India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) charges a licence fee of $50,000 per _annum_ for BBS operators, and nearly twice as much for e-mail providers. It is preparing to finalise a policy for Internet service providers; as it doesn't understand the distintion between Internet _networks_ (MCI, Sprintnet etc) and "retail" providers (the geek in the garage), it is planning to charge well over $100,000 in annual licence fees. This is totally against the opinions of Telecom Secretary R K Takkar, as expressed to my newsletter, The Indian Techonomist, some months ago. I spoke to Mr Takkar for some time, providing him the "education" that he asked for in my newsletter and that large datacom companies here have been curiously averse to give him. He appreciated my point of view, and invited me to send a proposal for an alternative datacom policy, which I have done (and which is summarised below). I hope to meet him next week to follow this up. As a major part of my call for removing restraints is based on the Internet's treatment by other world governments, I would like letters of support to show this. My proposal may appear tame, but it isn't really. It will allow small ISPs to pay as little as $150 a year in licence fees; reduce the (high) likelihood of cartels between large companies; and entrench electronic free-speech at (some) parity with other media. (Note that the DoT has said that it is "not considering" blocking access to parts of the Net for reasons of morals or security. This despite the local media's loudly proclaimed discovery that the Net is 97.34% paedophile, or whatever.) Highlights 1. Definitions - The category for E-mail providers becomes redundant, leaving international gateway, national network, and "retail" service providers - Content providers have constitutional protection as electronic publishers - BBSes do not require licensing, being content providers 2. Goals - Licence fees not for revenue generation, but to ensure responsibility (unavoidable. Mr Takkar's words) - Licence fees based on telecom infrastructure costs, not revenues (at the moment, a licence is almost like income tax) - Regulation required for free and fair competition (see below) - TRAI should also handle datacom regulation, and datacom consumer complaints (the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is likely to be very independent of the government, headed by a former Supreme Court judge) 3. Regulation - Equal access to gateway, network and service providers (to prevent denial of service and cartels, very likely here without explicit rules preventing them) - Rationalisation of DoT leased line tariff structure (now, a network costs more than the sum of its parts! too complicated to explain briefly) 4. Licensing - Uniform fee structure for gateway, network and service providers (say 2.5% of leased line costs, which are known as they are provided by the DoT) - Barriers to entry greatly reduced (minimal ISP pays $150 p.a) - However, total licence fee revenue for DoT not significantly reduced (important for success of this proposal; large nationwide network may still pay $100,000+ thanks to its huge leased line requirements) The full text of the proposal will be made publicly available on the Net sometime next week. Those who would like to see it, and a template for a letter of support, should send me mail at dcom-appeal@dxm.org. I would like letters from non-commercial organisations, lobby groups, policy bodies, and so on, but NOT datacom companies (I wouldn't mind _personal_ letters of support from them, but they wouldn't do for the DoT). I would particularly like to see something from Hong Kong, which I have used as a good example of how to do things in Asia. Thanks, Rishab ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Indian Techonomist - newsletter on India's information industry http://dxm.org/techonomist/ rishab@dxm.org Editor and publisher: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab@arbornet.org Vox +91 11 6853410; 3760335; H 34 C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA