Pradip Baijal: No lessons learnt from telecom

Various arms of the government are busy creating their own broadband networks instead of sharing.

Government efforts had increased teledensity by 2 percentage points between 1948 and 1998. Private players were introduced in telecom in 1995. Till 1998, that is, till the regulatory structure became effective, private players kept knocking at the network, but were not allowed entry by the incumbents. It took a long time and effort to give them entry and a level playing field in the network, but once this was ensured, we now add more than 5 percentage points in teledensity every year. Broadband, the vehicle for knowledge, full communication, effective governance and education is going through similar birth pangs today. Do we have anything to learn from the post-1998 telecom growth story, to achieve a similar growth in broadband? So far, we are duplicating efforts, committing huge expenditures and achieving almost nothing "" an old telecom story.

Till a few years back, broadband was the exclusive preserve of the government incumbent. Even when Internet Service Providers came in, they had no access to the incumbent's fixed line network and wireless standards had not evolved for last mile broadband delivery. They could, therefore only provide dial up and inferior internet service. The broadband growth was thus very poor "" 0.04 per cent in 2003. Despite huge government efforts over the last few years, broadband density today is only 0.2 per cent. Is there a higher demand which the network is not able to fulfill "" a repetition of the pre-reform telecom queues. There is definitely a huge demand indicated by a present 0.8 per cent internet density "" a very inferior service despite comparable tariffs, and the consumer cannot reach broadband due to restrictive regulation and practices imposed by the Government and the incumbents. This is despite the fact that we have an optical fibre backbone of 7.7 lakh route km ready and 30,000 rural exchanges, one in 20 villages connected by optical fibre which can be used to carry broadband, and also about 20 million DELS, which neither the incumbent is connecting, nor allowing last mile unbundling, a success story in many countries. And despite a huge demand for broadband services, this optical fibre set up by tax-payers money at a huge expense, is mostly lying dark. And why so?

Some time back, the government of Andhra Pradesh wanted to reach broadband to each village by using BSNL's sparsely used optical fibre network. The rentals sought were higher than the capital cost of extending a new network and the government of Andhra Pradesh is therefore now laying down a new network in public "" private partnership. This is happening in other states also and the incumbent's network is lying dark. The most viable solution capable of creating a broadband revolution, similar to the telecom revolution would be to allow operators/state governments/other agencies to share this network at reasonable rentals, to be determined by the regulator. These agencies could then connect villages by fibre loops or by wireless broadband and we would have the entire country connected by broadband. Like the mobile tower scheme, a USO subsidy can also be built in for this rural connectivity.

It is not as if that the government is not concerned or is not spending huge amounts of money to connect the interiors for e-governance. The government has proposed e-governance as a thrust program of the Department of IT "" taking government to the citizen, in particular in rural areas. While e-governance as an objective is unquestioned, the manner in which it is being interpreted and the manner of proposed implementation raises serious policy questions.

A separate government network based on leased lines at a cost of over Rs 1,500 crore and a recurring cost of over Rs 3,000 crore annually to provide e-governance is being set up. We do not have separate telephone lines for government conversation. Broadband networks are similar and do not need separate leased lines.

The approach to have exclusive and dedicated bandwidth rather than hiring IP bandwidth, leads to such heavy bandwidth and management costs on a recurring basis annually.

All these costs will make this highly desirable program a white elephant. Have cheaper options been examined?

Security has often been quoted as the reason for direct control of the operations and owning of the IP infrastructure. We are aware that fully secured networks can be programmed on the same fibre, which is the universal practice in broadband, and there is no need for separate fibre for each operator. When operated on commercial networks leasing their IP bandwidth, the costs come down dramatically because of sharing of infrastructure costs by a large number of users including business customers.

It is interesting that the central government is also funding a parallel networking project viz. the statewide area networks (SWANs) in various states. Similar separate networks are being laid down for connecting universities etc. involving additional government expenditure, whereas the ideal network would be a common public private network, like the hugely successful telecom network today, spread up to villages and being used by all including governments, universities, and private consumers There does appear to be a massive duplication of efforts and resources to achieve very little.

We always spoken about infrastructure sharing for last mile. The most important infrastructures that can be shared is backhaul infrastructure. BSNL and other operators should be encouraged by the government and the regulator to share the backhaul infrastructure like optical fibre cable, backhaul spectrum etc. Virtual Private Networks are a way of life for medium to large enterprises all over the world and should be propagated for use in villages. Of 6.5 lakh villages in India, the majority are in the interiors. These villages need connectivity for various institutions like primary schools, panchayats, primary health centres, and so on. Most often there are different schemes working in parallel to provide connectivity to each of these institutions. However, the easier solution is to merge all existing project into one project and resources supporting each of them can be shared. This will bring down cost as well as increase penetration.

Today, the upwardly mobile upper middle class is a very visible face of India, but one must not forget that 70 per cent of India still lives in villages. Numbers are India's core strength. However, the nightmare begins when these numbers migrate to urban areas, creating overwhelming infrastructure and social problems in its wake. The solution lies in restricting this movement towards cities by creating services and employment opportunities in the villages through public private participation. Replication of the urban BPO phenomenon in the rural context holds the key to rural empowerment. These would generate jobs in rural areas, giving rise to an upwardly mobile rural middle class that would greatly enhance the national economy.