5G Aspirations and Realities

What the government can do for 5G and Digital India with a Systems Approach.

Shyam Ponappa    |    June 6, 2019

Ah, 5G! The very thought seems to excite so many. What is it? It is a mix of telecom technologies¹ delivering much higher data speeds on more extensive connectivity, using much lower power, with extended battery life, and emitting less radiation, for ways to connect and operate most of the conveniences people use regularly. From smartphones and computers for communications, study, work, research, entertainment, to other devices and machines, such as for managing utilities (electricity and water) at home and the workplace, refrigerators and cooking devices, industrial equipment, transport, and more, so that daily activities are eased considerably. The catch is that 5G is at an early stage in a long process — perhaps a couple of years to manifest in large trials in India, and several more years to be widely available, needing huge investment ($100 billion in India).

Yet, there are compelling reasons for developing India’s capabilities. There is the sheer necessity for India to partially meet its requirements, instead of relying entirely on imports. The big draw is the size of the Indian market and prospective demand, the global market, and the possibility of innovation at this early stage. Domestic capabilities are a prerequisite to afford deployment at a level that would otherwise exceed petroleum imports, with unsustainable effects on our balance of payments. Without domestic capacity, energy imports would limit electronics imports. (This highlights India’s need for solar power development, a separate and equally high priority.)

However, the sobering financial condition of India’s communications industry gives pause. Financial capacity — revenue generation and access to capital, both equity and debt at favourable terms — is required to develop capabilities. After the telecom price wars, even Reliance Jio is reportedly cutting staff. Airtel, meanwhile, having invested heavily in 4G infrastructure, has stated its unwillingness to bid for 5G pectrum unless prices are lower.

The government set up a committee for 5G in September 2017 with a steering group chaired by emeritus professor at Stanford Arogyaswami Paulraj, a pioneer in wireless communications. This committee recommended network deployment as the immediate priority, i.e., rolling out early, efficient and pervasive 5G networks. Technology design and manufacturing capacity were recommended for later phases.

Network deployment needs policy support driven by a Systems Approach, especially for a debt-encumbered sector faced with declining revenues per user, and unused, inaccessible spectrum, even as other countries enhance their lead. This is ironic, because India has real strengths in this sector and a large market, with the potential to catapult productivity and prospects. Yet, government policies have not succeeded in coordinating our reservoir of human resources and potential.

India lags in 5G despite the government’s stated interest in establishing a lead. Spectrum allocation and large trials were scheduled towards the end of 2019, and auctions in 2020. However, government statements this week target 5G trials by September, and auctions by the end of 2019. As spectrum band choices and allocations for trials have yet to be made, this appears overambitious without radical improvement in resolving many such issues.

Also, India’s reserve price for spectrum is seven times Korea’s. As sectoral cash flows are weak, there may be takers only at very low prices unless funding is from external sources as for Reliance. A monopolistic outcome would be undesirable in the public interest. Therefore, shared access with Wireless Resource Virtualisation and Network Function Virtualisation may be a much better solution for network deployment and market development.

Inexplicably, government and the public still view communications as a “government cash-cow” instead of as critical infrastructure, while complaining bitterly about poor delivery from low investment. It is obvious that exorbitant government charges (29-32 per cent of revenues plus corporate tax) crowd out investment. The government can change this, or give up on establishing a lead in communications and 5G. Worse, India will continue to lose out on leveraging communications for development.

Initiate a breakthrough - Apply Systems Thinking

The government can catalyse a breakthrough by doing the following:

a) Reduce borrowing costs and taxes for communications as infrastructure. This aim of the National Telecom Policy 2012 (NTP-2012) has been ignored.

b) Provide adequate spectrum aligned with global allocations. Given India’s low fibre penetration and need for digital technology, allow shared access to all spectrum and infrastructure, with charges for usage based on revenue sharing.

c) Clear administrative impasses through coordination and due process without delay. For example, allocate spectrum immediately for 12 months for trials.

Many countries have completed 5G spectrum assignments and are already deploying 5G. These include Korea, Switzerland, Finland, UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Japan.²

There are nearly 300 5G deployments, as shown on an interactive map on Ookla’s site (Chart 1).

Chart 1: 5G Map – June 4, 2019

Source: https://www.speedtest.net/ookla-5g-map

In this context, Huawei’s role in India is contentious. One issue is of non-discriminatory trading terms, or fairness in competition.  If an entity such as Huawei achieves global dominance through government support, it competes on terms that cannot be matched because of cost of funds and scale advantages. Such entities can establish dominance in any country against competitors who do not enjoy similar support. Second, while Huawei may be doing nothing different from Nokia or Ericsson, the fact that it is supported by a neighbour with apparently hegemonic behaviour, China, suggests that dependence or entanglement are inadvisable.

To succeed with Digital India and 5G, government can begin by classifying communications as infrastructure, and adopting the approach taken for 5 GHz Wi-Fi.  Take pointers from the US FCC, ETSI, and so on; use spectrum and network sharing to leverage equipment and spectrum fully; support local technology champions such as a fabless chip design unit and a network equipment manufacturer in Bangalore, and a wireless equipment manufacturer in Delhi; and focus only on delivery with sustainable revenue generation.

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Shyam dot Ponappa at gmail dot com

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1: 5G technologies include Multi-User – MIMO (MU-MIMO) to improve reception, small cells for better performance and reduced radiation, WiGig and other high-speed wireless technologies, Software Defined Networks with Network Function Virtualisation, Wireless Resource Virtualisation, and a fibre backbone.

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2: Page 8: https://img.lightreading.com/5g/downloads/webinar-breaking-the-wireless-barriers-to-mobilize-5g-nr-mmwave.pdf

Democracy, Digital India and Networks

Digitisation and democracy are ruled by the ineluctable dynamics of networks.

Shyam Ponappa   |   May 2, 2019 

There’s no escaping the blessing or the curse of the Digital Age in India, any more than the benefits and challenges of democracy. The headlong rush into digitised networks provides incredible benefits of reach and efficiency in many different ways, at the individual and many collective levels — of family, friends, community, nation, polity, work, domain, and so on. It also lends itself to the dark side, plumbing the depths of social, religious, or political factions and tribalism, bigotry, autocracy and fascism, anarchy, social dysfunction, and the rest. Yet, there’s no denying that for India, with all its needs, talents, foibles, and contradictions, digitisation is a great enabler.

Likewise democracy.  Romanticised notions of it are pure fluff, epitomised by selfies at the Parthenon, conjectures about Vaishali, or the spectacle and pageantry of electioneering. The reality was, and is, much harsher, whether then or now. Then, it was the practice of a pri­vileged elite. Now, the reality of de­m­ocracy in India with universal franchise and an insufficiently prepared polity is a space captured by politicians, many of them fractious opportunists, not really prepared or equipped for the complex analysis and decision-making that governance requires. Mo­st citizens, however, have an illusory freedom of choice, despite the choice being restricted to accepting or rejecting incumbents, or choosing repla­cements from among th­e­se very politicians. This is where digitisation has a direct role and enormous impact through media in all its forms, in­cluding the nexus between money and politics as in the Cambridge Analytica episode.

According to McKinsey’s ‘Digital India’ report of 2019, the benefits of digitising India are impressive, although only 40 per cent of the population has internet access, and there is uneven adoption in businesses, leaving considerable room for improvement. Yet, newly digitising sectors have experienced tremendous gains. For example, in logistics, fleet turnaround time has been reduced by 50 to 70 per cent, and digitised supply chains helped companies reduce inventory by 20 per cent. The question is whether and how this can be managed to yield more benefits than detriments, while preserving privacy, social convergence, and harmony, while avoiding divergence, repression, and instability through disharmony.

The Imperative for Conscious Regulation

Network science tells us that real-world networks share two characteristics. The first is growth with time, and the second is that new nodes link more often to more connected nodes, or hubs. Growth and preferential attachment result in the emergence of a few, highly connected, dominant hubs in all networks, whether the networks are of the cells in our bodies, computer chips, transport networks for airlines, social networks connecting people, or the World Wide Web. These characteristics are common across networks of any size and are scale-free.  

Added later: June 7, 2019
[Re the scale-free aspect, for opposing views, see: liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-network-nonsense-of-albert-laszlo-barabasi/]

Added later: June 15, 2019
[Scale-Free Networks Are Rare-Anna D. Broido and Aaron Clauset-arxiv.org
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.03400.pdf]

The dominance manifested by companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, combined with the attenuated influence of less connected nodes highlights the role of regulation and structure for equitable development and outcomes in networks. The same issues of dominance and the need for regulation arise in democracy.  In India, outrageous changes introduced recently with regard to election funding have increased opacity and the potential for abuse at the heart of democratic processes. Political parties can now receive foreign or do­me­stic funding from any source without constraint, and funds can be anonymous through ele­ctoral bonds. Introduced with retrospective effect, both the National Demo­cratic Alliance and the Congress benefitted, as previous adverse judgments were nullified. Therefore, one pointer is the need for regulation and appropriate controls applied in a host of areas including news and social media.

Evidence-Based Policies

An entirely constructive aspect of digitisation relates to the application of network science to issues by mapping the links between factors and actionable policies. Examples are the connection between genes and diseases for effective treatment,1 or the feasibility of upgrading products and exports for countries. An example of how proximate products and exports developed over 20 years is visualised in Chart 1, showing the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) of Colombia (COL) and Malaysia (MYS) in production and exports from 1980 to 2000.

Chart 1: Revealed Comparative Advantage – Colombia and Malaysia

Source: Hidalgo et al: ‘The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations – Science, 27 Jul 2007).  https://science.sciencemag.org/content/317/5837/482

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6181618_The_Product_Space_Conditions_the_Development_of_Nations

The premise is that most upscale products are from a densely connected core, while lower order products are in a less connected periphery. Countries tend to move to products close to those for which they have specialised skills.

The lower chart is for Malaysia alone (it helps to view enlarged images in co­lour on a screen to trace the progression).

India’s manufacturing and export opportunities in its product space in 2017 are in Chart 2.

Chart 2: India - Export Opportunities Product Space - 2017  $292 billion

Hidalgo: https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/visualize/network/hs92/export/ind/all/show/2017/

Such interactive charts are available and can help in planning for product areas such as automobile parts, chemicals, or electric motors.2

A great deal of appropriate regulation followed by planning and execution is needed, incorporating insights such as these in areas like governance, healthcare and industrial policy. Realpolitik and preoccupation with obscurantism, religiosity, and caste/tribe, require that changes be driven by unraveling the nexus between politics and funding, evolving a transparent, state-funded system. Is such a transformation possible? Recent developments that have overtaken earlier attempts at electoral reform such as the Goswami Committee (1990) and the Vohra Committee (1993) emphasise an urgent need. But can public opi­ni­on and opportunistic opposition interests converge to effect appropriate cha­nges in political funding? And elicit enlightened government action in public interest projects for health, manufacturing and export policies, agriculture, finance, construction, and so on? A tall order. Perhaps the best hope is that reactions to phenomena such as Brexit help create more equitable practices.

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Shyam dot Ponappa at gmail dot com

1. For connections between diseases and genes, see Alex J. Cornish et al: https://genomemedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13073-015-0212-9

2. https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/
AJG Simoes, CA Hidalgo. The Economic Complexity Observatory 
'An Analytical Tool for Understanding the Dynamics of Economic Development.' Workshops at the Twenty-Fifth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. (2011)

A Pathfinding Approach for Digital India

It's not only the installation of the OFC, but of ensuring quality and reliability.

Shyam Ponappa   |   February 1, 2017

Most people believe an optical fibre cable (OFC) connection is necessary for broadband. While largely true, this is often financially viable only in urban agglomerations. What is less known is that trading companies use wireless links between New York and Chicago for high-speed electronic trades [1]. For people outside urban clusters, wireless is a less expensive alternative to fibre. They get only a few megabits per second, but realistically, ubiquitous broadband at 2 Mbps would be great.

Three factors are driving internet access and usage in India. An overriding factor is the growth of wireless devices and traffic as a global phenomenon. Cisco estimated in June 2016 that in 2015, wired access comprised 52 per cent of IP traffic, but would reduce to one-third by 2020, while wireless access would increase to two-thirds. This trend is reinforced by another factor: Innovation that lowers costs and improves performance in mobile wireless (Chart 1).

Chart 1: Mobile Innovation Lowers Costs and Improves Performance

Sources: Cisco Visual Networking Index; International Telecommunication Union; IE Market Research; Motorola, Deutsche Bank; Qualcomm

Note: Data speed indicated the maximum downlink speed, not average observed speeds. The average observed speeds depend on many factors, including infra, subscriber density and device harware and software

The third factor is the combination of the geographic spread of our population, the concentration of broadband penetration (Chart 2), and the limited coverage of OFC networks. While major cities and their connecting links are covered by OFC, less populated and less commercially attractive areas between them are not.  In hilly terrain, there is considerable difficulty in laying OFC, which extends far beyond cost.  In urban areas, cost can be a deterrent because we lack reasonable, uniform charges for rights-of-way. Such procedures and practices are difficult to institute and enforce, but are essential for robust, viable OFC networks.

Chart 2: Broadband Penetration

Source:  http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/internet/The-India-wide-web/article14588938.ece

I

It's not only the installation of the OFC, but of ensuring quality and reliability. OFC networks in India apparently suffer from 12 to 14 cuts per km per month, whereas the international benchmark is 0.7 cuts per km km per month. Apart from more frequent repairs, the capital expenditure in India is nearly three times as high as in Australia or the US. [2]
 

Estimates for installing OFC using standard procedures vary from about Rs 1 lakh to Rs 4 lakh per km. However, there have been attempts at getting costs down by radical changes in approach. For example, Andhra Pradesh considered an OFC installation of 22,500 km estimated at Rs 4,700 crore. By stringing fibre overhead along electric cables, however, the estimate was cut to Rs 333 crore, reducing costs from Rs 21 lakh to under Rs 1.5 lakh per km. It remains to be seen how this network will perform in terms of quality and reliability. Also, wireless technology is needed to extend connectivity from the fibre to villages, and cellular network costs rise with less bandwidth. For instance, one estimate is that excluding spectrum costs, a network using 5 MHz costs nearly 70 percent more than using 20 MHz.
 

For all these reasons, we need concerted action to redesign our approach to broadband, covering the fundamentals of infrastructure, spectrum and market design.  The exponential growth in mobile services has reached a plateau, and is complicated by the taint of the 2G spectrum scams. This has resulted in a mindset combining witch-hunting and paranoia in the press, the public, government departments, and the judiciary. This is not conducive for the coordinated, collective strategy and action that is required to extricate ourselves. Several proven wireless technologies are not permitted in India, although the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has recommended their use. Methods to increase connectivity like those listed below are urgently needed, with requisite environmental safeguards such as the use of renewable energy.
 

• 60 GHz (V band) wireless gigabit for short-haul; 

• 70 and 80 GHz (E band) for multi-gigabit backhaul up to 5 km;

• TV White Space for the middle mile from the fibre to users in villages up to 8-10 km away in a single hop;

Additional steps, e.g.: 

• Increasing unlicensed spectrum in the 5.8 GHz band from 50 MHz to 80 MHz to enable 866 Mbps per channel, or more for gigabit capacity;

• Enabling secondary sharing of spectrum bands such as TV White Space, which has the possibility of existing Indian IPR establishing domestic manufacturing and dominating this niche;

It is evident that despite intense efforts by the people involved, our existing approach is simply not getting us to where we need to be. This has been repeated by government and private sector representatives many times. There’s no substitute for developing a sound approach, collectively and participatively, with professional facilitation, cutting across government, industry (operators and equipment providers), users, and the judiciary, to devise whatever solutions will deliver better results.  We have to move away from adversarial deadlock.  

A good way to begin is by accepting facts, and considering the evidence before dismissing points of view. For licensing, we know that government collections from revenue sharing far exceed the auction fees foregone (“Breakthroughs Needed for Digital India”). We have the experience of building other infrastructure such as roads and airports on revenue-sharing principles.  We have to take a similar systematic, phased approach to designing and implementing broadband networks. Policies on infrastructure resource use including spectrum need to be rationalised, and the sector organised through participative path-finding and problem solving.  We have to build national champions in manufacturing to keep costs affordable, for instance, using TV White Space. India could set the standard with its IPR and products where OFC is infeasible or unviable for connectivity to villages and rural clusters. Both the administrative and political leadership need to do this, working with all stakeholders, and not treating any of them as adversaries, or cronies.
 

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                                                                                 Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com

1. ‘Information Transmission between Financial Markets in Chicago and New York’,  Gregory Laughlin, Anthony Aguirre, and Joseph Grundfest, Cornell University Library, arXiv.org

2. Conference presentation, Sterlite, http://www.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/Sterlite-Badri.pdf

Digital India Needs These Policy Changes

Appropriate policies will increase connectivity much more than spectrum auctions.

Shyam Ponappa    |    September 1, 2016

There's a "List of 10 Things" for realising India's potential that Prime Minister Narendra Modi received as the chief minister of Gujarat from Jim O'Neill, the originator of the "BRIC" concept. Many items on that list are greatly facilitated by information and communications technology (ICT): effective governance; primary, secondary, and tertiary education; improved infrastructure; and sustainable approaches that minimise negative environmental impact. While there's agreement on ICT's importance for India, there's difficulty getting it in place to best effect. This is because policy changes are needed to make Digital India a reality. These are the kinds of decisions that will turn the rhetoric about connectivity into reality.

Some changes are relatively easy, such as enabling 60 GHz Wi-Fi, while others require more effort, as explained below. These include better terms for satellite communications, enabling broadband on the 500-600 MHz bands, and spectrum and network sharing.

In our land of such range and contradictions, so much needs improvement that everything clamours for immediate attention. Attempts to address them all together are misplaced, however, because achieving results requires goal orientation, prioritisation and systematic action, to direct a convergent investment of time, effort and capital. Also, projects must be done with the realisation that the acid test is end-to-end delivery, even if it is initially to a small segment of the market. Only then can the rest of the iceberg be addressed: consistent, ongoing operation and maintenance, and scaling up. Think of the years of effort, capital and human resources invested without that first delivery in the National Optic Fibre Network. While defining objectives appropriately and setting priorities are difficult, both are imperative.

A recent report on The Networked Society City Index for 2016 by Ericsson reaffirms ICT's critical role in productivity and living standards.1 The report also shows that better-developed cities are on more sustainable paths to the goal of the desirable triple bottom line (TBL) of social, economic and environmental betterment. ICT facilitates not only sustainable development of cities and often their surroundings, but extends through the networked society far beyond their geographical environs. Even our metros need attention, with Mumbai and Delhi ranking at 36 and 38 out of 41.

The Wireless Imperative

Efforts at setting up Digital India have to contend with the reality that most non-urban communications have to be wireless, as does a significant proportion of urban access. This is because the cost and practical difficulties in laying and maintaining fibre everywhere is far greater than building wireless networks. The accompanying chart, showing the spread of broadband in India at the end of March 2016, illustrates this point.




The clusters are around major cities, with broadband penetration in Delhi/NCR highest at 58.2 per cent. Except along their major connecting links, the spaces between clusters are more difficult to connect and aggregate, as habitations are not densely clustered. Also, potential revenues are generally lower in less dense areas. Such areas urgently need lower-cost wireless coverage.
 
Policy Changes Required - from Easy to Difficult

Of the many constraints to building more accessible ICT in India, a major set lies within the control of government and stakeholders, provided they act together and are not adversarial about policies governing access technologies:

• There are unused frequencies in the 60 GHz band for which inexpensive equipment is available abroad with a capacity of several gigabits. Press reports years ago mentioned the de-licensing of this band in India. Last November, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recommended de-licensing Wi-Fi use, and light licensing backhaul with minimal charges. Yet, this asset is wasted because there's no policy permitting its use. It costs nothing to de-license in line with global norms. Apart from additional Wi-Fi capacity, service providers could use it for backhaul from small cells. Revenues are likely to rise, and the government would collect increased taxes. Domestic manufacturers could possibly develop products for what should be a huge market.
   
• Another proven technology is satellite communications. This is priced too high in India, as explained in "Satellite communications can drive the broadband revolution", Business Standard, 23 April 2016.2 Satcom tariffs are apparently nearly 300 times higher than in the US, while private sector applications for manufacturing satellites are languishing. Also, there is considerable potential for manufacturing associated equipment, such as VSATs, end-user terminals, and so on.
   
• A third area is unused or underutilised government spectrum. The most-useful and least-controversial, except for turf considerations, is unused broadcast spectrum in the sub-700 MHz bands. Government departments, namely, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B), the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY, now the Ministry of ... or MeitY), and the TRAI, could coordinate their approach, so that I&B and Doordarshan retain the spectrum, while allowing common access to shared spectrum and infrastructure for paid use by service providers. Doordarshan could increase its reach by providing programming and content over these links.
  These frequencies would be most effective in extending rural broadband, because of the distances that could be covered inexpensively. There is an issue with equipment, as there are no large, established markets anywhere yet for TV White Space devices, and there is insufficient support for local manufacturing even with Indian intellectual property rights. In fact, we have a Catch-22 situation here: such devices are likely to have massive deployment in India, but we don't have policies that allow these frequencies for broadband. The irony is that developers who manufacture prototypes in India have no access to spectrum even for testing their products, and will have to rely on markets abroad for testing as well as sales.
  
  
  Other Frequencies

•          Rules restricting usage of other frequencies could also be amended through a coordinated process.  The result could be policies that treat spectrum usage as part of a shared infrastructure solution for Digital India.  Using a shared access for payment approach with secondary sharing, primary holders of spectrum can retain usage rights, while government revenues accrue from swathes of spectrum that now remain unused, and holders of spectrum earn from common access.

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Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com


1. "Networked Society City Index 2016", www.ericsson.com
2. T V Ramachandran. "Satellite communication can drive the broadband revolution", Business Standard, 23 April 2016

The Epiphany In Power Reforms

If this is real, get Digital India moving by extending this epiphany.

Shyam Ponappa    |   June 2, 2016

My column last month faulted misrepresentation and hype about infrastructure.  There’s a positive side of the electricity supply story, however, apart from the valid criticism.  It is of a breakthrough in governance premised on a real epiphany, in the approach to reforms in electricity generation and distribution, an area plagued with seemingly insurmountable difficulties since economic reforms began 25 years ago.  If it’s true, a strategy based on abundance and organization instead of on scarcity, shortages and a ration mentality, is yielding net benefits. 

On a cautionary note, this article is based on anecdotal evidence from the public domain.  Therefore, the statements need independent validation to be accepted as facts.

                                        

What’s remarkable about the present initiatives is the enlightened approach to provide affordable electricity.  The emphasis is on systems and flows, and not just jiggering numbers on subsidies and rebates.  The focus is on increasing asset utilization in systems to get lower unit-costs from generation and distribution, and increasing volumes for gains from scale in manufactured products such as light bulbs, fans and water pumps.  There are additional benefits because these products are energy-efficient, leading to lower electricity demand for equivalent use, as well as lower emissions.  Using these gains to attract manufacturing investment by supplying inexpensive, assured electricity is likely to delight prospective investors, provided the other aspects of infrastructure and inputs are also available.

On the face of it, a number of factors are being improved in the electricity supply and demand ecosystem to make this possible.  This is one aspect of satisfaction: that a coordinated strategy was adopted to drive systemic changes across multiple domains and aspects, leading to these gains.  An approach desperately required in other sectors, but that hasn’t yet been attempted.

For electricity, the first step was to sort out coal supply for generation, as India relies on coal for about 55 percent of its generation.  Fortuitously, a fall in global prices reinforced the steps taken by the Coal Ministry working in concert with Indian Railways.  Second, a combination of solutions were formulated and introduced in the Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojna (UDAY) scheme in November last year.  These included improving the operating efficiency of distribution companies (the State Electricity Boards) through measures to increase utilization, reducing the cost of power by lowering the price of coal and the interest burden, and eliciting financial discipline.  On the demand/user side, an initiative to introduce efficient Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs in January 2015 by state-owned Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) was apparently very effective, with more than 100 million LED bulbs distributed by April 2016, resulting in a considerable reduction in electricity demand.  The sheer scale of procurement and distribution have reportedly led to reductions of about 75 percent in LED bulb prices.  

The financial innovations have been equally impressive, with imaginative structuring resulting in states being persuaded to take over part of the liabilities of the SEBs over three years, thereby reducing the interest cost, while also agreeing to share future losses if any.  As a consequence, SEBs have lower debt obligations, and states have strong incentives to maintain financial discipline.  Details on the UDAY scheme are available at: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=130261.

EESL has reportedly begun a similar effort to introduce energy efficient fans.  These fans use 30 watt-hours less on average than the 75-80 watt-hour rating of older fans, of which there are estimated to be 350 million.  Another initiative is being planned to replace over 20 million agricultural pumps with more efficient models. 

The approach to orchestrating these changes has apparently been exactly as one might script a good government process: through coordinating and facilitating meetings and consultations over many months between state and central officials.  The result is convergence on initiatives to reduce transmission and distribution (T&D) losses through steps such as upgrading transformers and equipment, introducing smart metering, and financial discipline.  T&D losses are inevitable up to a point depending on network conditions; the rest is inefficiency and theft.  Countries such as the USA and China report as low as 6 percent, while Canada has 9 percent.¹  India’s losses, however, have been at well over 20 percent, and the effort is to reduce these to 15 percent or less. 

While the solutions are not perfect -- for instance, the Supreme Court order to auction coal mining rights may result in higher life-cycle costs -- these may be the most comprehensive, integrated and well-coordinated efforts at policy reforms.

Extension To Other Sectors

Could the approach and methods applied to address electricity supply and demand management be applied to other sectors of the economy?  Obviously not in a one-size-fits-all manner, because the solutions have to address the specific problems or needs of each sector.  A consideration of the elements suggests a potentially transferable process:

•      An approach based on abundance instead of scarcity.
•      Central leadership in goal-directed coordination and facilitation with expert inputs, to converge on planning and execution.
  
  
•     Problem definition and analysis from a holistic perspective, with expert inputs from relevant domains, and inter-sectoral integration in solutions.
•      Emphasis on high utilization of “plant and equipment”, i.e., capital equipment and networks.
•      Scale and efficiency to reduce costs, combined with sophisticated financial structuring of solutions.
•     Central and state areas of responsibility well covered.
•     Distribution through markets and retail platforms.

These elements should be applicable, changing as necessary for specific attributes, domains, and expertise, to other sectors such as communications and broadband, primary health/water and sanitation, education, and transport.  Each of these would require addressing a complex set of questions and definitions with as much rigour, energy, expertise and panache as has been brought to bear in the electricity supply solutions.

Much depends on the veracity of these claims about process and results. If they’re true, this experience can be applied immediately to get the beached Digital India initiative going. If it is hype, both Digital India and Electricity for All are beached whales.

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Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com

1: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS

Breakthroughs Needed For Digital India

It's time the government accepts that current policies are not enough to bring about Digital India.

Shyam Ponappa   |   April 7, 2016

It helps to remind oneself of the scale of Digital India, its magnitude and sweep: to provide e-governance and other e-services everywhere, including 250,000 gram panchayats serving another 400,000 villages. That includes all the backbone and aggregation networks, and institutional processes to get there. The links indigitalindia.gov.in, such as http://www.bbnl.nic.in/, illustrate what's involved - and because many users are from households, the demand is for even more extensive networks.

The menu of services through Internet access is ambitious, and includes government services, health care, education, market information, financial services and so on. But it's the lack of basic access, of the "pipes" and "plumbing" for connectivity, that's the first, most difficult, yet essential step. Until this aspect is in place, getting results in areas such as efficient delivery of electricity, e-governance - including subsidies, education and skills, health care, manufacturing, and so on - is very much more difficult.

These services make up a robust wishlist, although their commercial underpinnings have yet to be designed and spelt out. As regards delivery, significant policy developments were reported last week. The Telecom Commission approved the operation of virtual network operators, allowing for operators who don't own networks or spectrum. They also recommended lowering spectrum usage charges from five per cent to three per cent of Adjusted Gross Revenues, while the exception of one per cent for Broadband Wireless Access spectrum continues. The bad news was in the Budget for 2016: service tax of 14.5 per cent on spectrum acquisitions, including through auctions.

But these are simply not enough. It's time the government accepts that Digital India is too distant, and they'd better formulate corrective measures. For example, even after 10 years with some success in setting up Common Services Centres (CSCs) in parts of the country, there doesn't seem to be a replicable template with sufficient momentum for ubiquitous connectivity. Worse, urban services remain constrained by too little spectrum that costs too much, with many impediments to augmenting capacity.

Consider factors affecting execution and delivery.

First, there's the telecommunications industry in its current beleaguered state. Its constituents have their backs to the wall for various reasons:

• Low revenues and high costs,
   
• Constrained access because of shortages - of networks; or of the means to build them, such as inexpensive rights-of-way, where laying fibre is feasible and viable; and where that isn't, shortage of inexpensive spectrum, and other cost-impediments such as local government charges for towers,
   
• Below-par services for current demand,
   
• Loads of debt, much of it incurred to pay for spectrum,
   
• Banks with little appetite for further lending to this sector, and
   
• Uncertain market sentiment

For local manufacturers, the competition from global vendors is formidable if not overwhelming, given their advantages of ready access to capital, tax breaks, state sponsorship, established products and markets, and relationships. Access to spectrum will enable development and testing of devices, which is very difficult under present circumstances, but local manufacturing also needs entire ecosystems.

For the government, there's an overriding imperative for revenue collection. The motivation is an unrelenting need for (legitimate) expenditure on infrastructure, governance, and basic welfare in a developing economy. This is compounded by execution on a massive scale that also involves changes in user behaviour, for instance, village institutions like CSCs that have yet to take root. Another level of complexity is because two-thirds of users are from non-urban areas requiring extensive wireless broadband, untested for rural delivery except for satellite television.

With the public and media suspicious of government and industry, resolving these aspects is more difficult because of their skepticism and opposition. There's a disinclination to evaluate policies objectively because of recent scams. It is increasingly obvious that plugging away at legacy plans with their failure rate won't do, and more effective ways must be framed to achieve connectivity. For solutions acceptable to the government, to service providers, and the public, essential criteria are transparency and fairness. Next, the approach must be practicable, yield reasonable government revenues, and have reasonable profit potential. All these elements are required for sustainable initiatives. Every step has to be thought through, with all government departments working together (another big ask) and with industry, from the basic strands: connective links, sustainable equipment at reasonable cost, and revenue streams (whether from user payments or partly from subsidies) for services and content to more than cover those costs.

My previous article ('Connectivity - Let's Apply What We Know', BS March 3, 2016: http://organizing-india.blogspot.in/2016/03/connectivity-lets-apply-what-we-know.html) showed how government collections from shared revenues after the New Telecom Policy of 1999 (NTP-99) far exceeded auction fees foregone, as shown in the accompanying chart.

Recognising this reality, it's time to frame breakthrough policies, encouraging service providers to increase broadband reach to cover suburban and rural users, and to provide content that they want. Ways to do this include:

• Sharing networks between operators, and
   
• Using spectrum unused for broadcasting, and Wi-Fi where feasible through line-of-sight, to offer TV and broadband through a single device to reduce costs.

As rural areas are not densely populated, the availability of spectrum is not a constraint as in urban areas. Using this approach, devices being tested in trials by the IITs and ERNET, if satisfactory, can be used for both TV-over-the-Internet as well as for broadband. This will enable Doordarshan and others to provide Internet access to archival content, and to current and future programmes. Consortium approaches to organisation and revenue sharing have to be developed as part of the solution. If shared on a secondary basis (ensuring primary access to Doordarshan when required), this approach can be adopted for unused spectrum for an interim period of some years without changes in allocation, to give it a chance to develop before taking stock, with reduced spectrum fees and/or incentive payments for seeding rural markets.

If the virtual network operator idea is extended to full sharing of networks including secondary sharing of unused spectrum for a fee to owners, future network investments will be rationalised, and capacity utilisation of networks and spectrum will likely become much more optimal.

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Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com

The Buzz Around TV White Space

There's a war brewing around wireless broadband trials using TV white space in India

Shyam Ponappa  |  November 5, 2015

Large blocks of underused spectrum lie tantalizingly out of reach, waiting for enabling regulation, administration, and to some extent technology, to accelerate our move towards Digital India. One such category is unused/underused TV spectrum or "TV White Space" (TVWS). Despite growing demand, operators face bleak prospects as they struggle to deliver, starved of spectrum and infrastructure. Their dilemma is how to extend delivery capability without choking on buying spectrum so precious it's like an albatross around their necks, leaving little capital for densifying and extending their networks.

There's a war brewing around wireless broadband trials using TVWS in India, years after completion in other countries. These frequencies are most effective for long-range broadband. Mobile operators are watchful of developments such as Microsoft getting preferential access, triggered by announcements of its partnership with the Education and Research Network (ERNET) for countrywide rural broadband. Equipment suppliers also seem apprehensive of developments that could lead to swathes of spectrum being "unlicensed", reducing markets for their established products for licensed spectrum.

This article aims to clear some of the misinformation to facilitate policies for Digital India.

What is "TV White Space"?

There's confusion and disinformation about what TVWS is. Quite simply, TVWS is unused TV spectrum, or TV bands devoid of TV signals. The meaning derives from the areas on a page without print or pictures. Microsoft calls [the technology developed for] it "White-Fi", while some call [the technology developed for] it "super Wi-Fi".

Even bands broadcasting TV programs can have underutilised sections that can carry broadband, as pioneered by researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Rice has a system that uses TV bands for both broadcasting as well as broadband.1 According to researchers, although the 400 to 700MHz band is used for broadcasting TV in many US cities, its capacity is largely underutilised because of alternative ways of accessing TV signals, such as through cable, satellite, or Internet TV. Therefore, incorporating Rice's technology in TV sets or remote equipment could significantly expand the urban reach of "super Wi-Fi", and not restrict it to rural areas.

Is there any TVWS in India? Some say there isn't!

Studies across the country show that over most of it, unused TV spectrum (white space) amounts to 85 to 95 per cent of TV spectrum.2,3,4 Studies excluding northern India show that in over a third of the area, a large band -- 470 to 585 MHz -- is available for alternate use.2,4

An odd controversy has been created about whether this is "white space" or not, precisely because the spectrum is largely unused.5 The convoluted semantics are mystifying, because white space is by definition unused broadcast spectrum. The National Frequency Allocation Plan already designates this band for fixed or mobile wireless, in addition to TV. In other words, without changes in allocation, operators can share TV spectrum on a secondary basis, as in the USA, the UK, and Singapore.

Regarding spectrum usage charges, as with any infrastructure, it is much more beneficial in the public interest to provide affordable services first and to collect government fees and taxes later, than to front-load auction fees and have no services at all (imagine road systems if up-front charges had to be paid for the right to build them). Overall benefits from Digital India, which is impossible in the foreseeable future without low-cost wireless broadband connections to the NOFN and other backbone networks like ERNET, will far exceed cash collections from auctions.

Proponents of auctions suggest that TVWS be reallocated as cellular spectrum and auctioned. Their reasons: (a) The transfer of public property to private operators; (b) Transparency and fairness; and (c) Government collections. This reasoning is false and misleading, because: (a) No transfer is required, as all operators can get secondary access equitably through a consortium approach; (b) This ensures transparency and fairness; and (c) Government collections from productive use will far exceed any auction collections, as evidenced by licence fees: in 2005, estimated auction fees lost until March 2007 were Rs 20,000 crore, whereas actual collections were double, at Rs 40,000 crore; collections by March 2010 were Rs 80,000 crore, in addition to the public benefits of better services.

Should TVWS be used only for 3G & 4G?

Another negative argument is the insistence that TVWS should be auctioned for 3G and 4G. Whereas Digital India needs low-cost wireless broadband, especially for long-distance links in rural India, because of the high cost and difficulty of building and maintaining fibre or wired networks in difficult terrain, and/or in sparsely populated areas. Therefore, access to TVWS needs to be bundled with the National Optic Fibre Network/BharatNet, and other shared backbone networks like ERNET. Policies should permit different network design scenarios including transmission power and purpose. Point-to-point links are needed over long distances in place of fibre or microwave, and broad coverage is needed for contiguous areas like industrial developments, campuses, commercial complexes, or rural communities. At the user end, TVWS could interface through cellular (3G or 4G) or Wi-Fi transceivers.

TVWS does need tight radio filters (unlike Wi-Fi) to minimise interference, the underlying consideration that drives spectrum management. There's also need for varying power specifications depending on the network design and purpose as described above, and policies for unlicensed sharing using geolocation databases, as defined by the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission).

To be most beneficial, it is not important to extract the maximum carrying capacity from TVWS in every location, as in the misplaced number-of-subscribers-linked spectrum policy some years ago. Rather, the objective for Digital India is to use this technology in combination with others for the purposes people need, namely, for affordable broadband wherever they are, while mitigating radiation hazards. This is essential for India to get its basic communications infrastructure.

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Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com

1. http://news.rice.edu/2015/07/13/rice-tests-wireless-data-delivery-over-active-tv-channels-2/, Jade Boyd, September 5, 2014.
2. IIT-Hyderabad studied TVWS in southern India from 2009, shared findings with the government/other IITs from 2011, and published in 2014:http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-08747-4_3#, Kalpana Naidu et al.
3. http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~vinay/papers/coral13.pdf, Pradeep Kumar et al, June 2013, IIT-Delhi.
4. arXiv:1310.8540v1 [cs.IT], Gaurang Naik et al, 31 October 2013, IIT-Bombay.
5. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tv-whitespaces-how-white-spaces-parag-kar;http://www.financialexpress.com/article/fe-columnist/editorial-beware-the-white-spaces/146355/

COMMENTS

DEBASHISH

I think this whole issue of TV White Space is being clouded with needless convoluted semantics . The author also does not do much to ' clear the air '.Some basic facts have to be placed on the table and understood clearly. 

1. TV White Space ( TVWS )is not an access technology. Hence the comparison with 3G/4G/cellular technologies is infructuous. 

2. TV White Space is and is being positioned as a " Middle Mile " or a " Mobile Backhaul " technology. This means that it is supposed to compete/susbtitute with fiber or microwave. Indirectly, it is in direct competition to the Optical Fiber which is required to be laid between the Block and the Gram Panchayat ( GP )as a part of the NOFN/Bharat Net Project ! 

3. Going by the Expert Committee Report on NOFN, BBNL shall lay fiber at only 80% of the locations as it is not feasible to do so in the balance 20% locations. They have advocated the mixed use of UBR Backhaul technology (which works in the unlicensed bands ) and satellite technology for the technically non-feasible areas ! 

4. So , if at all there is a use case in the revamped NOFN project ( now called Bharat Net ) for such 'special technologies ' like TVWS, it is only in these 20% GPs only ( unless of course Govt. decides to abandon the fiber project and decide to opt for alternate long-distance wireless backhaul technologies ). 

5. TVWS is being touted as a " technology for providing Rural broadband ". However before we join the bandwagon, it may be good to step back and find out what are we talking about . The moot question is that is this truly a broadband technology ? What are the bandwidths that TVWS is capable of providing ? . In the classical NOFN architecture, each GP was to be equipped with 100Mbps bandwidth which was meant to be used by different Telcos/Internet Service Providers/Cable TV providers etc to provide broadband enabled services to the 640,000 ( and not 500,000 ! ) villages . The early results of the trials with TVWS technologies have indicated a throughput of ~10Mbps against a spectrum requirement of 10Mhz ( under ideal conditions ). By simple extrapolation, this means that to provide 100Mbps, it would need a minimum of 100Mhz spectrum ! Surely, this cannot be a very efficient way of using the spectrum , when the entire " White Space " available is of that order only ( Refer IIT Mumbai study report ). Also, it is quite clear that in GPs which have higher bandwidth requirements due to presence of co-located schools, hospitals , government offices etc , TVWS technology may not be appropriate for such higher bandwidth requirements. 

6. Digital India ensures provision of guaranteed broadband transmission bandwidths everywhere with guaranteed SLAs and not on ' best effort ' basis. We have yet to come across a single commercial network being run on TVWS technology anywhere in the world offering highly reliable ( five 9s grade ) and assured quality of broadband service. 

7. It may be prudent to point out that ' field proven' High Capacity Wireless backhaul technologies do exist ( which provide scalable capacities of upto 1-2Gbps ) at distances of upto 10-13 kms , which are in licensed spectrum bands. These are extremely low cost, highly efficient, interference free, Point to Point links which can meet the requirements and complement the government's fibre roll-out in a more cost effective manner than ' special technologies ' viz. TVWS , treated in a special manner ! 

8. Besides, the issue of auction vs free/unlicensed spectrum remains as another moot point where the business case of TVWS hinges on keeping it unlicensed and thereby leading to frittering away of ' precious ' natural resource viz. spectrum , in contravention to the SC guidelines. Given the hype and buzz , it may suffice to state that TVWS has not yet passed the peak of inflated expectations ! I think it would be prudent for the government to let the dust settle down, before making the next move ahead.

November 05, 2015

The author responDS 

Comments 1-5: A “comparison that is infructuous”: The article asks: “Should TVWS be used only for 3G & 4G?” The implied question: “or for other technologies including TVWS-specific ones?” The article also states: “…the objective for Digital India is to use this technology [TVWS technology, as against the spectral medium] in combination with others…” Yes, the term “TVWS” is applied to both the medium – the spectrum – and TVWS technologies, for the (new) technologies developed for that medium, namely, 802.22 and 802.11af. 

The commentator must surely know this, as also the TRAI’s recommendations on the next comment: 

“…direct competition to the Optical Fiber”: 

This perhaps reflects genuine confusion and/or lack of awareness of the complementary role of wireless backhaul (including TVWS). The article clearly mentions supplementing the backbone where laying fibre is too expensive or infeasible. The TRAI’s recommendations on microwave for backhaul discuss this in detail (see: http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Recommendation/Documents/MW%20Reco%20Final29082014.pdf

UPDATED: January 18, 2020:
https://main.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/MW%20Reco%20Final29082014.pdf
“Recommendations on Allocation and Pricing of Microwave Access (MWA) and Microwave Backbone (MWB) RF carriers”, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, August 29, 2014, 
AND
https://main.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/Response%20to%20back%20reference%20on%20Microwave_17.11.2015.pdf
"Recommendations On Allocation and Pricing of Microwave Access (MWA) and Microwave Backbone (MWB) RF Carriers (Response to reference received from Department of Telecommunications on recommendations of 16th October 2015"), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, November 17, 2015).

The more fibre, the better. The question is to what extent it can be deployed cost-effectively. For the rest, other technologies and mediums are needed for the intermediate mile. 

“By simple extrapolation, this means that to provide 100Mbps, it would need a minimum of 100Mhz spectrum ! Surely, this cannot be a very efficient way of using the spectrum , when the entire " White Space " available is of that order only…” 

Comments like this appear to be misleading, especially when made by a commentator who seems to understand the technological implications: if there are more cost-effective ways, those are the ones to use. If not, use less perfect methods, including TVWS. The objective is connectivity at reasonable cost, not designing or deploying the most appropriate technology. Why should TVWS be used in any other way than to provide a 100Mbps link to a node to which it is infeasible for cost or other reasons to lay a fibre connection? What could be more desirable in the public interest? Surely not the optimization of some academic measure of TVWS usage. This is where the best is the enemy of the good. 

Comments 6-8

"6. …We have yet to come across a single commercial network being run on TVWS technology anywhere in the world offering highly reliable ( five 9s grade ) and assured quality of broadband service." 

Response

In the author’s surmise, this may be because the pioneers of TVWS-use and technologies (devices), namely, the USA, the UK, Singapore, already have good fibre and cable networks over most of their geographies. It is only on the fringes that they lack adequate connectivity. These are insufficient markets to provide the level of demand that could have otherwise led to proliferation, and therefore lower-cost devices and success. For instance, device makers are relatively small companies. So it’s a chicken-or-egg situation. The markets that are large enough are China and India, and both have started considering TVWS. Huawei has even acquired one of the early manufacturers, Neul, which was involved in the UK trials. The latter may be an indicator of possibly higher volume production and deployment, assuming Huawei knows what it’s doing (and it certainly seems to). 

"7. It may be prudent to point out that ' field proven' High Capacity Wireless backhaul technologies do exist ( which provide scalable capacities of upto 1-2Gbps ) at distances of upto 10-13 kms , which are in licensed spectrum bands. These are extremely low cost, highly efficient, interference free, Point to Point links which can meet the requirements and complement the government's fibre roll-out in a more cost effective manner than ' special technologies ' viz. TVWS , treated in a special manner !"

Response

This is partly true, but leaves out the rest of the relevant facts; else, if they were really low-cost (and unrestricted), such links would have been deployed extensively in India. Instead, the high cost (and restrictive regulations) make it impractical. This has resulted in the matter being taken to the Supreme Court [Supreme Court civil appeal No. D29714 of 2010]. All this is given in detail in the TRAI recommendations referred to above. 

"8. Besides, the issue of auction vs free/unlicensed spectrum remains as another moot point where the business case of TVWS hinges on keeping it unlicensed and thereby leading to frittering away of ' precious ' natural resource viz. spectrum , in contravention to the SC guidelines."

Response

Consider this: the objective is digital connectivity, in the sense of ubiquitous affordable access. It has not been achieved, and appears infeasible without lower cost access across rural India. If there are better, less expensive ways of providing it, suggest them by all means. If you can’t, think about (a) the objective (ubiquitous affordable access) and (b) constructive alternatives, and try to suggest practical solutions, and avoid misleading or ill-informed comments.  As for the Supreme Court guidelines, if the government formulates sound policies in the public interest, the court's aims will be well served.

9. "Given the hype and buzz , it may suffice to state that TVWS has not yet passed the peak of inflated expectations ! I think it would be prudent for the government to let the dust settle down, before making the next move ahead." 

Response
TVWS use with TVWS devices is not proven. That’s what the trials (mentioned in the article) are about. 

November 10, 2015