Connectivity Providers Database

From: rishab@arbornet.org (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) To: cix-members@cix.org Date: Thu, 3 Aug 1995 16:03:10 -0400 (Update... for info on India's first public-access ISP, which happens to be the overseas telecom monopoly and plans to charge $160 pa, see http://www.c2.org/~rishab/techonomist/news/vsnl.html ) If you can provide reasons and facts why India should not charge BBS sysops $50,000 annually, e-mail providers $80,000, and not allow (from ignorance?) ISPs at all, read on... -Rishab As you may know, the 1885 (British) Indian Telegraph Act allows, in effect, the Department of Telecommunications to do as it likes. It likes to charge minimum annual licence fees of $80,000 for e-mail providers, and $50,000 for BBSes. I spoke to former Chief Justice of India, P N Bhagwati, who said that, in the light of a recent Supreme Court ruling against the government monopoly of broadcasting, the DoT licences would be struck down in court. Someone will, of course, have to take it to court - an expensive and time-consuming process. That may not be unnecessary, for the DoT Secretary told me that he was WILLING TO REDUCE LICENCE FEES TO ANY LEVEL as the idea was to encourage the growth of datacom (including Internet) services.As described in the Techonomist article attached here, he wants "to be educated." I'm planning to visit him with representatives of the datacom and BBS world, and I need some background material. Basically, my argument was that the datacom (ISP) and telecom business models are quite different - start up capital requirements are lower in datacom by several orders of magnitude; ISPs are tiny and work in large, cooperative networks; most important, even in an "advanced" market such as the US, the bid companies (AT&T, etc) have shied away, leaving the field open to the little ones. I plan to suggest a licencing policy similar to the earnest money paid to ensure responsible operation for tenders - 2.5% of estimated CAPITAL required for a business or project, rather than the current licence fees based on REVENUE (the $50,000 and $80,000 figures refer to the MINIMUM). I need, at the very least, figures to show that the average US ISP is small; that the total revenue is small too, compared to telecom; that the explosive growth in ISPs there is a result of this, and of the ease of start up (read no licencing). I would appreciate info on Asian markets such as HK and Taiwan, and anything else you could suggest. Please get back to me as soon as possible. Thanks, Rishab ps. here's the datacom story/interview. one on the supreme court ruling, and Justice Bhagwati's comments, is on the Web at http://www.c2.org/~rishab/techonomist/legal.html (C) Copyright 1995 Deus X Machina, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The Indian Techonomist, Sample issue, July 1995 Bandwidth restraint How excessive regulation hurts India's promising data communications industry, and what the government appears willing do about it. When, three years ago, India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) allowed the entry of the private sector into the "value- added services" - a quaint term including everything from electronic mail to radio paging - it ignored reality. It did so again in a strange notification last year, where it announced annual licence fees of Rs 2.5 million ($80,000) for e-mail providers and Rs 1.5 million ($50,000) for bulletin board services. Electronic bulletin boards (BBSes) had been active since at least 1991 in India's major cities; with its notification, far from "constantly endeavouring to upgrade technologies," as it claimed, the DoT became the major impediment to the growth of Indian datacom. The value of India's data communications market (including fax and networking products) has been estimated at $150 million this year by Voice and Data magazine. Indians took quite rapidly to fax, once import duties were low enough for reasonable prices. They are taking as well as they can to e-mail, given the limited opportunities, thanks to the DoT. Astonishingly the DoT is not posing obstacles deliberately, but is just not aware of the differences between the economic models of datacom and telecom - it can't tell a modem from a phone. This should change soon, for two reasons. First, the 110-year-old Indian Telegraph Act, from which the DoT draws its power, is under attack from several directions (see ITK_ITA) - although changes to such entrenched legislation take time. More encouraging is the attitude of the DoT itself, or at least of its Secretary, R K Takkar. In an exclusive interview for The Indian Techonomist Mr Takkar expressed the DoT's willingness to change the way it behaves towards datacom. He accepted that licence fees "should not be looked upon as a source of revenue" - answering the concern that the DoT wanted a share in the earnings of datacom service providers over and above that from the considerable additional telephone traffic generated. He said the intention of the DoT should not be to make money, and that "at best the government is entitled to recover its administrative costs" through such fees. The sole purpose of licencing, Mr Takkar maintained, was to ensure that the prospective service provider "is earnest about that business, [will] be able to provide a public service," and, echoing India's suspicion of foreigners' intentions, "is a responsible citizen or company." When it was pointed out that excessive fees curtail the spread of electronic networks in the country, Mr Takkar agreed that "licence fees should not be fixed [at a point that] stifles the growth of the services" as the primary focus "should be on the widest possible provision of the service." Widespread access to data communications services, he reiterated, "should be the only objective of determining the level of licence fee," and offered to "give a serious relook" to the current fee structure. Mr Takkar was quick to appreciate the distinction between the huge investment requirements of telecommunications infrastructure and the distributed, small-scale nature of Internet and other electronic networking services. When it was suggested that India was poised for the proliferation of small Internet service providers, as in the US, if it were not for the DoT's licencing policies, he repeatedly expressed that he was open to further inputs. "I would greatly appreciate meeting [knowledgeable people >from the industry]" said Mr Takkar, "I'd like to be educated." TECHONOMIST COPYRIGHT NOTICE AND SUBSCRIPTION (C) Copyright 1995 Deus X Machina, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This article has been licenced for commercial electronic reproduction in TELECOM Digest, Compuserve, America Online and Prodigy. Elsewhere, this article may be redistributed in electronic form only, provided that the article and this notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances be redistributed or resold in any non-electronic form, or for compensation of any kind, without prior written permission from Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab@arbornet.org) This article is from the Indian Techonomist (http://www.c2.org/~rishab/techonomist/), the newsletter on India's information industry. Annual subscription (monthly print edition plus e-mail bulletins) is for US$ 595 or equivalent. For information, contact Rishab Ghosh by e-mail at rishab@arbornet.org, call +91 11 6853410 or post to H-34-C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Indian Techonomist - newsletter on India's information industry http://www.c2.org/~rishab/techonomist/ rishab@c2.org Editor and publisher: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab@arbornet.org Vox +91 11 6853410; 3760335; H 34 C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA