Internet in India: There lies tremendous opportunity in despair

Access to the Internet for Indians is just about as bad as it can get anywhere on the planet. According to the Akamai State of the Internet Report , India performs the poorly compared to other countries in the Asia Pacific region. South Korea performed the best in the region with a speed of 27 Mbps, whereas India only managed an average speed of 3.6 Mbps. This is worse than the average speeds in Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. Singapore had a average peak speed of 157.3 Mbps whereas India had the lowest average peak speed among the studied countries, at 26.1 Mbps.

The International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations Agency report titled Measuring the Information Society Report , considers various internationally agreed upon communication technology indicators to assign a connectivity index for countries known as the ICT Development Index. India is counted among the most backward countries in the world when it comes to the IDI Index.

Broadband is getting worse every passing day

Further, India shows no signs of improving as the performance index for Internet in India is falling over time. Connectivity in India is actually getting worse. Between 2010 and 2015, countries such as Bhutan and Myanmar increased in their rankings, but India fell six places. Despite the low performance, in absolute terms, China and India have huge populations connected to the Internet. 860 million Internet users from the two countries, make up almost 30 percent of the total number of internet users in the world. Some regions in China perform at par or better than developed countries, and China itself is at par with the Global average. However, India performs much worse than the Asia Pacific average, or the Developing countries average.

FUP has been a bone of contention between users and service providers in India. While speeds may not be a problem, the data limits are extremely expensive, and some of the worst in the world. High income economies such as Singapore, Korea and Hong Kong offer connectivity plans without data caps. However, broadband plans without data limits are available in China, Cambodia and Vanuatu as well. Even where data plans are capped, there is a liberal amount of data offered, including in New Zealand, Australia and Japan. The most restrictive FUP plans in the world are in Papua New Guinea, Vietnam and India.

The roadblocks to a better broadband experience

The Internet Service Providers, Industry Bodies, Communications Technology Manufacturers all outline the same list of problems when it comes to the performance of Internet in India. Top on the list are taxes for importing the equipment needed to build up the infrastructure. Pricing of spectrum is another bone of contention. The licensing fees are expensive. Access to housing complexes, hospitals and stadiums is restricted, and Internet is not considered a basic utility on par with water and electricity. Connecting to NIXI, the National Internet Exchange of India is too expensive. It is cheaper for smaller operators to connect to larger ISPs who in turn connect to NIXI. The backhaul network in India is not good enough to handle the traffic.

TRAI has a long drawn out but thorough process of addressing each of these problems. However, it just takes too much time to implement the right policies. The minimum speed for Broadband was supposed to be 2 mbps by 2015, but that has not happened. In building access to infrastructure is being worked on , which would ease licensing hurdles and prevent builders from partnering exclusively with some service providers.

However the process of waiting for comments and counter comments, listening to every stakeholder, and then taking the decision means that critical services are always delayed. India still refuses to accept the Internet as a basic human right . The Government is slow in fibre roll-out, and that is not just an Indian problem. LIRNEASIA, a information and communications technology think tank has compared the roll-out of fibre by government agencies in India and Australia to the private roll out in Malaysia.

Unconventional ideas to the rescue 

A rapid rollout is possible with an unconventional approach. Local cable operators understand the specific urban and rural features in their areas. This gives them an advantage in deploying networking infrastructure. Additionally, existing cables for television can be re-purposed for delivery of internet services. Industry bodies of cable operators are enthusiastic about the idea, and are keen to get into competition with a sector dominated by internet service providers.

One of the ways to boost the performance of the internet in India is to host content locally. There are various benefits of this, the data of Indian citizens are hosted and secured locally. The access to data means there is less burden on submarine cables, less international traffic, reduce congestion, and the end user gets faster access to the content. Hosting the content locally will also bring down the cost of broadband. The content is not hosted locally as of now because of inferior network infrastructure, and a lack of competitiveness. BSNL has called for the government to incentivise data centre investment.

IIT Bombay also cites a lack of backhaul capacity as limiting broadband penetration in India. However, it has suggested a brilliant idea for improving the backhaul capacity in India. The spectrum usage is concentrated in populations of high densities, with a staggering 56.27 percent of area in the country where the spectrum lies unused. IIT Bombay suggests that this unused spectrum be put to use for boosting the backhaul capacity with multi-hop mesh based middle-mile network.

There is a demand side problem as well

It is not just problems with supply though. India has a unique demand side problem as well. There is low consumer awareness of online services, and a low level of education in the rural areas. The digital literacy rate is also abysmally poor. The National Computer Literacy Drive is an effort by the government to boost the Digital Literacy rates, with a focus on schoolchildren. The computer penetration is poor in India, because of the low levels of literacy and digital literacy. Finally, there is very little content available in vernacular languages , produced locally with regional sensibilities. All of this forms a toxic concoction where there is a low demand for broadband access.

Improving the broadband situation in India is a problem of unprecedented complexity. The problems have been identified, there are multiple solutions available. However, with increasing rollout of broadband access, the service just keeps deteriorating in India. The only way to improve the situation is to speed up the process of executing all the good ideas that we have. The 2014 consultation paper by TRAI on delivering broadband quickly to India is embedded below.

The ITU Measuring the Information Society Report: PDF The Akamai State of the Internet Report, 2016: PDF Cable Operators Federation of India (COFI) suggestions: PDF Cellular Operators Association of India response: PDF Response by IIT Bombay: PDF