The Government’s latest initiative of “Digital India” has been heavily propaganded throughout the country as a game changer initiative to modernise bureaucratic services and enable the growth and development of the Country through universal digital access to every corner of every state. The programme has received its share of praise and dismissive snorts of derision alike, with the opposition considering it another overhyped un-implementable scheme of the present political dispensation.

Parallel to the debate on Digital India is another debate presently in progress on Network Neutrality. The Government has on multiple occasions emphasised its support for Network Neutrality and Shri. Ravi Shanker Prasad, Minister for Communications and Information Technology, has on a number of occasions stated both inside and outside Parliament that under no circumstances will the government allow the violation of the principles of Network Neutrality. To this end, the Ministry constituted a Committee under its supervision (commonly referred to as the DoT Committee) to look into the issue and come out with recommendations to implement the same. The merits of the recommendations notwithstanding, what became evident on a perusal of the Report was that the one of the foremost concerns of the government was to ensure that any enforcement mechanism for Network Neutrality did not compromise on “Digital India”, and it is perhaps safe to assume that if the executive was forced to choose between ensuring Network Neutrality and Digital India a success, it would in all probability choose to encourage the latter at the cost of the former.

Which brings us to certain significant questions: Does Network Neutrality need to be sacrificed as the cost for Digital India? Is it possible for both to not only be enforced and developed together, but also complement each other?

Some of the major pillars of the Digital India Programme are creating broadband highways, public internet access programmes and universal access to mobile connectivity. To this extent, Digital India is merely a merger (with an expanded outlook and ambition) of previous government initiatives of National Optical Fibre Network (N.O.F.N.) and the National Knowledge Network (N.K.N.). The major (and the most obvious) problem with achieving these goals is the lack of infrastructure prevalent not only in rural areas but also in the metropolitan cities of the Country. This glaring weakness is openly expressed by many for what will be the programme’s ultimate downfall.

At the same time, coming to Network Neutrality, one of the primary arguments against Network Neutrality has been that Telecom Service Providers have had to spend a financial bomb on developing infrastructure, and will have to continue to do so in the future, and disruptive OTT services significantly eat into their revenue, thus making the business and investment unviable.

Both concerns raised by their respective parties can together provide the perfect complementary solution to each other, provided the Digital India Programme is tweaked a bit. Digital India can in fact become the perfect platform for developing broadband and mobile connectivity infrastructure, while at the same time be used to lower the cost of development of the said infrastructure by providing various incentives under the Digital India Programme to develop the same. Reducing cost, thus consequently reducing the return on investment required, can burn a gaping hole in the shroud that has been developed against Network Neutrality.

Take for example the erstwhile NOFN scheme. It was and still is far behind its schedule and in its present format there is very little chance of this changing. A report has even gone so far as to state that sixty seven percent of the NOFN points are not functional. One of the main reasons for this has been the over reliance on the recurring loss making and inept public sector enterprise B.S.N.L., which has allowed a lot of fibre laid at excessive cost to go waste and render them unusable today. But by allowing the private sector to invest, the government can aid in boosting the speed of laying down of fibre by providing long term tax exemptions to these companies, and also exempt Right of Way (RoW) charges raised by Municipal bodies, which are excessive, while at the same time also fast track clearances and set aside encumbrances which have been seriously detrimental to telecom growth by bringing the same under the umbrella of the Digital India programme. According to some estimates, RoW charges are five to twenty times of the cost of the fibre being laid!

True, there would still be a lot of work to be done. For starters, the spectrum issue is the metaphorical white elephant in the room and needs to be addressed on an immediate basis. It is well documented that Indian telecom service providers need to provide their ever growing and ever in demand services with only forty percent of the spectrum available to foreign telecom service providers, and spectrum sharing has been universally panned as being too insignificant and too economically unattractive. At the same time, the private sector will have to bite the bullet on its presently substantial debt and be willing to invest at the above mentioned favourable terms and conditions.  But allowing the private sector to do what it is willing to do at a reasonable cost would be a major long lasting solution to ensure network neutrality for the consumer and financial benefit to the service provider to the consumer.

(First published here)