The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : TOWARDS INTERNET FOR ALL

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Thursday, Apr 08, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

TOWARDS INTERNET FOR ALL

THE INTERNET, WHICH has grown over the years with little interference from governments the world over, has evolved into a platform for free speech that is now accessed by nearly 850 million users. Its influence and impact on communications, commerce and intellectual freedom is unprecedented. However, there is also concern about the millions of people who are unable to leverage any of this power because of poverty and lack of opportunity. The challenge to bridge the digital divide and make the Internet a truly equitable resource was the theme of the Global Forum on Internet Governance held recently in New York. Representatives of 200 countries came together under the aegis of the United Nations to consider ways of achieving this goal and working towards an international governance framework that would, as U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan put it, make the Internet secure, dependable, and accessible. The consensus at the forum was that the current system of governance was working well but it needed to be made more inclusive to accommodate all stakeholders.

The future of the Internet and its potential to serve as a facilitator of development will now be the remit of a working group on Internet governance to be set up by the U.N. soon. Advocates of unfettered online freedom would like to see the worldwide web evolve without national barriers while remaining true to the development idiom. Leading delegates at the global forum including Vinton Cerf, the co-designer of the architecture of the Internet, urged that bureaucratic restraints should not be allowed to stifle its growth. Governments have to set for themselves a deadline to create the basic infrastructure for wider access to the Internet and adopt policies that would bridge the digital divide. Besides access, the issue of high cost of computers has to be addressed; some countries have offered incentives to corporates for recycling computers to benefit educational institutions.

Internet growth rates have begun to drop in India from a peak of nearly 55 per cent in the year 2000 to 10 per cent a year later and negative growth thereafter. Although governmental interference is minimal, the user base and content applications have failed to expand for want of proactive policies; according to National Readership Survey 2003, the total number of Internet users in India is an underwhelming 6.5 million. Despite a national focus on e-governance and information and communication technology for development, few initiatives have become truly interactive. Most States remain in the primary phase of disseminating information using the worldwide web, without moving on to offer services online. The high cost of dial-up access coupled with poor quality of service has kept many users away. Alternatives to dial-up access such as satellite, wireless and broadband technologies have been slow in coming, in conspicuous contrast to most countries in the Asia-Pacific region. India has few hot spots offering Wi-Fi wireless access to broadband Internet compared with China and Korea where official policy is calibrated to facilitate expansion. Even a successful e-governance experiment using Wi-Fi in Tiruvarur, Tamil Nadu did not make much headway for want of policy support. The basic customs duty concession in the interim budget for telephony and Internet infrastructure is welcome but the benefits are yet to flow to the user. Even new access devices like the recently launched indigenous handheld computers would appear to be of limited utility if bandwidth and access options remain static. For the user base to grow, a basket of measures such as attractive reductions in telephone charges for dial-up access, the commissioning of a national Internet exchange, and incentives for Internet Service Providers to offer diverse access choices is urgently called for.

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