The communications revolution is here

FREEZE FRAME

The internet is changing the world.

What we take for granted today, satellite television or cellular telephone or even a humble Walkman, were part of sci-fi a mere quarter of a century ago.

Even as we debate a new convergence policy in India and wonder whether we need a content regulator or talk about new spectrum allocation, the viability or desirability of direct-to-home television and broadband, a socio-economic revolution is quietly taking place.

Close to 400 million Indians watch TV regularly. Our teledensity has grown from 1 to 3 in less than a decade. India is fast emerging from the backwaters of poverty and scarcity to a front-runner in the digital area.

One opportunity, which exists, is in media and entertainment .If the government of India through its myriad arms is able to create an eco system conducive to growth and the development of digital entertainment, there is no reason why we cannot turn this into a truly Indian century.

While India has a mere 8.5 million internet connections, there are over a billion internet users worldwide. This number is expected to rise to about 1.5 billion in the next three years.

What is responsible for this phenomenal growth and the manner in which the world is beginning to communicate?

As the micro chip increases in power at a lower cost and more memory is crammed on to silicon wafers (or whatever replaces them) we will see a convergence of telecom, broadcasting and data communication driven by quantum leaps in light wave and wireless communication.

A few years ago Moore's law stated that computer chip power would double every 18 months but we have seen that it is actually happening much faster.

Another famous dictum, the Photon law, says that bandwidth triples every year. But some experts believe that in a completely networked world it would be virtually free in 10 years.

Michael Dertouzos, the former director of the Massuchussetts Institute of Technology computer lab, had predicted a decade ago that by 2007 there would be one billion interconnected computers in the world.

According to him, three fundamental forces were shaping this networked society.

1) The ability of computers to offload repetitive work from the human brain.

2) Electronic proximity "� that is, bringing distant people together.

3) A new kind of middlemen, a kind of information brokers necessary to match the information one person wants with the information another person has. Give and take a few years, what we are seeing will surprise the Dertouzos and the Alvin Tofflers of the world.

Today the internet provides the equivalent of 50,000 daily newspapers in all languages, including online editions of several print newspapers that have web editions.

In fact, many newspapers and magazines offer their subscribers access to online editions for continuous updates. As media guru John V.Pavlik says: " News content on the internet has been developing through three stages. In stage one, which is most prevalent today, online journalists repurpose content from their mother publication.

In stage two, journalists create original content with additives, which allow cross-reference through hyperlinks with other web sites. In stage three which is just about beginning, news content is designed specifically for the web as the medium of communication."

A new form of "immersive story telling" is already emerging on some of the better online sites and the still nascent interactive news channels.

In this form of reportage you can enter and navigate through a news report in many different ways and perspectives. Nothing has changed journalism more than the advent of the blog (weblog) and what we are seeing are just the beginnings of blogging.

Already it is becoming a favoured form of disseminating news and information. Soon there will be a proliferation of the video blog. A version of peer-to-peer TV streaming is already on the internet.

These developments are still in their nascent stages but have the potential to change the whole concept of mass communication.

New digital technologies are causing a paradigm shift for the media and entertainment industry. By leveraging newer technologies, we have seen media companies not only make up for lost revenue but also add many new streams.

The very nature of the music industry has been changed first by Napster and more recently by Apple I-Pod. Despite the opportunities which digital media presents, the industry's energies has been largely spent on the 'non compensated trading' or copyright theft of content.

The inconsistencies of global copyright laws and lack of technical standards in digital rights management have also retarded the development of a viable and robust economic model.

This is changing fast both on the technology as well as the regulatory fronts and should help the transition of the old media giants into more dexterous gladiators.

The other change agent is sheer demographics. Teenagers today are the first real citizens of the digital world. Unlike their parents, they have grown up in a world in which electronic delivery of information and entertainment is natural and more accepted than conventional forms like the newspaper, tape or film.

Being a powerful consumer group with increasing purchasing muscle, they are also determining both content and its access modes around the world.

It is these digital generations that will take the world online further and eventually wholly, embracing the universe in a virtual cornucopia of information and entertainment.

(Amit Khanna is chairman of Reliance Entertainment. The views expressed here are his own)