Centre for Internet and Society

Invitation for Padartha Chintamani

praskrishna — 2016-01-28T14:49:30Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/padartha-chintamani.zip

Kannada Wikipedia not on top of the charts

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T16:23:37Z

It occupies the 10th place among Indian languages.

The article by Muralidhara Khajane was published in the Hindu on January 19, 2016. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was quoted.

Bengaluru being the IT capital of the country has made little difference to Kannada’s presence in the cyber world. Compare any major Indian language on Wikipedia with the 13-year-old Kannada language pages, and you are in for a surprise: Kannada occupies the 10th place among Indian languages, while Urdu occupies the first slot in terms of number of articles.

As on January 2016, the number of articles in Kannada Wikipedia is just 19,070, while Tamil (83,432), Telugu (64,451), and Malayalam (41,334) are way ahead. Urdu version occupies the first place with 1,10,367 articles and Hindi version follows with 1,00,912 articles.

As far as the world ranking of languages is concerned, Kannada stands 107th. It is interesting to note that Cebuano spoken by 21 million people and second most spoken language in the Philippines stands fourth in the list of global languages with 18,65,033 articles after English, Swedish, and German.

It has been 13 years since a small group of tech-savvy Kannadigas got together to create the first few article stubs on Kannada. This resulted in starting the Kannada language edition of Wikipedia in 2003.

Though the articles in Wikipedia pages drew flak for their lack of depth and quality initially, the site showed signs of improvement only to fall back again. Initially, it was the issue of fonts that came in the way of developing Kannada pages and interestingly very few people knew that Wikipedia could be written in a regional language.

Omshivaprakash, one of the five administrators of Wikipedia’s Kannada version, blames laxity in community participation for Kannada version’s poor show. “Authors, publishers, government bodies don’t seem to be confident enough to use Wikipedia platform. Not many show interest to learn and contribute,” he says.

Awareness of Kannada Wikipedia, lack of awareness about Kannada typing tools, Internet accessibility issues, and lack of self-motivated volunteers who can drive the Wiki learning activities are reasons for the slowdown, he says.

Admitting that Kannada Wikipedia is lagging behind in terms of quantity (number of articles), U.B. Pavanaja, another administrator, argued that it was however good in terms of quality.

Attributing the rise in number of articles in other Indian language versions, especially in Tamil and Telugu, to uploading government data, he said, “But we have not done that. Our focus was mainly on quality, rather than quantity and the intention is to make the page more theme-based. We have deleted some 2,000 articles to provide the content in Encyclopaedia format.”

According to him, things are now moving in a positive direction with more people showing interest in this community attempt.

Kannada Development Authority chairperson L. Hanumanthaiah said he would immediately convene a meeting of administrators of the Kannada version of Wikipedia and discuss the mode of support Kannada bodies could expend in enriching Kannada pages.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-hindu-january-19-muralidhara-khajane-kannada-wikipedia-not-on-top-of-the-charts

Public Debates on Differential Pricing

praskrishna — 2016-01-28T13:48:40Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/public-debates-on-differential-pricing

GI-tagged products to get Wiki pages

praskrishna — 2016-01-27T16:33:47Z

Ever realised that the famous, red hot Naga Mirchi (a special variety of chilli from Nagaland) doesn’t have a Wikipedia page?

The article by S. Anandan was published in the Hindu on January 26, 2016.

And that Cannanore Home Furnishings — textile home furnishings from Kannur — is a brand with geographical indication (GI) registration? Wiki, which is an open and free repository of knowledge on the Internet, does not have pages, in English and other recognised Indian languages, on most GI-tagged Indian products.

The Centre for Internet and Society-Access to Knowledge — popular as CIS-A2K— which is a not-for-profit movement to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development, launched an India Edit-a-thon for seven days from January 25 to generate Wikimedia pages in English and Indian languages on Indian products recognised by the GI Registry of India.

“Kerala alone boasts 23 products, mostly agricultural, with the GI tag. But Malayalam Wiki doesn’t have information on all of them. Besides the Aranmula Kannadi, none of the other GI-tagged products from Kerala have Wiki pages in English. Nationally, there are about 213 GI-tagged products and we know nothing of most of them. There isn’t a single article on many of them even in English. It’s in this context that the Edit-a-thon becomes extremely relevant. It’s being held to celebrate the Republic Day,” says Wiki activist Manoj Karingamadathil.

13 pages already

The campaign, launched on Monday, has evoked enthusiastic response from Wiki activists who have begun to create pages on most of these products. At the time of going to press, 13 GI-tagged Kerala products have got Wiki pages and editors are at work to generate content for these products in English.

Apart from existing Wiki editors, freshers may also be part of the campaign. “All they have to do is to create a Wiki account before sending in researched content,” points out Mr. Manoj. The campaign will be on till January 31.

Seven-day India Edit-a-thon begins; Wiki activists begin creating pages.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-hindu-s-anandan-january-26-2016-gi-tagged-products-to-get-wiki-pages

Geographical Indications in India Edit-a-thon

praskrishna — 2016-01-26T15:19:56Z

Between 25 January and 31 January 2016, CIS-A2K is organizing an edit-a-thon to celebrate India's republic day. The goal of this edit-a-thon is to create and improve Geographical Indications articles.

Expectations

We expect that if you participate in this edit-a-thon, you'll create or expand at least 3 articles. However you may work on as many as articles you want.

Rules

For an article to be considered as part of this Geographical Indications in India Edit-a-thon, it must adhere to the following rules

The new article must be created between 0:00 UTC on 25 January 2016 and 23:59 UTC on 31 January 2016.
Creation/Expansion rule: If you are creating a new article the new article must have a size of at least 3,500 bytes and a minimum length of roughly 300 words (the word count excludes templates, infoboxes, references, etc.), If you are expanding an existing article, you need to expand this article by at least 3000 bytes, (the word count excludes templates, infoboxes, references, etc.)
The articles should not copyvio content and should follow verifiability and other important policies of Wikipedia.
The articles should have decent references;
The article must not be purely machine translated.
There should not be any maintenance tags in the articles
The article must have a direct relation to Geographical Indications in India (see Proposed articles).

Participants

Please add your username below. If you can not find your community name, please add a section using level 3 header (eg. === Ukrainian Wikipedia ===). We also encourage you to start an event page on your Wikipedia.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/events/geographical-indications-in-india-edit-a-thon

Trai promises final call on differential pricing by month-end after 'lively' open house

praskrishna — 2016-01-26T02:41:56Z

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will take a final call on differential pricing by the end of January , its chairman said, describing the open house discussions on the regulator's contentious consultation paper as "lively".

The article by Economic Times was published on January 22, 2016. CIS gave inputs.

"It was a very lively consultation, the hall was full. We will take all these into account and hope that by the end of the month, we should be able to come out with our position," Trai chairman Ram Sewak Sharma said.

He, however, refused to link this consultation paper to the broader topic of net neutrality . "Net neutrality is a different subject. First we will decide differential pricing, then we will look at other issues. I cannot say at this time what Trai will do on the larger issue of net neutrality , but we will certainly take a call," Sharma said.

The open house saw a near packed house, with representatives from Trai, several telecom companies, civil society organisations, industry bodies, and individuals, but the debate did not turn out to be as explosive as the acrimonious lead-up to it.

Facebook India's policy head Ankhi Das, whose presence was hugely anticipated after a recent round of high octave communication between Trai and Facebook was made public, did not turn up.

A representative of Facebook, whose zero-rated programme called Free Basics has been at the cent re of the controversy surrounding the differential pricing paper, said: "As a company we have commented. With Free Basics we hope to bring people online in a non-discriminatory manner... We hope Trai will encourage Free Basics.

"Telcos including Bharti AirtelBSE -0.37 %, Idea CellularBSE 0.05 %, Reliance CommunicationsBSE -1.58 %, Sistema Shyam, Tata Communications, VideoconBSE -0.54 % Telecom, and Vodafone made a case for allowing differential pricing, and most cited extending the practice from voice to data services.

"Differential pricing should be incorporated as were done in voice telephony. Data should be encouraged while the content part can be taken up in another consultation paper," a Vodafone representative said.

The volunteer-led savetheinternet.in coalition said: "Internet is not a marketplace. Though telcos advocate differential pricing in the name of different customer classes, but when they charge for third party content, it becomes a problem."

Civil society organisations also made detailed submissions, explaining their positions. While most, including industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India, said they were against differential pricing, some took a slightly cautious view. "What hasn't been discussed is that there is already differential pricing and this is undocumented," said a representative of Centre for Internet and Society. "Free Basics isn't following certain protocol standards, and this is a concern. We don't have enough data on internet usage, costs, user experience, to take a decision now," he added.

A representative of Tata CommunicationsBSE 0.58 % said "sponsored data services" exist around the world and argued citing an example that providing free voice service does not confer competitive advantage.

"If there are two pizza vendors: one with a toll-free service for taking orders and the other where you pay money to order without a toll-free service. The uptake in the pizza depends on the quality and the price of the pizzas. It is not because it is a toll free call," he said.

This comparison drew laughter in the open house, and became the butt of jokes on Twitter from internet freedom advocates. "Btw, I think a new analogy from the telco guys today, comparing the internet with pizza. How creative," tweeted Nikhil Pahwa, who under the banner of savetheinternet.in has been campaigning for net neutrality.

IAMAI president Subho Ray's candid commentary on submissions, calling some of them "badly done homework", did not go down well with some members of the audience.

Individual entrepreneurs made a case for not having differential pricing, as that would mean the telcos would get to decide the access for their business. Some people suggested alternatives. Digital Empowerment Foundation founder Osama Manzar said unlicensed spectrum or Wi-Fi could be used to provide access in the rural areas.

Trai launched the differential pricing consultation paper on December 9, which was followed by Facebook starting a mass campaign, asking its users to support Free Basics, urging them to email Trai in support of "digital equality" and supporting Free Basics.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/news/trai-promises-final-call-on-differential-pricing-by-month-end-after-lively-open-house

Litt Review

praskrishna — 2016-01-22T02:50:08Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/litt-review.pdf

Litt Review

praskrishna — 2016-01-22T02:44:33Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/litt-review.odt

IP in Mobile Applications Development

praskrishna — 2016-01-21T16:32:50Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ip-in-mobile-applications-development

Patent Landscaping in the sub-$100 Mobile Device Market in India

praskrishna — 2016-01-20T16:16:52Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/patent-landscaping-in-the-sub-100-mobile-device-market-in-india

Rethinking Music Copyright Management in the Age of Digital Distribution: Business Models, Licensing Practices and Copyright Institutions in India

praskrishna — 2016-01-20T16:02:06Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/rethinking-music-copyright-management-in-the-age-of-digital-distribution-business-models-licensing-practices-and-copyright-institutions-in-india

The Curious Case of the CCI: Competition Law and SEP Regulation in India

praskrishna — 2016-01-20T15:34:53Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-curious-case-of-the-cci-competition-law-and-sep-regulation-in-india

100 Konkani Articles Added to Wikipedia in One Day

praskrishna — 2016-02-12T15:17:02Z

This was published in the Times of India.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/100-konkani-articles-added-to-wikipedia-in-one-day

Why Indians are turning down Facebook's free internet

praskrishna — 2016-01-17T16:25:10Z

Imagine a billion of the world’s poorest gaining overnight access to health information, education, and professional help — for free. Add to this one rich man who wants to make that dream a reality.

The article by Nimisha Jaiswal was published in the Global Post on January 13, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

That’s the invitation that Facebook has sent to India. Many there, however, are rejecting such benevolence.

Facebook has introduced its Free Basics project in 36 countries. The company claims that the app acts as a stepping-stone to the internet for those who are otherwise without access, by providing them with a few essential sites — or “basics” — to get started.

“We know that when people have access to the internet they also get access to jobs, education, healthcare, communication… We know that for India to make progress, more than 1 billion people need to be connected to the internet,” wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a recent op-ed for a major Indian newspaper. “Free Basics is a bridge to the full internet and digital equality.”

However, net neutrality researchers and activists in India define it quite differently.

“Free Basics is a zero-rated walled garden that gives users a tiny subset of the world wide web,” Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society, told GlobalPost.

The Free Basics app is part of Facebook’s Internet.org, a “zero-rating” internet service that provides limited access for no charge to the consumer. The original Internet.org was heavily criticized in India for violating net neutrality, the principle that all content on the web should be accessible to consumers at the same speed, without discrimination by providers.

Last spring, as part of a homegrown Save The Internet movement, over 1 million people wrote to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to protest services that disrupt net neutrality by providing only a small fraction of the internet to their users.

India’s Department of Telecommunications has already recommended that such platforms be disallowed. Before it makes its own recommendations this month, the TRAI asked concerned citizens for another round of input on zero-rating apps. The criticism has been so loud that, at the end of December, Free Basics’ local telecom partner was ordered to take the service down until a decision is reached.

Though Free Basics does not require payment from the websites it shares, Facebook’s competitors are unlikely to participate and provide user data to their rivals. And while there are currently no advertisements on Free Basics, Facebook reserves the right to introduce them in the future to garner revenue from their “walled-in” clients.

According to Abraham, such a platform harms free speech, privacy, innovation and diversity by adding another layer of surveillance and “censoring” the internet.

Mahesh Murthy, a venture capitalist who is part of India’s Save The Internet movement, puts it more bluntly.

“What Facebook wants is our less fortunate brothers and sisters should be able to poke each other and play Candy Crush, but not be able to look up a fact on Google, or learn something on Khan Academy, or sell their produce on a commodity market, or even search for a job on [Indian recruitment website] Naukri,” said Murthy.

Zuckerberg and Facebook’s India team have vigorously rebutted net neutrality activists in India, including Murthy, challenging their criticism of Free Basics and accusing activists of deliberately trying to prevent the masses from gaining internet access.

“Critics of the program continue to spread false claims — even if that means leaving behind a billion people,” wrote Zuckerberg in his Times of India op-ed.

According to Abraham, this is a misleading assertion. “They are falsely framing the debate, they are making it look like we have only two choices,” he told GlobalPost. “The choice is not between less people on the internet and unregulated [Free Basics].”

Several alternatives are being proposed. Abraham does not advocate a complete ban on Free Basics, instead suggesting a “leaky” walled garden where users would be given 100 MB of full internet access for every 100 MB of Free Basics consumed.

The Save the Internet campaign, however, wants Free Basics barred altogether. It proposes returning to previously implemented schemes like providing data on the purchase of a phone, or letting users access the full internet after watching an ad. The Universal Service Obligation Fund, set up by the Department of Telecommunications to provide affordable communication technology in rural areas, could also be used to finance free data packs.

While Facebook could potentially contribute to such funds to promote its connectivity goals, the millions of dollars it has spent loudly defending Free Basics in India suggest that the company is deeply attached to its own scheme.

Facebook has claimed that “more than four in five Indians support Free Basics,” according to a survey that it paid for. Indian users of the social network have received notifications encouraging them to send a template letter to the regulator in support of Free Basics. Even users in the US were “accidentally” notified to add their backing to the Indian campaign.

Some of the company's critics suggest that it is driven less by philanthropy, more by guaranteeing itself a stream of new users.

Murthy points out that a large number of the world’s population not yet on the internet are in India and China — and Facebook is banned in China. “So who becomes essential to Mark Zuckerberg’s balance sheet? Enter us Indians.”

While Indian activists agree that connectivity is an important goal, they insist that Free Basics in its current form is not the solution or even the only option right now. All it does is whets the appetite of the consumer, according to Abraham.

“You can compare Free Basics to when you go through the mall: You see the people selling cookies, and the aroma fills the whole mall,” he said. “That’s what Free Basics does — it gets you interested in the cookie. But it doesn’t solve the affordability question.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/global-post-nimisha-jaiswal-why-indians-are-turning-down-facebook-free-internet

A billion mobile users: new startup profiles and innovation insights from Mobile India 2016

praskrishna — 2016-01-17T15:13:42Z

The annual Mobile India conference, for which YourStory was the media partner, wrapped up recently in Bengaluru with a startup showcase and a wide range of insights on mobile innovation in India.

The blog post by Sneha Maselkar and Madanmohan Rao was first published in Your Story on January 14, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Chaired by professors V. Sridhar of IIIT Bangalore and D. Manjunath of IIT Bombay, the event’s theme was ‘The App Economy.’ (See YourStory coverage of the earlier editions of this conference: 2015, 2014 and 2013).

Mobile innovators

New products were presented by innovators like Pravin Bhagwat, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, AirTight Networks. The company is creating an app store based on ‘social WiFi,’ riding on Google+ and Facebook. A number of interesting startups like IoTM2MSolutions were also at the event. Founded by Ismail Zabihullahh in 2009, the 15-member team has a range of offerings in home automation, RFID biometrics, street lighting and smart parking solutions.

Inaccel is a med-tech accelerator founded in 2014 by Siraj Dhanani, Vijayarajan and Dr. Jagish Chaturvedi. It address the needs, resource and skill gaps, and price-sensitivity of clinical markets, and helps startups conceptualise, design, engineer, and achieve regulatory certification. Its portfolio picks companies with a five-year horizon, in exchange for equity stakes.

Dataglen was formed in 2014 by Deva P. Seetharam, Tanuja Ganu, Sunil Ghai and Rajesh Kunnath. It provides Internet of Things (IoT) data collection and management services, and provides an API for users to develop applications on a variety of computing platforms. The startup charges for data management services based on the volume of transactions and for any required customisation services.

Czar Securities was founded in August 2013 by Shikhil Sharma and Ananda Krishna. Two employees Deepankar Tyagi and Nakul Gulati joined in quick succession. The cyber security solutions company secures corporate IT infrastructure from cyber attacks. Offerings include ASTRA, an intrusion prevention system, as well as penetration testing and security audit services.

Infilect was founded in April 2015 by Vijay Gabale and Anand Prabhu Subramanian. They are building an AI-enabled personalised fashion shopping assistant. The product, Photolect, helps in discovery, search and personalisation for online shoppers by parsing of photos. The product is in beta-test mode with several fashion experts evaluating its features.

Sattva Medtech was founded in 2014 by Vibhav Joshi and Sumedh Kaulgud. They are developing a next-generation fetal health monitoring device which leverages advanced sensors and algorithms. This device, called the Sattva Fetal Lite, has been designed and engineered for use in India and other low-and-mid-income countries; the team has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from InnAccel.

Coeo Labs was founded in October 2014 by Nitesh Kumar Jangir and Nachiket Deval. It is a medical device company, developing products in the field of emergency and critical care. Offerings include a device to reduce chances of acquiring ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), and a mechanical CPAP machine (mCPAP) for transport of neonates with troubled breathing, from a resource-constrained setting to a neonatal ICU.

IoT scenarios

Over a dozen experts from India and the US discussed the latest mobile trends in a day of packed panel sessions and keynotes. Interface design, usable security and systems integration are key success factors for IoT, according to Henning Schulzrinne, Professor at Columbia University, and CTO, United States Federal Communications Commission. Consumer and industrial IoT scenarios differ with respect to predictability, redundancy, energy consumption and interoperability.

He pointed out categories and uses cases of high IoT impacts: automation of manual data extraction (metering), remote maintenance (vending machines), extraction of additional information (thermostats) and software-defined mechanics (locks, switches).

“IoT networks won’t operate just on mobile carriers, but also on other networks such as Zigbee and Bluetooth,” Henning explained. The Internet itself will be transformed by IoT. “Protocols matter, programmability matters more,” he added. The Internet is becoming more than the Internet protocol; plug-and-play is becoming augmented by plug-and-programme in the IoT world.

The ‘DNA’ of apps

The proliferation of apps can lead to the rise of localised app stores in local languages, said Chinnu Senthilkumar, CTO, Exfinity Ventures, pointing to Korea as an example in this regard. “Many apps are local. How well do you know the digital literacy of your neighbourhood users,” he asked.

Most apps in India are of the ‘me-too’ type; developers need to incorporate better user experience (UX) and bring in more cross-disciplinary experience (see earlier insights from the UX India 2015 conference and NASSCOM NPC 2015). “Security is still an afterthought in app development,” cautioned Chinnu.

“You need to figure out the DNA of the mobile experience: Device, Network, App,” explained Amar Nagaram, Director, Mobile Engineering, Flipkart. The e-commerce giant classifies devices into four broad categories, and its app design factors in the app size, data stored on the device, and computational power of the device.

Battery requirements of the device and packet drop rates on mobile networks are major constraints on app performance in India. Online shopping lets users interact with catalogues as well as product experts.

“I had to unlearn a lot of things from the Internet world which may not apply in a similar manner to the app world. For example, not all older versions of apps need to be supported,” explained Amar.

“Ask yourself, what does your app do for consumers?” advised Pradeep Nair, Co-Founder and CEO, Confianzys. Developers should be looking not at product-market fit, but market-product fit. “Industries die because of their myopia; they focus on past products and not future consumer needs,” he said, urging developers to track-long term megatrends as well.

Telcos’ role in the App Economy

The telecommunications world is changing rapidly due to trends like IoT, new breeds of apps, video boom and Big Data, observed Ishwardutt Parulkar, Cisco Distinguished Engineer. Telcos are struggling to get new drivers for existing services, new revenue sources, and new sources of consumer loyalty.

“Telcos need to provide APIs to developers for embedding telco services and network analytics data. Telcos can also play a bigger role in mobile advertising, for example network-wide ad blocking, as in the case of Jamaica,” advised Ishwardutt. Telcos can exploit synergy with cloud services, and resell SaaS products bundled with telco products.

“We are witnessing major waves of disruptive innovation today: the rise from oblivion to the top is rapid – and so is the fall from the top,” said SR Raja, Associate Vice President, Persistent Systems. Many incumbents tend to suffer from ignorance, inertia, and the inability to do little more than tweak or tinker with existing offerings.

There is a Moore’s Law variant for all architecture components, including programming languages. Hence, telcos need to master new business models blending product and service, advised Raja. “Even regulated industries can be disrupted from outside – look at Uber and Tesla. Will telcos experiment with surge pricing like Uber, or become IoT solutions systems integrators,” he asked. For example, operator O2 has used mobile identity to launch its own messaging OTT app, and Vodafone is getting into IoT services.

Operators and Net Neutrality

The Mobile India conference took place with the backdrop of a heated battle over Net Neutrality between Facebook’s Free Basics and Internet activists from India, which has received a lot of media coverage in India and overseas.

This calls for the digital media community and entrepreneur ecosystem to pay attention to complex but important issues such as Internet governance. “The next billion users in India may be very different from the current billion, in terms of geography, language and access device,” observed Samiran Gupta, Head-India, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN’s objective is to maintain inter-operability of the Internet, and there is a unique opportunity for emerging economies to play a stronger role in Internet governance, in issues such as local languages and scripts.

Regulation and digital innovation

Regulators have major challenges ahead in juggling the needs of multiple stakeholders and demands for different slices of spectrum. “There are 43 different kinds of radio-communication services competing for spectrum,” said Pavan Garg, Former Wireless Adviser, GoI, and former Member, Radio Regulations Board, ITU, Geneva.

Regulators need to become much more savvy on the kind of collusions possible between industry heavyweights, according to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society.

If India gets its IP regime correct, the local language content economy can be boosted, in addition to other civic benefits. For example, giving anonymised data access to independent researchers has helped LIRNEasia come up with better transportation design in Sri Lanka.

The discussion covered a wide range of interesting possibilities. In the EU, it is mandated that all mobile phones be able to display all European languages. Can India do the same for local languages? Will regulation promote support for Indic language technology on mobiles, or should this be left purely to the market? Organisations such as the Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) is working on Indian language standards in ICTs.

The app economy can indeed be accelerated with proactive government intervention, said Parnil Urdhwareshe, Research Assistant at ICRIER and co-author of a report on ‘Impact of India’s App Economy.’ India’s app ecosystem could be worth Rs 2,000 crore in 2016; it created about 75,000 direct jobs in 2015, according to the report.

The government can pass regulations on apps covering privacy, Net Neutrality and safety, eg. SoS buttons, medical apps. The UK government has drawn up a range of app guidelines covering issues such as in-app purchases.

“Design in India is more important than Make In India,” said Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director, C-DOT, drawing attention to issues of participatory design and citizen-centric services rather than only one-way top-down initiatives from government and large industry players.

The road ahead

Broadband penetration in India is only 10 per cent. By 2018, video will be 62 per cent of India’s mobile data traffic, and there will be 526 million Internet users, according to Anil Kaushal, Member, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

The government’s BharatNet initiative aims to connect 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats across the country. TRAI has given recommendations for Virtual Network Operators, wherein niche players can offer Smart City services.

In addition to regulators, operators and developers, success of the app economy also rests on responsible user behaviour, said Deepak Maheshwari, Head-Government Affairs, Symantec. “Be more active with respect to data encryption on your device. Use multi-factor authentication,” he advised.

Seventy per cent of India’s population lives in villages; digital innovation will help bring education and healthcare to them, said Vimal Wakhlu, Chairman & Managing Director, TCIL. There are also global extensions and markets for Indian innovations, such as the Pan-African E-Network targeted at 53 countries. There are major uses of ICTs across India, such as monitoring the cleaning of the Ganges as well as water gate management in Gujarat, Vimal added.

“India needs to mandate telecom infrastructure in real estate development and town planning. Digital media will change the way we learn and earn,” said T.R. Dua, Director General, Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA) India, and Co-Chair ITU APT Foundation of India.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/news/yourstory-sneha-maselkar-and-madanmohan-rao-january-14-2016-a-billion-mobile-users