Wireless for Communities & Open Spectrum Summit

About the Summit

The national consultative summit was a first kind effort to bring all stakeholders to deliberate, discuss, share, experience and emerge with a concrete set of recommendations as how unlicensed spectrum in India can be used to serving the last mile connectivity. The summit saw stakeholders from the government departments, agencies, industry, civil society, academia, network implementers, policy advocators, wireless practitioners, and others to air views, opinions, inputs, concerns and suggestions on a wide area of topics. One unique approach was to present and share good practices and challenges in wireless network deployment and operations in India and other developing countries.
The Summit was formed in a free-flow format allowing not only experts and policy advocators to share their ideas and information but also given opportunity to each participant to share their challenges and issues. That made the session highly interactive (including the ability to converse in local languages).

Summit Objectives

Key objectives of the national summit identified were:

• Arrive at better understanding of unlicensed band, free spectrum and its importance to serve last mile connectivity
• To share good practices and challenges faced during the wireless network deployment and operations in India and other developing countries
• Deliberate on the need availability & challenges of appropriate wireless technologies to bridge access and connectivity divides
• To bring implications related to wireless, mobile & broadband technologies which help transcend traditional infrastructural bottlenecks in rural areas of India
• To emerge with working framework with necessary inputs, suggestions, comments, recommendations on ways to connect the government and business services that can reach the masses through the wireless and mobile networks in local languages and in oral medium

Summit Broad Areas

In light of the above, the summit discussed the following broad areas:

1.Discuss the importance of free spectrum for public good and advocacy towards utilizing it for social development

2. To understand the scope and opportunities of unlicensed spectrum in India and other developing countries

3. The magnitude and extent of unlicensed wireless band/free spectrum can be used to connect isolated areas and communities of the country.

4. Explore and understand the rights and ethics challenges and issues around unlicensed spectrum

Summit Themes

The consultative summit deliberated on the following themes:

1. Access, rights & ethics for providing uniform wireless

2. Economic and social advancement of using wireless network

3. Developing uniform policy framework for unlicensed spectrum

Summit Outcome

The national summit looked at the following key outcomes

1. Consolidate factors and inputs to uniform policy framework for unlicensed wireless spectrum;

2. Consolidate solutions towards issues related to media, access and rights, ownership of unlicensed spectrum, ownership of accessibility and exploring opportunities in terms of accessibility;

3. Building a roadmap towards a working framework on adopting cost-effective technologies to propagate the wireless network networks far and wide across the country for ensuring equality of access, digital equity and media access.

4. Consolidating scope of policy areas and suggest workable action steps;

Summit Proceedings

The summit was formed in a discussion-oriented format sharing the case studies around wireless network deployment and operations in India. The focus of the summit is to empower rural communities via providing them affordable internet connectivity. The summit also focused on understanding the importance of unlicensed band and how wire and wireless network can be used together to provide uniform internet access across the country. The Summit was chaired by Mr. N. Ravi Shankar, MD, BBNL & Administrator of USOF, DoT, MoCIT and moderated by Mr. Rajneesh Singh, Regional Bureau Director for Asia, ISOC.

Chairperson & Keynote Address: N. Ravi Shankar, MD, BBNL & Administrator, USOF, DoT, MoCIT
Moderator

• Rajnesh Singh, Regional Bureau Director for Asia, ISOC
  Panelists
• Deepak Maheshwari, Public Policy Professional
• Dr. Ravina Aggarwal, Program Officer for Media Rights and Access, Ford Foundation
• Prof Rekha Jain, Executive Chair, IIMA-IDEA Telecom Centre of Excellence & Professor, Computers and Information Systems Group, IIM –Ahmadabad
• Vibhas Sharma, Founding Director and CEO, Aura Ventures Pvt. Ltd.
• Viresh Goel, Deputy Wireless Adviser (T), WPC Wing
• Shahid Ahmad, Project Director, DEF

The Proceedings

Moderator, Mr. Rajneesh, initiated the summit by the introduction of panelists and participants. Further, he raised the question with N. Ravi Shanker to share his opinion and feedback on fibre optic network and what is the mission of government in terms of connecting the country.
Mr. N. Ravi Shanker initiated the discussion sharing mission of Telecom Ministry, Govt. of India – ‘Internet of people to Internet to things’ is theme of the National Telecom Congress which is inaugurated on 5 December 2013. He further mentioned there is a need that all kind of technologies should reach rural parts of the country. For example voice communication is still missing in several parts of the country. About 90% of the country has luxury to have towers and this is endeavor of the Telecom Ministry. The government is trying to bring each and every kind of technologies such as 2G, 3G, 4G and community wireless network, community radio, etc. He further explained there is a need to understand how technology permits to the rural area and how technology has been acting as a democratizing element. Mr. Ravi Shanker welcomed all panelists and participants and requested them to share their feedback and add valuable experiences in the summit.

Recommendations

1. One of the major recommendation came out is to understand how technology permits to the rural area and how technology has been acting as a democratizing element;
2. Harmonised regulatory approval processes and finite approval timelines, appropriate licensing mechanism is very much required for the last mile connectivity or at community level (using a rural ISP type model or perhaps the highly successful cable TV retailer model in India), deployment and access costs that are affordable to the target community, business and sustainability models and the importance of knowledge sharing between communities and practitioners.
3. One of the strong recommendations that has been emerged that DOT (Department of Telecom), TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) should look at policy aspect of unlicensed spectrum and make other spectrums to be delicensed not only villagers but internet proliferation in general;
4. Regulations like using premium bandwidths on shared basis for both paid as well as non-paid spectrum can be initiated in India to solve the issues related to substandard quality of ISP service. Though there are issues like security, interference and even non-working of the business model, however, there is need to rework on sharing model of spectrum;
5. Another major recommendation is to develop sustainable social enterprises and to generate strong demand at the lowest price that could work for the poor. There is also need to understand the price-factor which has to be reduces before it reaches at grassroots level;
6. It must be mandatory to understand whether rural communities are able to harness the benefits of the existing bandwidth;
7. In terms of new policies, policy makers and government needs to come forward and provide any kind of subsidy to internet users rather than internet service provider.
8. Assessing the potential of open spectrum or rural broadband networks, first steps of bringing out sustainable models in semi-urban cities and towns, so that rural communities can also get inspired and look upon these models. In result, it will create an ecosystem and help rural regions to be connected with the mainstream.
9. Instead of always talking about bureaucratic hurdles, there is a need of bringing all kind of technology in rural areas right now, not after the 5 years as these technologies can drastically change the lives of villagers.
10. Being most of rural broadband is state controlled mostly (through BSNL) and this needs to change by opening up infrastructure for shared usage and subsidy depending on location of installation. On understanding the requirements of rural broadband networks, there is need to analyze ways and models which can fill in gap with provision some level of subsidy or tax exemption for ISPs.
11. There is a need to explore alternative solutions such as fibre optic as backhaul option and other solutions such as cable network, wireless networks to provide the last mile connectivity.
12. There is a need to explore opportunities of 5Cs approach – content; connectivity; cost of devices, competitive tariff, and computer literacy and to implement the concept of wholesaler, retailer and distributer to provide internet connectivity at rural parts of the country;
13. There is a need to emphasize on making policies for rural-level entrepreneurs/players who want to serve rural parts of the country and they should be allowed to be partnered with large level players. Thus, the infrastructure can be used for various purposes – telemedicine, education, providing e-governance services.

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