No Subject

[Rishab Aiyer Ghosh <rishab@best.com>]

India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) charges a licence
fee of $50,000 per _annum_ for BBS operators, and nearly twice
as much for e-mail providers. It is preparing to finalise a policy
for Internet service providers; as it doesn't understand the distintion
between Internet _networks_ (MCI, Sprintnet etc) and "retail" providers
(the geek in the garage), it is planning to charge well over $100,000
in annual licence fees. This is totally against the opinions of Telecom
Secretary R K Takkar, as expressed to my newsletter, The Indian 
Techonomist, some months ago. 

I spoke to Mr Takkar for some time, providing him the "education" that 
he asked for in my newsletter and that large datacom companies here have 
been curiously averse to give him. He appreciated my point of view, and
invited me to send a proposal for an alternative datacom policy, which
I have done (and which is summarised below). I hope to meet him next week 
to follow this up. As a major part of my call for removing restraints is 
based on the Internet's treatment by other world governments, I would like 
letters of support to show this. 

My proposal may appear tame, but it isn't really. It will allow small
ISPs to pay as little as $150 a year in licence fees; reduce the (high)
likelihood of cartels between large companies; and entrench electronic
free-speech at (some) parity with other media. (Note that the DoT has
said that it is "not considering" blocking access to parts of the Net
for reasons of morals or security. This despite the local media's loudly
proclaimed discovery that the Net is 97.34% paedophile, or whatever.)

     Highlights
     
     1. Definitions
     - The category for E-mail providers becomes redundant,
       leaving international gateway, national network, and
       "retail" service providers
     - Content providers have constitutional protection as
       electronic publishers
     - BBSes do not require licensing, being content providers
     
     2. Goals
     - Licence fees not for revenue generation, but to
       ensure responsibility (unavoidable. Mr Takkar's words)
     - Licence fees based on telecom infrastructure costs,
       not revenues (at the moment, a licence is almost like income tax)
     - Regulation required for free and fair competition (see below)
     - TRAI should also handle datacom regulation, and datacom consumer
       complaints (the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is likely
       to be very independent of the government, headed by a former
       Supreme Court judge)
     
     3. Regulation
     - Equal access to gateway, network and service
       providers (to prevent denial of service and cartels, very
       likely here without explicit rules preventing them)
     - Rationalisation of DoT leased line tariff structure
       (now, a network costs more than the sum of its parts! too 
       complicated to explain briefly)
     
     4. Licensing
     - Uniform fee structure for gateway, network and
       service providers (say 2.5% of leased line costs, which
       are known as they are provided by the DoT)
     - Barriers to entry greatly reduced (minimal ISP pays $150 p.a)
     - However, total licence fee revenue for DoT not
       significantly reduced (important for success of this proposal;
       large nationwide network may still pay $100,000+ thanks to its
       huge leased line requirements)
     
The full text of the proposal will be made publicly available on the
Net sometime next week. Those who would like to see it, and a template
for a letter of support, should send me mail at dcom-appeal@dxm.org.
I would like letters from non-commercial organisations, lobby groups,
policy bodies, and so on, but NOT datacom companies (I wouldn't
mind _personal_ letters of support from them, but they wouldn't do
for the DoT). I would particularly like to see something from Hong Kong,
which I have used as a good example of how to do things in Asia.

Thanks,
Rishab

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The Indian Techonomist - newsletter on India's information industry
http://dxm.org/techonomist/                             rishab@dxm.org
Editor and publisher: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh           rishab@arbornet.org
Vox +91 11 6853410; 3760335;     H 34 C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA