Indians may have to wait for a few more months. While Microsoft is moving full throttle with the planned global launch of Tablet PC at the Ambassador Theatre in New York on November 7, 2002, a small legal issue has put on hold the OEM’s—HP, Toshiba, and Accer—plans of a simultaneous launch in the country.

While OEM partners of this project declined to comment on the issue citing "non disclosure agreement" as the reason, according to a senior Microsoft India official, the Tablet PC motherboard has an inbuilt WiFi-based wireless LAN card— aimed at ensuring true mobility of the product—that makes it necessary for the vendor to get Dealer’s Possession License (DPL) before the product can be introduced in the Indian market. According to DoT norms, DPL is mandatory for all vendors if they want to stock and trade in wireless apparatus. While the official shrugged the matter as a non-issue and assured that the product would definitely be out in the Indian market by December-end, the small bit of information did raise a more serious issue. While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and their counterparts across all major countries have decided to keep the spectrum in the vicinity of 2.4 Ghz unlicensed under the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band, why does India Inc need a separate license for the use of 802.11-based products or wireless LANs that operate in the same band?

The Wi-Fi factor
Short for wireless fidelity, the term WiFi has been promulgated by the alliance of leading wireless equipment and software providers with the missions of certifying all 802.11-based products for interoperability and promoting the term Wi-Fi as the global brand name across all markets for any 802.11-based wireless LAN products. While all 802.11a/b/g products are called Wi-Fi, only products that have passed the Wi-Fi Alliance testing are allowed to refer to their products as "Wi-Fi Certified". All "Wi-Fi Certified" products also need to indicate the radio frequency band used—2.5GHz for 802.11b or 11g and 5GHz for 802.11a.

Earlier the alliance was known as the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) but changed its name in October 2002 to better reflect the Wi-Fi brand it wants to build. Also, while the term "Wi-Fi" was used only in place of the 2.4GHz 802.11b standard, in the same way that "Ethernet" is used in place of IEEE 802.3, the Alliance expanded the generic use of the term in an attempt to stop confusion about wireless LAN interoperability.

The bottleneck
The widespread reliance on networking among businesses and the meteoric growth of Internet and online services are strong testimonies to the benefits of shared data and resources. With Wireless LANs, users can access shared information without looking for a place to plug in making anywhere, anytime business a reality.

Globally, wireless LAN has gained immense popularity in verticals like health care, retail, manufacturing, warehousing, and academia as these industries have profited from the productivity gains of using hand-held terminals and notebook computers to transmit real-time information to centralized hosts for processing. Reports suggest that in the highly networked markets of US and Europe, wireless LANs are popular because of four main reasons—user mobility, speedy and less cumbersome installation, installation flexibility, and scalability.

The same does hold good for India because the overall cost of wireless LAN hardware has nose-dived in the last two years. However, the real benefit is lost due to the recurring spectrum fee payable to the wireless planning and coordination (WPC) wing of the Department of Telecom (DoT). While the first necessitates Rs 18,000 per year for frequent use, every additional user needs to pay one-fourth or Rs 4,505 per year as the license fee for use on this ISM band. Not to mention that in the case of first time users, it usually takes three-four months to get a clearance from WPC. However, an existing user of Wireless LAN can expect to get a clearance in two-three weeks’ time. Worst, an organization also needs to approach the WPC for allocation of frequency for every new user it adds on its wireless LAN network.

Why the license?
While no body debates the fact that spectrum being a scarce national resource needs to be managed in order to ensure that radio services are able to operate on a non-interference basis, what the industry and users find as most irksome is the licensing of the ISM band. While a senior DoT official cites security as a major reason for putting WiFi in the license bracket industry analysts and experts feel that the real motive can be revenue. Their argument is substantiated to a certain extent by certain statements in the WPC’s document on economic considerations of spectrum pricing. It says "While a free market in spectrum does not appear feasible due to technical, economic, and social considerations; auctions, transferable and flexible spectrum rights, and well-designed fees can enable a number of the benefits of a market approach to be realized. Fees can promote efficient use of the spectrum, provided they incorporate the correct economic incentives and are not set so low as to be negligible or so high as to exceed what a market would set."

In fact, while gross injustice has been done to technology, by putting WiFi in the licensing category, the WPC also seems to be unaware of the market dynamics even in fixing the cost for using this spectrum and violating its own principles. No wonder then that despite availability of technology, wireless LAN implementation has been limited to only some companies, mainly MNCs like Microsoft and Cisco or top IT companies in the country. In fact, had it not been the issue of DPL, Indians would not have had to wait couple of more months to be able to use the technology that had triggered the imagination of scientists almost 20 years back.

Not that the government is not aware of the issue. It certainly is or else the Minister for IT and communication, Pramod Mahajan would not have told the 9th session of the General Assembly and the 26th Session of the Management Committee of the Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) about the government’s proposed plan to delicense the indoor use of wireless LAN. Unfortunately, while India is amongst the very few countries that still warrants a license for products using WiFi, such announcements have been in the offing for more than three months now. And even while the draft notification to this effect has been made, it is applicable only for 802.11b, Bluetooth, and part of wireless LAN products. While security concerns add up to a mere technical issue, the major hindrance is the political will for policy changes.If, despite the minister's efforts, the DoT still wants to cling to the ‘license raj’ for WiFi, the least the government can do is to bring down the license fee and do away with the per user structure, the need to seek permission for every new user, and charging only a fixed annual fee from the organizations willing to go the wireless LAN way.

SHUBHENDU PARTH in New Delhi