INTRODUCTION:
The Hon. PM of India announced the objective of a fully ‘Digital India’ that
extends governance to the hands of the common man through the mobile handset.
The mobile handset virtually represents a networked minicomputer. Essentially, the
success of Digital India will depend on the extent of population foot-print
that it is able to target. This means that the network device penetration and
Internet penetration should extend to every nook and corner of the country,
including the rural and hilly regions, wherever the citizen needs such
connectivity. This paper outlines how these objectives could be met in a spectacular
way by the government taking a few timely policy and regulatory decisions.
1.
Proliferate WiFi Hotspots:
WiFi is a citizen friendly medium which can be relied upon to
serve the cause of the noble objective of Digital India by providing efficient
and cost effective connectivity to all mobile handsets. All that the government
needs to do is to tweak the regulations in a way that can enable WiFi hotspots to mushroom all over the
country, covering every “basti”,
every highway and every rail line. The government should permit
entrepreneurs to setup hotspots without requiring a Cat A or Cat B ISP license
as at present. Instead, a special hotspot operator license may be granted at a
nominal fee (say Rs. 1000/-) which should entitle the recipient to backhaul
broadband from one or more of any of the existing service offerings by the Cat
A or Cat B ISPs.
2.
Backhauling broadband from ISP’s
Internet nodes to connect WiFi hotspots:
Spectrum which is a natural resource like water and air,
qualifies to extend the first right of use to citizens at large, for utilizing
it for their individual needs without having to pay a heavy and unaffordable
price. Allotment of appropriate spectrum of sufficient bandwidth using OFDM
technology for backhauling broadband from an ISP’s Internet node to the WiFi
hotspot at affordable licensing charges will go a long way in meeting the
citizen’s need for a wireless backhaul solution, which is presently limited to
only landline solutions which in most cases end up being financially non-feasible.
This is true even in urban areas where backhaul distances are as low as 3 kms,
what to talk of rural areas where the backhaul distances extend to as much as
30 kms!
UHF band in the region of 400 MHz to
700 MHz has the necessary 30km coverage characteristic and therefore presents
just the right opportunity for backhaul applications in urban as well as in
rural areas. This
band, which was earlier allocated for Analog TV transmission of Doordarshan
(called TV White Spaces or simply TVWS), stands abandoned today with the
advent of the digital age where the TV programmes are distributed over TV Cable
systems or over DTH Satellite systems, and has remained unutilized for the entire
last decade. It must therefore be put to immediate use for providing the said wireless
backhaul solution to WiFi hotspots.
3.
Unlicensed TV White Space band dedicated
to Rural citizen:
As a special dispensation to the severely handicapped rural and hilly
terrain sector, the government should unlicense another chunk of the said TV
White Spaces only for rural applications (on lines similar to that of WiFi)
with an appropriate administrative mechanism for ensuring fair usage. This approach has already been
followed by the FCC
in the USA, with following countries/organizations also taking initiative in
opening up TVWS spectrum: United Kingdom (OFCOM), Japan (NICT), Singapore (I2R),
South Africa (ICASA) and Korea (KCC).
TVWS
spectrum allocation presents a unique opportunity to India to take a lead in
positioning broadband to drive National GDP. Hence it is time for India to take
the necessary leap. One can say that this is India’s moment to demonstrate
technological leadership which has hitherto been latent, just for want of a
credible government policy.
4.
Position India as leader in “Content
management”:
Content is typically served from a
server located anywhere in the world-wide web or the “www” and could be subject
to many a congestion in the Internet. However, if all end
devices and set top boxes are mandated to become content
distributors through a well defined and unique content addressing scheme and
protocol, content would then flow freely and become available in clusters
whenever and wherever it is in maximum demand.
For
example, if a Bengali movie is once downloaded by a customer residing in a
Bengali colony, all further downloads of that movie from other customers in the
same colony would be limited to the network within that colony itself. The
implication of this innovative mechanism is that the Internet bandwidth at the
backbone level and the particular server hosting the content would be subjected
to that much less load, and would result in more efficient use of the Internet
and server resources. This would also result in improved packet latency and
download speeds by a significant order of magnitude. Last but not the least,
all this would in turn result in significant reduction of cost of Internet
bandwidth.
To implement this, India would have to take a lead in
standardizing the content addressing scheme that would enable her to be
virtually a global leader of Content
distribution, in much the same way as USA is a global leader in the field
of Internet addressing.
5.
Open
Set-top-boxes will widen customer choices:
The proprietary nature
of Television set-top-boxes offered by Cable or DTH Operators imposes severe
limitations on customer choice. These set-top-boxes must therefore be mandated to access broadband Internet
service also from any Service Provider – landline or wireless so that Internet
content can also be viewed over the same TV set. Going a step further, the
same STB should be mandated to work with different DTH operators also, so that
a customer does not have to buy a new STB each time he changes his DTH
operator.
CONCLUSION:
The
adoption of the aforesaid measures, which only involve policy decisions by
government with no separate outlay, will convert all fixed and mobile Customer
devices and Set-top-boxes into micro-computers connected to broadband Internet
through WiFi hotspots spread all over the country, thereby simultaneously catapulting
the Computer and Internet penetration of the country to unprecedented levels.
Further, it would result in more efficient Internet bandwidth at lower costs.
The ordinary citizen would be empowered with the power of network computing in
his hands and would be better placed to connect to a wide variety of network
based services, including e-Governance. It would position India as a world
leader in broadband usage. In other word, it will contribute positively to make
“Digital India” a grand success.
