We organized few interviews with some prominent ICT and telecom experts in the country to understand the current landscape, awareness, activities, policy relevance of net neutrality in Bangladesh. The conversation was a bit stock-taking and covers issues from regulatory, rights and development perspectives. Following are some of the excerpts.
K A M Morshed
Director, Advocacy, Technology and Partnership at BRAC
KAM Morshed leads BRAC’s advocacy, partnership, and technology teams. He facilitates BRAC’s policy engagements and stimulates technology adaptation to help reimagine BRAC’s internal processes and programme interventions. He is also responsible for fostering partnership between BRAC and the government to help expand BRAC’s impact. Before joining BRAC in October 2015, Mr Morshed led Bangladesh’s Policy, Innovation and Communication teams at UNDP for over 10 years. In that role, he managed UNDP-government partnerships and supervised various programme interventions in the areas of ICT4D, MDGs, aid effectiveness, trade, and south-south cooperation. Mr Morshed designed and oversaw implementation of many successful projects, among which Access to Information Program (a2i) at the Prime Minister’s Office in Dhaka is the best known. In our conversation, Mr. Morshed agreed that net neutrality is an important issue in Bangladesh but talked about giving equal importance to content appropriateness as well. He is in the view that some sorts of regulatory framework is required not only to ensure free flow of network and connectivity but also to ensure the content that flows are free from bias and tainted information. He cited examples such as, UK court’s ruling on extreme porn sites and Facebook’s influence in recent US election. The conversation is available here.
Abu Saeeed Khan works as a Senior Policy Fellow at LireneAsia, a premier think tank on ICT policies and regulatory issues in Asia. Abu also worked in the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh (AMTOB) as its Secretary General from August 1, 2010 to July 31, 2012 and was a Strategy Analyst at Ericsson’s Southeast Asian head office in Malaysia until June 2010. As a Technology Editor for bdnews24.com, Bangladesh’s first online newspaper, as well as a research analyst at EMC World Cellular Database he covered the mobile markets of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. Being a journalist, he influenced various policies pertaining to the telecoms sector of Bangladesh. In our conversation, Abu opined that net neutrality in Bangladesh is yet to become relevant, rather infrastructure neutrality should come at the first place. He talked about four (4) layers of Internet or broadband supply-chain – International segment, domestic transmission, network and finally the devices in the hands of the users. For domestic transmission government has imposed duopoly in a sense that only two private entities were given the license. It has forbidden any other entity to roll out optical fiber network. He thinks market is not matured enough to get exposed to net neutrality threat because net neutrality is an issue of concern where the network is reasonably functional which is not the case in Bangladesh. He thinks net neutrality is one level better than bad connection. He thinks net neutrality discussion is kind of pre-mature in the context of Bangladesh. You can listen to the conversation here.
Dr. Rokon Uz Zaman is an academic researcher on technology, innovation and public policy and also is an activist in promoting technology and innovation led economic growth in Bangladesh. His more than 50 action research projects and academic publications indicate that Bangladesh’s Telecom, Software and eService sectors–among others– are suffering from Neoclassical Economics of perfect market, political economy and static efficiency based policy and management practices. As a result, firms operating in these imperfect markets are either operating at near monopoly or are caught in stagnant situation. He has written extensively on net neutrality in Bangladesh. In our interview, Prof. Rokon Uz Zaman talked about the whole idea of net neutrality and its relevance to Bangladesh. According to him, net neutrality is about discriminatory access to platform. There are two types of platfrms. One is network operators (mobile phone operators for example) and the other is platform providers (Google, Facebook for eample). When these providers enter into service market and functionally specialized services such as, health, e-commerce, education etc. then it may create an unfair competition for others. Because being network operators or providers they can influence service delivery, quality of service, availability of services etc. Thus network providers have unfair advantage in weakening the competition. Thats where he thinks net neutrality is important issue to nurture entrepreneurship and to support transformation of digital services. The conversation is available here.
A.K.M Fahim Mashroor is an IT business entrepreneur in Bangladesh. He is the former president of the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) and also the owner and founder of Bdjobs.com, Ajkerdeal.com and Beshto.com. Mr. Mashroor had previously organized some awareness campaign from BASIS on net neutrality issue. He thinks net neutrality is being taken seriously by the young entrepreneurial community. In Bangladesh, as he explained Internet penetration is controlled by 3 or 4 major operators. In this less competitive market, violation of net neutrality is always a threat. Mr. Mashroor believes that when these network operators also provide digital services, content etc. then there a major conflict of interest. He thinks unlike India, regulators did not come forward here in Bangladesh. He is happy that voices have been raised from the industry. For example, BASIS organized a series of round table, seminar and prepared articles in support of net neutrality issue. He also pointed out that there are some existing laws and Acts in Bangladesh that can actually provide legal direction to net neutrality issue. His work on net neutrality actually motivated him to help create an alliance for fair commerce in Bangladesh (BAFCOM – Bangladesh Alliance for Fair Commerce). Please listen to our conversation here.
Dr. Faheem Hussain is a Faculty in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University (ASU). He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. degree in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. The principal components of Faheem Hussain’s research encompass Development for Displaced Population, ICT4D, Digital Afterlife, and Women’s Empowerment. Faheem Hussain has been involved as a Technology Policy Specialist with UN-APCICT, international development agencies (e.g., IDRC, DFID, Ford and Rockefeller Foundation), and international think tanks (e.g., Freedom House, LIRNEasia, Ideacorps) in the fields of Technology, Public Policy, and Development. Mr. Hussain thinks general awareness on net neutrality is totally absent as the general population do not have any idea on the issue. He also argues that free accesses provided to certain websites is a disaster and creates discrimination. He think India has a very interesting stand point with regard to internet.org It is also interesting for him to know who decides what is free and what is not and argues for a guideline. He thinks our ICT policy, ICT Act, new cyber law etc. have direction for equity on access. The conversation with Dr. Hussian is available from this link.
A.K.M Fahim Mashroor
Faheem Hussain