ISP is also connected to - or by it directly "peering" with the ISP) or by the ISP (by engaging in "transparent proxying" in which case the ISP creates caches at the ISP level of specific content (usually by caching non-encrypted data the ISP's customers request) and serves the cached content when a user requests a site, rather than serving the actual site). None of the practices so far mentioned are discriminatory from the customer's perspective with regard either to price or to prioritization, though all of them enable faster speeds to specific content. Hence none of the above-mentioned practices are considered even by the most ardent Net Neutrality advocates to be violations of that principle. <a href="#_ftn21" name="_ftnref21"><sup><sup>[21]</sup></sup></a> However, if an ISP zero-rates the content to either pass on its savings to the customer<a href="#_ftn22" name="_ftnref22"><sup><sup>[22]</sup></sup></a> or to incentivize the customer to access services that cost the ISP less in terms of interconnection costs, that creates a form of price discrimination for the customer, despite it benefiting the consumer.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The essential economic problem is that the cost to the ISP is variable, but the cost to the customer is fixed. Importantly, this problem is exacerbated in India where web hosting prices are high, transit prices are high, peering levels are low, and Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are not functioning well. <a href="#_ftn23" name="_ftnref23"><sup><sup>[23]</sup></sup></a> These conditions create network inefficiencies in terms of hosting of content further away from Indian networks in terms of network distance, and thus harms consumers as well as local ISPs. In order to set this right, zero-rating of this sort may be permitted as it acts as an incentive towards fixing the market fundamentals. However, once the market fundamentals are fixed, such zero-rating may be prohibited.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="h.fpfvyrxp6pif"></a> This example shows that the desirability or otherwise of discriminatory practices depends fully on the conditions present in the market, including in terms of interconnection costs.</p>
<h5><a name="h.uc9je2dcrwpx"></a> 3.3.3.1.3 Unbundling Internet into Services ("Special Packs")</h5>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since at least early 2014, mobile operators have been marketing special zero-rating "packs". These packs, if purchased by the customer, allow capped or in some instances uncapped, zero-rating of a service such as WhatsApp or Facebook, meaning traffic to/from that service will not be counted against their regular Internet usage.</p>
<p>For a rational customer, purchasing such a pack only makes sense in one of two circumstances:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">● The person has Internet connectivity on her Internet-capable phone, but has not purchased an "Internet data pack" since she doesn't find the Internet valuable. Instead, she has heard about "WhatsApp", has friends who are on it, and wishes to use that to reduce her SMS costs (and thereby eat into the carriage provider's ability to charge separately for SMSes). She chooses to buy a WhatsApp pack for around ₹25 a month instead of paying ₹95 for an all-inclusive Internet data pack.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">● The person has Internet connectivity on her Internet-capable phone, and has purchased an "Internet data pack". However, that data pack is capped and she has to decide between using WhatsApp and surfing web sites. She is on multiple WhatsApp groups and her WhatsApp traffic eats up 65% of her data cap. She thus has to choose between the two, since she doesn't want to buy two Internet data packs (each costing around ₹95 for a month). She chooses to buy a WhatsApp pack for ₹25 a month, paying a cumulative total of ₹120 instead of ₹190 which she would have had to had she bought two Internet data packs. In this situation, "unbundling" is happening, and this benefits the consumer. Such unbundling harms the openness and integrity of the Internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If users did not find value in the "special" data packs, and there is no market demand for such products, they will cease to be offered. Thus, assuming a telco's decision to offer such packs is purely customer-demand driven - and not due to deals it has struck with service providers - if Orkut is popular, telcos would be interested in offering Orkut packs and if Facebook is popular, they would be interested in offering a Facebook pack. Thus, clearly, <b>there is nothing anti-competitive about such customer-paid zero-rating packs, whereas they clearly enhance consumer benefit</b>. Would this increase the popularity of Orkut or Facebook? Potentially yes. But to prohibit this would be like prohibiting a supermarket from selectively (and non-collusively) offering discounts on popular products. Would that make already popular products even more popular? Potentially, yes. But that would not be seen as a harm to competition but would be seen as fair competition. This contravenes the "openness" of the Internet (i.e., the integral interconnected diversity that an open network like the Internet embodies) as an independent regulatory goal. The Internet, being a single gateway to a mind-boggling variety of services, allows for a diverse "long tail", which would lose out if the Internet was seen solely as a gateway to popular apps, sites, and content. However, given that this is a choice exercised freely by the consumer, such packs should not be prohibited, as that would be a case of over-regulation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The one exception to the above analysis of competition, needless to say, is if that these special packs aren't purely customer-demand driven and are the product of special deals between an OTT and the telco. In that case, we need to ensure it isn't anti-competitive by following the prescriptions of the next section.</p>
<h5><a name="h.f0rfoerqprro"></a> 3.3.3.1.4 Earning Additional Revenues from Content Providers</h5>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With offerings like Airtel Zero, we have a situation where OTT companies are offering to pay for wholesale data access used by their customers, and make accessing their specific site or app free for the customer. From the customer's perspective, this is similar to a toll-free number or a pre-paid envelope or free-to-air TV channel being offered on a particular network.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, from the network perspective, these are very different. Even if a customer-company pays Airtel for the toll-free number, that number is accessible and toll-free across all networks since the call terminates on Airtel networks and Airtel pays the connecting network back the termination charge from the fee they are paid by the customer-company. This cannot happen in case of the Internet, since the "call" terminates outside of the reach of the ISP being paid for zero-rating by the OTT company; hence unless specific measures are taken, zero-rating has to be network-specific.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The comparison to free-to-air channels is also instructive, since in 2010 TRAI made recommendations that consumers should have the choice of accessing free-to-air channels à-la-carte, without being tied up to a bouquet.<a href="#_ftn24" name="_ftnref24"><sup><sup>[24]</sup></sup></a> This would, in essence, allow a subscriber to purchase a set-top box, and without paying a regular subscription fee watch free-to-air channels. <a href="#_ftn25" name="_ftnref25"><sup><sup>[25]</sup></sup></a> However, similar to toll-free numbers, these free-to-air channels are free-to-air on all MSO's set-top boxes, unlike the proposed Airtel Zero scheme under which access to a site like Flipkart would be free for customers on Airtel's network alone.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Hence, these comparisons, while useful in helping think through the regulatory and competition issues, <i>should not</i> be used as instructive exact analogies, since they aren't fully comparable situations.</p>
<h5><a name="h.pyn97x5b6nfq"></a> 3.3.3.1.5 Market Options for OTT-Paid Zero-Rating</h5>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As noted above, a competitive marketplace already exists for wholesale data purchase at the level of "content ISPs" (including CDNs), which sell wholesale data to content providers (OTTs). This market is at present completely unregulated. The deals that exist are treated as commercial secrets. It is almost certain that large OTTs get better rates than small startups due to economies of scale.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, at the eyeball ISP level, it is a single-sided market with ISPs competing to gain customers in the form of end-users. With a scheme like "Airtel Zero", this would get converted into a double-sided market, with a gatekeeper without whom neither side can reach the other being in the middle creating a two-sided toll. This situation is ripe for market abuse: this situation allows the gatekeeper to hinder access to those OTTs that don't pay the requisite toll or to provide preferential access to those who pay, apart from providing an ISP the opportunity to "double-dip".</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One way to fix this is to prevent ISPs from establishing a double-sided market. The other way would be to create a highly-regulated market where the gatekeeping powers of the ISP are diminished, and the ISP's ability to leverage its exclusive access over its customers are curtailed. A comparison may be drawn here to the rules that are often set by standard-setting bodies where patents are involved: given that these patents are essential inputs, access to them must be allowed through fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licences. Access to the Internet and common carriers like telecom networks, being even more important (since alternatives exist to particular standards, but not to the Internet itself), must be placed at an even higher pedestal and thus even stricter regulation to ensure fair competition.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A marketplace of this sort would impose some regulatory burdens on TRAI and place burdens on innovations by the ISPs, but a regulated marketplace harms ISP innovation less than not allowing a market at all.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At a minimum, such a marketplace must ensure non-exclusivity, non-discrimination, and transparency. Thus, at a minimum, a telecom provider cannot discriminate between any OTTs who want similar access to zero-rating. Further, a telecom provider cannot prevent any OTT from zero-rating with any other telecom provider. To ensure that telecom providers are actually following this stipulation, transparency is needed, as a minimum.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Transparency can take one of two forms: transparency to the regulator alone and transparency to the public. Transparency to the regulator alone would enable OTTs and ISPs to keep the terms of their commercial transactions secret from their competitors, but enable the regulator, upon request, to ensure that this doesn't lead to anti-competitive practices. This model would increase the burden on the regulator, but would be more palatable to OTTs and ISPs, and more comparable to the wholesale data market where the terms of such agreements are strictly-guarded commercial secrets. On the other hand, requiring transparency to the public would reduce the burden on the regulator, despite coming at a cost of secrecy of commercial terms, and is far more preferable.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Beyond transparency, a regulation could take the form of insisting on standard rates and terms for all OTT players, with differential usage tiers if need be, to ensure that access is truly non-discriminatory. This is how the market is structured on the retail side.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since there are transaction costs in individually approaching each telecom provider for such zero-rating, the market would greatly benefit from a single marketplace where OTTs can come and enter into agreements with multiple telecom providers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Even in this model, telecom networks will be charging based not only on the fact of the number of customers they have, but on the basis of them having exclusive routing to those customers. Further, even under the standard-rates based single-market model, a particular zero-rated site may be accessible for free from one network, but not across all networks: unlike the situation with a toll-free number in which no such distinction exists.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To resolve this, the regulator may propose that if an OTT wishes to engage in paid zero-rating, it will need to do so across all networks, since if it doesn't there is risk of providing an unfair advantage to one network over another and increasing the gatekeeper effect rather than decreasing it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, all forms of competitive Internet service-paid zero-priced zero-rating, even when they don't harm competition, innovation amongst content providers, or consumers, will necessarily harm openness and diversity of the Internet. For instance, while richer companies with a strong presence in India may pay to zero-rate traffic for their Indian customers, decentralized technologies such as XMPP and WebRTC, having no central company behind them, would not, leading to customers preferring proprietary networks and solutions to such open technologies, which in turn, thanks to the network effect, leads to a vicious cycle. <b> These harms to openness and diversity have to be weighed against the benefit in terms of increase in access when deciding whether to allow for competitive OTT-paid zero-priced zero-rating, as such competition doesn't exist in a truly level playing field </b> . Further, it must be kept in mind that there are forms of zero-priced zero-rating that decrease the harm to openness / diversity, or completely remove that harm altogether: that there are other options available must be acknowledged by the regulator when considering the benefit to access from competitive OTT-paid zero-priced zero-rating.</p>
<h5><a name="h.huy1gfie05he"></a> 3.3.3.1.6 Other options for zero-rating</h5>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are other models of zero-priced zero-rating that either minimize the harm is that of ensuring free Internet access for every person. This can take the form of:<a href="#_ftn26" name="_ftnref26"><sup><sup>[26]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p>● A mandatorily "leaky" 'walled garden':</p>
<p>○ The first-degree of all hyperlinks from the zero-rated OTT service are also free.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">○ The zero-rated OTT service provider has to mandatorily provide free access to the whole of the World Wide Web to all its customers during specified hours.</p>
<p>○ The zero-rated OTT service provider has to mandatorily provide free access to the whole of the World Wide Web to all its customers based on amount on usage of the OTT service.<a href="#_ftn27" name="_ftnref27"><sup><sup>[27]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p>● Zero-rating of all Web traffic</p>
<p>○ In exchange for viewing of advertisements</p>
<p>○ In exchange for using a particular Web browser</p>
<p>○ At low speeds on 3G, or on 2G.</p>
<h4><a name="h.ncpm1d9hru2b"></a> 3.3.3.2. What kinds of zero-rating are good</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The majority of the forms of zero-rating covered in this section are content or source/destination-based zero-rating. Only some of the options covered in the "other options for zero-rating" section cover content-agnostic zero-rating models. Content-agnostic zero-rating models are not harmful, while content-based zero-rating models always harm, though to varying degrees, the openness of the Internet / diversity of OTTs, and to varying degrees increase access to Internet-based services. Accordingly, here is an hierarchy of desirability of zero-priced zero-rating, from most desirable to most harmful:</p>
<p>1. Content- & source/destination-agnostic zero-priced zero-rating.<a href="#_ftn28" name="_ftnref28"><sup><sup>[28]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p>2. Content- & source/destination-based non-zero-priced zero-rating, without any commercial deals, chosen freely & paid for by users. <a href="#_ftn29" name="_ftnref29"><sup><sup>[29]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p>3. Content- & source/destination-based zero-priced zero-rating, without any commercial deals, with full transparency. <a href="#_ftn30" name="_ftnref30"><sup><sup>[30]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p>4. Content- & source/destination-based zero-priced zero-rating, on the basis of commercial deal with partial zero-priced access to all content, with non-discriminatory access to the same deal by all with full transparency.<a href="#_ftn31" name="_ftnref31"><sup><sup>[31]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">5. Content- & source/destination-based zero-priced zero-rating, on the basis of a non-commercial deal, without any benefits monetary or otherwise, flowing directly or indirectly from the provider of the zero-rated content to the ISP, with full transparency. <a href="#_ftn32" name="_ftnref32"><sup><sup>[32]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">6. Content- & source-destination-based zero-priced zero-rating, across all telecom networks, with standard pricing, non-discriminatory access, and full transparency.</p>
<p>7. Content- & source-destination-based zero-priced zero-rating, with standard pricing, non-discriminatory access, and full transparency.</p>
<p>8. Content- & source-destination-based zero-priced zero-rating, with non-discriminatory access, and full transparency.</p>
<p>9. Content- & source-destination-based zero-priced zero-rating, with non-discriminatory access, and transparency to the regulator.</p>
<p>10. Content- & source-destination-based zero-priced zero-rating, without any regulatory framework in place.</p>
<h3><a name="h.f8vwrsnhu1fj"></a> 3.3.4 Cartels and Oligopoly</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While cartels and oligopolies may have an impact on Net Neutrality, they are not problems that any set of anti-discrimination rules imposed on gatekeepers can fix. Further, cartels and oligopolies don't directly enhance the ability of gatekeepers to unjustly discriminate if there are firm rules against negative discrimination and price ceilings and floors on data caps are present for data plans. Given this, TRAI should recommend that this issue be investigated and the Competition Commission of India should take this issue up.</p>
<h1><a name="h.1ckcvcwez55d"></a> <b>3.4 Reasonable Network Management Principles</b></h1>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Reasonable network management has to be allowed to enable the ISPs to manage performance and costs on their network. However, ISPs may not indulge in acts that are harmful to consumers in the name of reasonable network management. Below are a set of guidelines for when discrimination against classes of traffic in the name of network management are justified.</p>
<p>● Discrimination between classes of traffic for the sake of network management should only be permissible if:</p>
<p>○ there is an intelligible differentia between the classes which are to be treated differently, and</p>
<p>○ there is a rational nexus between the differential treatment and the aim of such differentiation, and</p>
<p>○ the aim sought to be furthered is legitimate, and is related to the security, stability, or efficient functioning of the network, or is a technical limitation outside the control of the ISP<a href="#_ftn33" name="_ftnref33"><sup><sup>[33]</sup></sup></a>, and</p>
<p>○ the network management practice is the least harmful manner in which to achieve the aim.</p>
<p>● Provision of specialized services (i.e., "fast lanes") is permitted if and only if it is shown that</p>
<p>○ The service is available to the user only upon request, and not without their active choice, and</p>
<p>○ The service cannot be reasonably provided with "best efforts" delivery guarantee that is available over the Internet, and hence requires discriminatory treatment, or</p>
<p>○ The discriminatory treatment does not unduly harm the provision of the rest of the Internet to other customers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These principles are only applicable at the level of ISPs, and not on access gateways for institutions that may in some cases be run by ISPs (such as a university network, free municipal WiFi, at a work place, etc.), which are not to be regulated as common carriers.</p>
<p>These principles may be applied on a case-by-case basis by a regulator, either <i>suo motu</i> or upon complaint by customers.</p>
<div>
<hr />
<div id="ftn1">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a> Report of the <i>Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, </i>(19 May 2011), http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/17session/A.HRC.17.27_en.pdf.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p><a href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a> Available at http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/userfiles/file/NTP%202012.pdf.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3"><sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup></a> IAMAI, <i>India to Cross 300 million internet users by Dec 14, </i>(19 November, 2014), http://www.iamai.in/PRelease_detail.aspx?nid=3498&NMonth=11&NYear=2014.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<p align="left"><a href="#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4"><sup><sup>[4]</sup></sup></a> World Economic Forum, <i>The Global Information Technology Report 2015, </i>http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_IT_Report_2015.pdf.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<p><a href="#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5"><sup><sup>[5]</sup></sup></a> http://www.ictregulationtoolkit.org/4.1#s4.1.1</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6"><sup><sup>[6]</sup></sup></a> <i>See</i> R.U.S. Prasad, <i>The Impact of Policy and Regulatory Decisions on Telecom Growth in India</i> (July 2008), http://web.stanford.edu/group/siepr/cgi-bin/siepr/?q=system/files/shared/pubs/papers/pdf/SCID361.pdf.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<p><a href="#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7"><sup><sup>[7]</sup></sup></a> 1973 AIR 106</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<p><a href="#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8"><sup><sup>[8]</sup></sup></a> 1962 AIR 305</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9"><sup><sup>[9]</sup></sup></a> "When ISPs go beyond their traditional use of IP headers to route packets, privacy risks begin to emerge." Alissa Cooper, <i>How deep must DPI be to incur privacy risk? </i>http://www.alissacooper.com/2010/01/25/how-deep-must-dpi-be-to-incur-privacy-risk/</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn10">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10"><sup><sup>[10]</sup></sup></a> Richard T.B. Ma & Vishal Misra, <i>The Public Option: A Non-Regulatory Alternative to Network Neutrality</i>, http://dna-pubs.cs.columbia.edu/citation/paperfile/200/netneutrality.pdf</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn11">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11"><sup><sup>[11]</sup></sup></a> Mobile number portability was launched in India on January 20, 2011 in the Haryana circle. See <a href="http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pm-launches-nationwide-mobile-number-portability/1/127176.html"> http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pm-launches-nationwide-mobile-number-portability/1/127176.html </a> . Accessed on April 24, 2015.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn12">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12"><sup><sup>[12]</sup></sup></a> For a comprehensive list of all TRAI interconnection regulations & subsequent amendments, see http://www.trai.gov.in/Content/Regulation/0_1_REGULATIONS.aspx.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn13">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13"><sup><sup>[13]</sup></sup></a> See Telecommunication Interconnection Usage Charges (Eleventh Amendment) Regulations, 2015 (1 of 2015), available at http://www.trai.gov.in/Content/Regulation/0_1_REGULATIONS.aspx.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn14">
<p align="left"><a href="#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14"><sup><sup>[14]</sup></sup></a> Article 30 of the Universal Service Directive, Directive 2002/22/EC.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn15">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15"><sup><sup>[15]</sup></sup></a> See Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability (Sixth Amendment) Regulations, 2015 (3 of 2015), available at http://www.trai.gov.in/Content/Regulation/0_1_REGULATIONS.aspx.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn16">
<p align="left"><a href="#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16"><sup><sup>[16]</sup></sup></a> The Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services (Seventh) (The Direct to Home Services) Tariff Order, 2015 (2 of 2015).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn17">
<p align="left"><a href="#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17"><sup><sup>[17]</sup></sup></a> Section 8, Cable Television Networks Act, 1995.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn18">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18"><sup><sup>[18]</sup></sup></a> <i>TRAI writes new rules for Cable TV, Channels, Consumers, </i> REAL TIME NEWS, (August 11, 2014), http://rtn.asia/rtn/233/1220_trai-writes-new-rules-cable-tv-channels-consumers.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn19">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19"><sup><sup>[19]</sup></sup></a> An initial requirement for all multi system operators to have a minimum capacity of 500 channels was revoked by the TDSAT in 2012. For more details, see http://www.televisionpost.com/cable/msos-not-required-to-have-500-channel-headends-tdsat/.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn20">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20"><sup><sup>[20]</sup></sup></a> Aparna Ghosh, <i>Bharti SoftBank Invests $14 million in Hike, </i>LIVE MINT, (April 2, 2014), http://www.livemint.com/Companies/nI38YwQL2eBgE6j93lRChM/Bharti-SoftBank-invests-14-million-in-mobile-messaging-app.html.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn21">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21"><sup><sup>[21]</sup></sup></a> Mike Masnick, <i>Can We Kill This Ridiculous Shill-Spread Myth That CDNs Violate Net Neutrality? They Don't</i>, https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140812/04314528184/can-we-kill-this-ridiculous-shill-spread-myth-that-cdns-violate-net-neutrality-they-dont.shtml.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn22">
<p align="left"><a href="#_ftnref22" name="_ftn22"><sup><sup>[22]</sup></sup></a> Mathew Carley, What is Hayai's stance on "Net Neutrality"?, https://www.hayai.in/faq/hayais-stance-net-neutrality?c=mgc20150419</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn23">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref23" name="_ftn23"><sup><sup>[23]</sup></sup></a> Helani Galpaya & Shazna Zuhyle, <i>South Asian Broadband Service Quality: Diagnosing the Bottlenecks</i>, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1979928</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn24">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref24" name="_ftn24"><sup><sup>[24]</sup></sup></a> DTH players told to offer pay channels on la carte basis, HINDU BUSINESS LINE (July 22, 2010), http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/dth-players-told-to-offer-pay-channels-on-la-carte-basis/article999298.ece.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn25">
<p><a href="#_ftnref25" name="_ftn25"><sup><sup>[25]</sup></sup></a> The Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services (Fourth) (Addressable Systems) Tariff Order, 2010.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn26">
<p><a href="#_ftnref26" name="_ftn26"><sup><sup>[26]</sup></sup></a> These suggestions were provided by Helani Galpaya and Sunil Abraham, based in some cases on existing practices.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn27">
<p align="left"><a href="#_ftnref27" name="_ftn27"><sup><sup>[27]</sup></sup></a> This is what is being followed by the Jana Loyalty Program: <a href="http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/05/06/with-a-new-loyalty-program-mobile-app-marketplace-jana-pushes-deeper-into-the-developing-world/"> http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/05/06/with-a-new-loyalty-program-mobile-app-marketplace-jana-pushes-deeper-into-the-developing-world/ </a></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn28">
<p><a href="#_ftnref28" name="_ftn28"><sup><sup>[28]</sup></sup></a> Example: free Internet access at low speeds, with data caps.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn29">
<p><a href="#_ftnref29" name="_ftn29"><sup><sup>[29]</sup></sup></a> Example: special "packs" for specific services like WhatsApp.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn30">
<p><a href="#_ftnref30" name="_ftn30"><sup><sup>[30]</sup></sup></a> Example: zero-rating of all locally-peered settlement-free traffic.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn31">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref31" name="_ftn31"><sup><sup>[31]</sup></sup></a> Example: "leaky" walled gardens, such as the Jana Loyalty Program that provide limited access to all of the Web alongside access to the zero-rated content.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn32">
<p><a href="#_ftnref32" name="_ftn32"><sup><sup>[32]</sup></sup></a> Example: Wikipedia Zero.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn33">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="#_ftnref33" name="_ftn33"><sup><sup>[33]</sup></sup></a> A CGNAT would be an instance of such a technology that poses network limitations.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/regulatory-perspectives-on-net-neutrality'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/regulatory-perspectives-on-net-neutrality</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshTelecomNet NeutralityInternet GovernanceICT2015-07-18T02:46:30ZBlog Entry