Can South Asia catch up in the Internet race?

Historic South Asian Internet workshop believes it certainly can

There will soon be close to one and a half billion people in the Indian subcontinent, while the global Internet user population is already close to 150 million. But the South Asian spread and adoption of the Internet continues to fall far short of the region's potential. The key outcome of a four-day workshop on the issue - drawing participants from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Nepal - has been a set of concrete policy recommendations as well as five project proposals aimed at increasing the diffusion of the Internet in the region and at reducing both internal and regional imbalances.

At the Internet workshop in Dhaka each of the four countries presented papers that focused on national variations as well as on regional similarities with regards to rural Internet access, Internet service provider (ISP) policies, telecom tariffs, data-communication infrastructures, levels of computer literacy, and the local relevance of online content.

Differences in speed of development

"According to a recent World Bank study, the average waiting period for a telephone line in Nepal and Bangladesh is 10-12 years, in India 1.9 years, and in Pakistan 1.1 years," said professor Jamilur Reza Choudhury, a political advisor who is generally credited with enacting legislation favourable to the IT sector in Bangladesh.

Regionally speaking, India has the strongest Internet capacity (skill-sets, training, IT workforce), but the Indian Internet continues to be a largely urban, English-oriented phenomenon. Bangladesh, on the other hand, is institutionally strong in quickly rolling out projects for the rural sector (for example the Grameen Village Phones) - though it does not yet have a formal Internet policy. Pakistan, to its credit, does not enforce multiple metering for dialup calls to ISPs (local phone call charges are not added to the ISP's per-minute charges). Pakistan was also the first South Asian country to open up its ISP market to the private sector (in 1995), and now has close to 40 ISPs in operation, accounting for about 250,000 users. There are 18 ISPs in Bangladesh and three in Nepal; each country has about 40,000 Internet users. India has around a dozen ISPs, and close to 800,000 Internet users. Part of the challenge is in creating regulatory environments which nurture a proliferation of private ISPs, while also ensuring that government monopoly telecom players do not squeeze out the private ISP sector.

The 1885 Telegraph Act

"It is tragic and ironic that more than 50 years after independence from the British, most South Asian countries are still enslaved by colonial-era legislation like the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885," said Arun Mehta, an Internet engineer and activist from New Delhi. While British Telecom has shaken off such pre-digital legislation and launched aggressive initiatives in areas ranging from Internet telephony to global Internet backbone networks, South Asian telecom monopolies are like dinosaurs in the Internet age, said Mehta.

In the interests of fair competition, the workshop recommended that a distinction be made between wholesale and retail Internet access services, and that government telecoms with a monopoly in one area of access services (i.e. phone lines, international gateways) should not use this advantage to wipe out or threaten players in other sectors (i.e. dialup Internet access). Such concerns are being voiced by ISP associations in South Asian countries like India and Bangladesh. The workshop also called for greater co-operation in South Asia between railway and power grid authorities of each country for inter- linking national Internet backbones and increasing regional bandwidth. A conference focusing on this initiative is currently being planned.

Limited bandwidth

Bandwidth to the international Internet is about 80 Mbps in India, 10.5 Mbps in Pakistan, 512 Kbps in Bangladesh, and 320 Kbps in Nepal. In terms of content, the number of Web sites focusing on each country is estimated to be around 10,000 in the case of India, 2,000 for Pakistan, 1,000 for Nepal, and 100 for Bangladesh.

In addition to quantitative measures of content, qualitative measures, like information utility for domestic and international audiences, are also important. Workshop participants stressed the need to create more locally relevant content, and the inclusion and use of local languages. Local infrastructure initiatives must therefore go hand in hand with drives to create locally generated content, based on local community needs and activities. This will require a strong partnerships between governments, and the private, educational and NGO sectors, with special boosts to local businesses.

Expanding the focus beyond urban markets

"Governments need to play a stronger supportive role in enabling new technologies to help alleviate problems relating to poverty, gender, environment and the like. While the Internet brings people of diverse backgrounds together, it has not yet bridged the gap between rich and poor," said Egbert Pelinck, Director General of ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development) in Kathmandu.

The Internet workshop was sponsored by ICIMOD, and hosted in Dhaka by the Local Government Engineering Department. Expanding the focus beyond urban markets, participants showed that the Internet has tremendous potential, like other information and communication technologies, for rural communities as well.

"With appropriate synergies in rural communities, we have shown how environmentally-aware education among primary school students can be coupled with the use of computers and the Internet in villages," said Imran Rasheed, director of the Learn Foundation in Sylhet. A memorandum of understanding for a project involving communication between rural schools via the Internet is being signed by South Asian organisations including the NGOs: PRIP, Drik, LEARN Foundation, South Asia MultiMedia, Global Amitech, and the ISP PraDeshta. It will draw network professionals and students from across South Asia, to develop and deploy low-cost Internet based mass communication devices. The project will be scaled up as appropriate across the region, and a set of best practices will be evolved. Other projects proposed at the workshop include a blueprint for community telecommunication-centres, an initiative for tele-medicine, and an agenda for regional e-commerce.

The explosive growth of the Internet has been unprecedented in countries around the world. With appropriate policies, infrastructure, capacity, and local creativity, this same revolution may well become a reality in the countries of South Asia as well.