Backsliding Without Broadband

We are losing out on so much of our potential because of regulatory constraints.

[But of course, that is only a part of the story.  The rest of it is lack of organization, and of discipline, which is a long, long story.]

Shyam Ponappa      |    April 1, 2021

Not being permitted to use available spectrum in line with technological developments and global applications is like being deprived of access to the air around one. That our way-below-par broadband is not systematically addressed as a critically important way to provide requisite infrastructure to improve people’s lives is troubling. We lose out on the facilitation of education, healthcare, productivity, commerce, industry, government services, and entertainment. Is the government unaware of our deprivation? Surely the authorities are capable of devising ways to use spectrum for the common  good. 

Whatever other matters they are busy with, this is an area that should have priority.

The difficulty is in satisfying competing demands arising from what can best be described as our collective gnarled psyche. One preoccupation is with making corporations alone pay for public resources without allowing for profits. This apparently pervades not only the government’s thinking, but extends to many people at large, in the press and media, polity, civil administration, and judiciary. Compounded with the anxiety of decision-makers to protect themselves from overzealous future witch-hunts, this ensures there are no innovative attempts at resolving our communications infrastructure needs. One also sometimes encounters sentiments questioning whether we need 5G, or faster internet, or notions that we already have adequate broadband, and so on. We are inured to dysfunctional infrastructure support, and have become habituated to accepting deficiencies in our daily lives. Whether it is dropped calls, slow internet, or sporadic failures in electricity, water supply, or logistics, we treat this shoddy state as acceptable, despite its immense drag on effectiveness and productivity.

Meanwhile, we have just embarked on yet another 4G spectrum auction, while 5G, where we are way behind global developments, seems a lifetime away. If only our policymakers and administrators actively sought ways to improve our communications, including rural broadband, for instance, we might learn from practices elsewhere in the world of adaptations that could be implemented here. One interesting instance is that of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US. Seeking to improve broadband in underserved markets, in 2019, the FCC began the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) initiative, to channel universal service obligation funds collected from telecom operators to get high-speed networks built and services provided in rural areas. This replaced the prior Connect America Fund programme with its lowest-bid awards that had not worked. In 2020, the FCC conducted a reverse auction for broadband services to rural users, allowing for slower delivery in more remote locations. The tentative award for Phase I is $9.2 billion (Rs 67,000 crore) over the next 10 years in monthly instalments, with time-bound completion requirements. (India has about Rs 55,000 crore in a comparable Universal Service Obligation Fund.)

Over 400 entities, many of them consortiums including electricity distribution companies, have won RDOF contracts to build networks and provide services. Most plan fibre-optic networks, but the biggest winner for $1.3 billion, LTM Broadband, plans to also use high-speed fixed wireless. Another winner, SpaceX, plans Low Earth Orbit satellites to deliver 100 Mbps. There has been criticism from some analysts and contenders who question the feasibility of gigabit wireless networks in place of fibre. This may be uninformed, but it remains to be proven that delivery is on time and profitable.

Despite the difference in our environments, the FCC’s example has useful pointers for India. One is a practicable way to channel USO funds to develop rural broadband, with performance monitoring every six months. Second, a model and time frame to design and conduct a reverse auction, and award the 10-year contracts, with minimal hype. Third, allowing for choice of technologies, including high-speed fixed wireless, satellite, and so on. Finally, a solid foundation is provided by FCC’s supportive approach to making spectrum and infrastructure sharing a reality, including 6 GHz Wi-Fi. This is the sort of action we need in place of more rhetoric.

A complementary approach is that of Sweden and other Nordic countries. Telecom operators there have been sharing infrastructure and spectrum from 2G through 4G, which is now being extended to 5G. Note that all levels of technology (2G, 3G, 4G and 5G) coexist in their networks (1).

For India, policy-makers have to develop approaches, policies, laws, adaptations, and so on that are specific to our context, including culture, institutions, practices, and geographic and social circumstances. One element likely to be necessary for ubiquitous broadband is shared networks in rural areas as well as in dense urban environments. Mandatory provision of shared infrastructure was being considered in Sweden over a decade ago. Given that government’s initiatives and Sweden’s experience with sharing thereafter, network sharing is likely to be extended for internal use without mandatory requirements. In India, too, there is need for government initiatives and incentives. This is because extensive changes in policies, laws, and regulations must be effected, requiring inter-agency coordination and convergence in government departments, legislative agencies, institutions, and among stakeholders. The latter will include service providers, manufacturers, and user groups. Sweden’s experience shows there are compelling cost and energy saving reasons for sharing, apart from environmental impact mitigation, but that without government initiatives and facilitation, the common-good outcomes are not likely to evolve naturally in India, where passive sharing has been permitted and practised for years.

Our desperate need is for revamped spectrum regulations, making the relatively straightforward changes aligned with the FCC model to the extent feasible, after due consultation with industry and other stakeholders. Extending Wi-Fi on the lines of what has already been done for 5 GHz is the first step. The target bands are 6 GHz for Wi-Fi, 60 GHz for indoor Wi-Fi and outdoor authorised shared access by licensed operators like Wi-Fi, and similar outdoor regulations for 70-80 GHz. After that [the end-to-end connectivity is enabled -- which is infeasible now], a systematic initiative is required for network sharing through consortium ownership, with similar holdings in verticals with infrastructure providers, and government participation through BSNL. All concerned government agencies will need to be involved, as must all stakeholders.

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Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com

1: https://www.nokia.com/blog/the-well-kept-secret-of-2g-3g-4g-5g-dynamic-spectrum-sharing/

Infrastructure: Rural & Urban

Shyam Ponappa / New Delhi October 05, 2006

Let’s begin with Integrated Area Planning - Spatial Planning.

Stop to think of what is really essential: enabling people to live well, be active and productive, by providing the necessary services and facilities... What assumes importance, after goal setting and prioritisation, is pragmatic planning and execution...

There is this view that development means that everyone gets to live in a city, that urbanisation is the ultimate desirable goal. There is also the opposite, railing against the resource-hungry, wasteful cities in India, where the 20 per cent in cars hog 75 per cent of the roads, while buses that transport 60 per cent of the population get only 7 per cent (Business Standard, September 26, 2006: “The future of the city”). There are those who argue that the Metro and urban rail projects are wasteful and unnecessary, because more buses deployed differently would be much more efficient. That big dams or connecting major river systems are anti-people. That nuclear power is bad, because there are alternative ways of getting energy from the sun, wind or tides.

The Essentials

Let us begin with dialogue, not adversarial debate, as Soka Gakai’s President Daisaku Icheda puts it. That is, give your own perspective while accepting with an open mind, the operating criteria being good faith and “right knowledge” in the way that Deming meant it. And if facts and logic indicate that your assumptions or understanding are wrong, allow the facts and logic to prevail.

Town vs Country? Town & Country

The fact is that cities are the engines of civilisation and growth. They enable the agglomeration of talent and resources that can result in synergy through economic and cultural activity and growth. Equally, haphazard development often leads to problems that overwhelm the benefits of efficiency and association. What we need is Smart Growth that fosters vitality in community centres, while transforming the economic structure of our rural working landscape. We have seen other countries do this successfully. Above all, it means providing the basic amenities that make communities viable: apart from law and order, it is infrastructure including sanitation and basic education, which we are unable to get done. Equally, we need to make our rural areas livable, so that all roads don’t lead to urbanisation. PURA (Provision of Urban Facilities in Rural Areas) is what many developed countries have, particularly in Europe.

Economic Viability vs Short-Term Profits

To knock either the Metro or the bus systems in New Delhi is to miss the point entirely. Infrastructure services must necessarily be sustainable, i.e., economically viable in the long term. Let us recognise, however, that for services like transportation, this may take several decades. To expect such services to be profitable in the short or medium term (5-6 years) is simply unrealistic. The essential need is to provide effective and, ultimately, efficient services to people in living and working spaces, starting with sanitation, basic health and education, whether for manufacturing, agriculture, or services.

Area Planning or Spatial Planning

Timothy Beatley’s “Green Urbanism: Learning From European Cities,” published seven years ago, is an in-depth survey of the innovative practices of a number of cities. While we cannot expect to flip a switch to have it all happen here, this is a compendium of so much in terms of process that we could initiate. Consider the National Spatial Strategy of the Netherlands, in its fifth avatar this year. Initiated by the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning & the Environment, a priority is “area development”, in which all parties involved take joint decisions. The ministry itself is an example of Dutch unitary organisation, like their Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Management (Business Standard, October 6, 2005: “Thinking big: scale, ownership & results”). The ministry encourages provincial governments, local authorities, social organisations, local residents, and businesses to work together to come up with a vision, and then make it happen. The process has taken time to achieve results; the Dutch have been doing this for some 50 years before getting to their Fifth National Policy Document on Spatial Planning.*

Spatial Planning Example: The Randstad

The Randstad in the Netherlands is a group of towns and cities across some 50 km with a largely rural centre. It has excellent living, working, and leisure facilities with the requisite transport and communications. Its “Green Heart” has livestock, agriculture, floriculture, and leisure activities. It has several towns and many villages, giving it a different character from other urban agglomerations. And because it has four major cities—Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht -- it has no “centre”. The transformation of their subsistence use of land is an object lesson in development. It didn’t just happen.

I am not advocating blind replication here. But to paraphrase Gandhi, we can take ideas from many lands without losing our sense of who we are. We can—in fact, we must—learn from everywhere, and adapt as we apply to our context and particular condition.

Dickens’s words about the best and worst of times seem horribly apt, if you think of any of India's urban and rural locales: Cities and towns with exploding economic activity in a vast population on a scale, range, and form that defies description, but unorganised and chaotic. Traffic surging helter-skelter, scads of buildings—whole townships rising from among the green fields around Delhi, and all across the country. Within Delhi, demolitions or sealing as court orders on zoning take effect. The endless cycle of floods and drought with limited irrigation systems, the annual monsoon runoff, alarming groundwater losses because of unbridled pumping, and a precipitous decline in the water table. And the unending difficulties of inappropriate compensation for land acquisition. All the flurry epitomised in Ed Luce’s book, In Spite of the Gods.

Stop to think of what is really essential: enabling people to live well, be active and productive, by providing the necessary services and facilities. Then, if we consider the possibilities based on the real world manifest in real place/s, the need for many systems to coexist comes through. What assumes importance, after goal setting and prioritisation, is pragmatic planning and execution, driven by what is good for people (the public interest). Let’s hope that this week’s conference, 'Building Infrastructure: Challenges & Opportunities', begins to address our need for comprehensive, integrated spatial planning.

shyamponappa@gmail.com


* http://international.vrom.nl/pagina.html?id=7348

May 30, 2014
This is no longer valid.  This link seems to lead to a similar document:

http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten-en-publicaties/brochures/2010/11/23/summary-national-spatial-strategy-creating-space-for-development.html