Provisioning of a public good, by private means
The question of what happens to the promise of providing “freely” available Wi-Fi is literally riding the airwaves over the past few days. This electoral promise aimed at an aspirational electorate has given an opportunity to open the narrative of open and free internet access in a country whose rapid internet growth is driven by mobile platforms. This post tries to analyze the possible policy and technical alternatives available to ensure free and open access to around 20 million citizens.
Firstly, the Delhi government can adopt a “Public Goods” approach towards provisioning of open and free internet access (such access will need to be to be non-excludable and non-rivalrous). Furthermore, this provisioning needs to be scalable in future, secure in design and should not involve excessive participation from the already stretched government machinery in implementation. One way of doing this is to engage one or more private firms and give them a channel to deploy their innovative solutions to reduce or even eliminate the need of a tax payer funded “freebie” scheme and yet stand true to a promise that can alter the way electoral aspirations are tapped in future.
The three technical innovations I suggest below are backed by corporations that have certain common characteristics. They have deep, really deep pockets that allow for the creation of the physical infrastructure needed to implement such projects even as a city-level pilot project. Their leaders are known for providing long term funding of innovative solutions to ensure open and free internet access and they have also gone on record to assure that they do not intend to seek returns from such projects in the short or medium term. Each of them uses a different technology solution to address the “Digital Divide”, each with its own set of pros and cons.
While it is undeniable that the long term business logic of private firms behind funding such projects is to widen the base of internet users that will in turn use services/products that they provide, yet hoping for it to be initiated solely by Government funding or by the cash stripped telecom players would amount to hoping against hope itself.
First in this list is the “White Spectrum Space” technology that uses the unutilized spectrum between the 200-300 MHz frequencies used by Television channels to provide data transmission wirelessly. This technology has already been tested across Kenya, Tanzania, Philippines, Singapore and UK by Microsoft. Currently this spectrum is held by Doordarshan and if the Central government pursues this under its “Digital India” initiative then not just Delhi, even remote rural areas may benefit from this technology.
Google’s Project Loon is next in the list. Conceptualized as a project that sends out solar powered balloons which in turn provide connectivity to a ground area about 40 km in diameter using a wireless communications technology called LTE. To use this technology, Google partners with telecommunications companies to share cellular spectrum so that people will be able to access the Internet everywhere directly from their phones and other LTE-enabled devices. At present the movement of the balloons is controlled by Google, it aims to deregulate this control to the stratospheric winds as the project scales up.
The last member on the list is not actually a technology per se but more of a platform (app-based) that Facebook is pioneering under its Internet.org initiative. In its current form this platform is aimed at making industry collaborations to reduce the cost of connectivity by developing cheaper devices and reducing the amount of data that apps consume. It involves negotiating “zero-rate” deals with telecom providers in developing countries to provide free access to the Internet.org app. It also aims at developing new “network extension” (drones and special orbital satellites) technology to provide access to new users. As of today, it lacks the essential element of net neutrality as it caters to a select set of services (Facebook, Wikipedia etc.) offered by select service providers. However Facebook claims that this is a transition phase and the long term aim is to make it an open and free access platform.
As is the case with freeing up any channel of information, the hurdles to all the above mentioned ideas are more political than technical. Governments are known to hold on dearly to spectrum in the hope of monetizing it rather than giving it away for a test projects. Balloons in the stratosphere will usher in a “Borderless” internet in true sense, but the thought of such devices in sovereign air space and beyond may not work well with the security establishments on ground. Finally, zero-cost deals are like free lunches, (which there are none) and may end up burdening existing network infrastructure without actually scaling it to accommodate newly added users.
The Delhi Government will need to work hand in hand with the central government to push for implementation of one or more of these technologies. Disruptive change has been one of the modus operandi for the present government of Delhi and it can make a choice to align with innovative solution delivery mechanisms instead of burdening a crumbling information delivery infrastructure.
The first test of cohesion between government in Delhi and government of Delhi may be on how they work out the microwaves. In the meantime, the Delhi government may also want to think about what happens when around 20 million collectively impatient citizens gain access to free and open internet, as promised.
The Old Wonk 