World Dialogue on Regulation

As part of PANOS’ media toolkit on ICTs, they have produced a document titled Going the last mile: what’s stopping a wireless revolution? Divakar Goswami comments on the publication.

The objective of the document is to enable journalists in the developing countries to write informatively about wireless access in their countries and what steps the government can undertake to enable its use. This objective is poorly met since this document fails to discuss explicitly the policy recommendations that governments need to carry out. 

The document lists various restrictions that governments place on wireless growth but it does not recommend enabling steps that need to be taken to remove the barriers to wireless communication.

The most enabling step governments can take is to delicense the 2.4GHz for Wi-Fi use. The PANOS document is ambivalent on this recommendation, for some reason. The various barriers listed include high license fees and customs duties on wireless equipment, but the single most important barrier which makes it illegal for ISPs and others to use the Wi-Fi range of frequencies is not mentioned as a barrier.

The Wi-Fi innovations in Indonesia report, written by myself and Onno Purbo available on WDR, discusses instances in Africa where ISPs had their equipment confiscated for illegal use of the 2.4GHz. Even in Africa, the regional regulatory body TRASA (The Telecommunications Regulators Association of Southern Africa) is unambiguous in urging the southern African governments to change their regulations to allow license-exempt access to the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands by recognizing that WiFi can play a substantive role in increasing access to opportunities in Africa (See Guidelines on Wireless Policy and Regulations). Hence, it is a bit perplexing why PANOS chooses to remain silent on this important recommendation.

The PANOS report does not outline any role for civil society. As the Wi-Fi innovations in Indonesia report discusses in length, civil society groups have played an important role in creating a pool of ICT technicians and knowledge producers who have enabled the deployment of Wi-Fi and Internet connectivity in their communities. Also, civil society groups have effectively lobbied with the Indonesian government to delicense the 2.4 GHz. These are steps that civil society groups can take on their own without having to wait for government action.

The document spends considerable amounts of space discussing spectrum management (page 3) that has little relevance to journalists or for anyone who needs to understand the issues surrounding barriers to wireless growth. Finally, there are a number of inaccuracies in the document, the most blatant is the Indian Cellular Association’s claim which they have reproduced, which states that 1 per cent growth in telephone penetration results in 3 per cent increase in GDP growth! By that measure, India’s teledensity which grew by around 1% (4.56-5.89) from 2004-2005 should have increased the GDP from 6.9 per cent to 9.9 percent in 2005 (it was around 7.5%). By that same measure, Pakistan’s GDP growth should be around 12 per cent!

The document discusses “wireless” communication in such general terms that it can include microwave, ultrawideband, Bluetooth, DECT and dozens of different wireless standards. Different wireless technologies have different frequency and power requirements and are governed by specific policies and handled differently. They are also suited for specific applications and country contexts. It is precisely because of the general terms by which wireless communication was discussed in the document that it makes it difficult for the authors to make specific policy recommendations. PANOS would have been better off focussing on the Wi-Fi and Wimax range of frequencies and outlining the steps governments and civil society organizations in developing countries can take to extend communication access in unserved areas using the two wireless technologies.