ICT for Rural Development at Globalcomm India 2006

Yesterday, I was on the closing panel at Globalcomm India 2006 in New Delhi.  It was called the “Valedictory Plenary Session” — now that’s a mouth full! —  and the subject was “ICT for Rural Development.” For those of you not familiar with UN and ITU language, ICT stands for Information and Communications Technology, i.e. computers, the Internet and Telecom.

Ambassador David Gross, US Ambassador for International Communications and Information Policy was the moderator and there were eight panelists — seven leaders of Indian telecom and me.

I’d like to think I ended up on this panel because I write and speak on telecom in developing economies and because I’m known as a polite but provocative panelist, but the fact that NMS was co-sponsoring the conference couldn’t have hurt. :-)

Luckily, as I’m new to Indian politics, I got to meet the other panelists in a VIP lounge 20 minutes before the event, so I was able to try out ideas on people and judge what might be considered polite discussion versus unwanted and offensive advice.

The panelists were:

• Mr. A.K. Sinha, Chairman & Managing Director, Bharat Snachar Nigram Ltd., a.k.a. BSNL — the PTT!
• Mr. Kanwalinder Singh, President, Qualcomm India & SAARC.
• Mr. P. Balaji, Vice President Marketing & Technical Solutions, Ericsson India Pvt. Ltd.
• Mr. C.S. Rao, President and CEO, Lucent Technologies India.
• Mr P.S. Saran, former secretary – DOT and Chairman – Advisory Committee, Globalcomm India.
• Mr. Sudhir Narang, Vice President, Cisco Systems India and SAARC.
• Mr. R. Brough Turner, SVP, CTO and Co-Founder, NMS Communications USA.
• Mr. G.S. Grover, Director Commercial & Marketing, BSNL.

Ambassador Gross began the session by asking each panelist to give a one minute statement as they were introduced (which was in the order listed above). Most of the panelists interpreted this as license to speak for 5–6 minutes, and their general formula was:  give some grand words about what needs to be accomplished and then discuss how your organization is involved in rural issues. But no one talked about significant change, even though it clear current policies don’t work.

Mr. Sinha of BSNL started and immediately I was upset. He talked with pride about how BSNL was extending service to rural villages even though they loose money on each new subscriber they sign up. This is nuts!  India’s current scheme, which isn’t working!, is to heavily tax mobile operators in urban areas and, at least nominally, use that money to subsidize operators who deploy service in rural areas. The principal operator getting money under this scheme is BSNL, the government-owned legacy PTT, and I use the words “at least nominally” because there are allegations in the press that most of the money is not actually being used to subsidize rural phone service but instead has disappeared. 

Rural coverage will continue at a snail’s pace until there is a way to make money. Then multiple competitors will emerge and rural India will get mobile phone service, Internet access and so on.  Until then, expect only more of the same.

By the time I got to give my introductory remarks, no one had made a concrete suggestion of anything India should do differently, so I thought I’d shake things up.  For my initial statement I took slightly less than a minute to talk about NMS — as a provider of platforms and solutions for value added services and, more importantly in this context, as a provider of AccessGate, a bandwidth optimizer for the back-haul link from remote cell towers to the mobile switching center. Then I prefaced my further remarks to say that, while I don’t have deep knowledge of conditions in India, I have been exposed at some level to telecom conditions in a diverse set of developing economies in Africa, Latin American, China, the former Soviet republics and India and would try to provide an outsiders perspective.

My points were:

1. It’s well established that improving teledensity provides more economic benefit than any other kind of infrastructure investment, including roads, electricity and even education! I briefly sited papers by David Canning and by Waverman et. al. which I’ve previously written about here and here.
2. And yet total taxes paid by India’s telecom sector are higher than those in most other countries.
3. Further, India has made less spectrum available (per M subs) than most other countries.
4. And India has made no spectrum available in the 450 MHz band where propagation distances are much larger and the capital cost to reach rural subscribers is a quarter or less that of 800 MHz spectrum.

My question to the audience and the other panelists:  Is anyone talking about making real changes that could accelerate the deployment of mobile phones everywhere but especially in rural areas?

I clearly hit a nerve as Mr. Grover of BSNL, who spoke after me, spent his time addressing me instead of the audience. To the extent I understood and correctly took notes on his remarks, he said there was plenty of spectrum for rural areas and instead the problem was lack of electricity at potential cell sites — still no suggestion for something that India should do differently.

More importantly, on the next round three people including Mr. Rao and Mr. Singh picked up on my comments and pushed the issue of 450 MHz spectrum — at least I helped trigger some real discussion.  Also, judging by private comments made to me after the session, quite a few people appreciated my provocation.

For the record my, slightly more organized, comments on what India could do to foster rural ICT are here.

 

Comments

[john]

Brough,

I read with interest your entry about your visit to India and your experience with Indian "politics"

By way of background I have worked for a major telecom organization and set up their Indian Engineering organization in Bangalore and have traveled to India many times.

I first resisted the idea of going there but now have developed a real passion for India it is truly exciting to see the economy take off right in front of you especially when you see people who used to be in extreme poverty make the first steps toward economic security

The other part of the equation is the socialist mind set that still exists in India - along with the corruption that makes so difficult to get ordinary things accomplished

I would recommend a book that would give you a background in the economic development of India from Independence to the present (2002).

India Unbound by Guacharo Das ISBN 0-14-027823-0

A friend of mine sent it to me from India but I am sure it is available in the US

[Atanu Dey]

I would recommend that the playing field be leveled and BSNL be asked to compete with other operators to seek the license to serve rural markets. That license should be auctioned and the price (possibly negative) be determined by the market. In short, the competition for the market should be encouraged and some scope be created for competition within the market.

Please see http://www.deeshaa.org/2003/10/15/the-logic-behind-risc/ this for how much BSNL loses in rural markets.