Apple has initiated steps to develop its own search engine. Currently, it uses Google’s search engine, and Google pays Apple between $8 billion and $12 billion per year to be the default search engine on Apple products. Apple’s own search engine will be an alternative to Google search. Maybe, the authorities in future block this partnership as it violates anti-trust laws.

When a query is typed on iPhone, Apple now shows its own search results. It also displays auto-complete style suggestions. It means it is learning ‘from users’ most common search queries. Many would not have noticed this subtle change. Apple uses a web crawler called Applebot to build a database of online material. It has become more active these days.

Apple hires search executives. It has already recruited head of search in April 2018 (formerly he was with Google). There are recruitment ads for search engineers.

India has National Frequency Allocation Plan (NFAP) 2020. In its amendment, it notes that the band 57-64 may be used for high density point-to-point/multipoint links and other access applications. The band between 57-71 GHz is called V-band which is suitable for short-range transmission. Some countries allow V-band by telcos and ISPs. Some restrict its usage to lower band 57-64 GHz. The bandwidth of 7GHz provides large capacities.

Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) has adopted IEEE .802.11 protocols, especially .ad and .ay in 60 GHz band in unlicensed mode. Facebook and Google have been working on technologies using WiGig standards to provide high-speed public networks. Many countries have unlicensed the V-band, e.g. Austria, Belgium, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, China, Korea, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. The US has released spectrum in 57-71 GHz for license-exempt use.

India feels this spectrum band of 57-64 could be released with’ light-touch’ regulation, or could be delicensed. It is suitable for access as well as backhaul. SC has ordered auctions, rather than free access. The Government will have to reconcile this by suitably amending the policy.

To get the benefit of the short-range devices (SRDs), we need the 60 GHz band which has the width of 7 GHz bandwidth. It offers unmatched capacity compared with lower frequency spectrum, thus setting it apart from other high frequency bands.

An SRD is a radio freqhency transmitter device used in telecom to transmit information (without the harmful interference to other radio equipment). Short-range wireless technologies include WiFi, Bluetooth, Near-Field-Communication (NFC) ultra wide-band (UWB), wideband, medical diagnostics, RFID, telemetry and radar.

Operating effectively in higher bands requires more devices at short ranges. It is essential to combine the two. Spectrum band in the 57- 64 GHz is attractive for high capacity transmissions over short distances. The combination could help transform India into a digitally empowered society.

Trai has recommended the delicensing of 60 GHz band (for both indoor and outdoor apps). Department of Telecom should permit SRD proliferation.

A reasonable compromise could be to break up V-band into two parts — assign 7GHz for license-exempt high-speed broadband access at Gigabit speed and assign the remaining 7GHz for data backhaul.

In India, the transmission through optical fibre is not satisfactory. It is the reason why for backhaul telcos prefer wireless means. Apart from the V-band, the E-band of 70-80 GHz can be used for both backhaul and broadband access under IEE 802.11 protocols for WiFi.

Big Tech firms request the European Union to frame new rules that would protect them from legal liabilities for actively removing hate speech and other illegal or harmful content.

Big Tech firms are expected to police activity such as hate speech responsible for inciting violence (for instance in places like Myanmar) or spreading disinformation (for instance to influence US Presidential Election 2016 by the Russians or the UK’s Brexit vote) for legal protection.

The request has been sent by an association of big tech firms to the officials in the European Commission, Parliament and Council. European Commission is devising digital policy measures aimed at giving the big tech firms greater responsibility for what users post on their sites. The ultimate aim is to curtail the spread of harmful content and illegal products (such as unsafe toys}.

A European legal safeguard would give Big Tech greater leeway to use their resources and technology in creative ways. The new rules would protect them from liability for what is posted on their sites, unless they have actual knowledge of its presence. Suppose a user flags it harmful, it has come to the actual knowledge of the site. Once they become aware of illegal content, they are obliged to act fast to remove it.

There is no clarity on what is considered ‘actual knowledge’. This has prevented Big Tech from being more proactive in dealing with bad content. There are risks associated with it — facing legal consequences for hosting it.

Big Tech fear that voluntary removal of content could be construed as having actual knowledge, and thus making them liable.

AI is going to be a major component of economic competitiveness. It is also going to be a force multiplier in strategic capacity.

AI, by itself, and by the uses it is put to, poses major challenges. There are concerns about the control and regulation of AI.

In the first place, there must be robust data protection framework. Data fuels AI. How data is used to train AI has implications for data subjects (whose data is utilised) and for the kind of algorithms produced. In facial recognition software, making use of AI, there could be a racial bias. It is, therefore, necessary to be careful about AI at development stage itself. AI must be able to explain how and why it has reached a certain conclusion. Tracebility of datasets used for creating or training the algorithms involved is essential. Another focus should be on accountability — it should function properly.

An appeals court confirmed in October, 2020 that Google must open talks with the publishers in France about paying to use their content. Thus this ruling compels Google to sit down with publishers and news agencies to find a way to remunerate them. It differs from Googles promise to pay $1 billion to publishers globally for their news over the next three years, as the French arrangement would involve finding a sustainable methodology to remunerate publishers and news agencies for news.

In April 2020, the competition authority had ordered Google to negotiate with publishers and news agencies ‘the remuneration due to them for any use of protected content.’

Google is being prosecuted under anti-trust laws. It is a dominant search engine, and hence a monopoly. In economics, a monopolist exercises price control and exploits the consumers. But here Google offers free searches, news, entertainment and knowledge. However, there are issues of privacy and hate speech.

Monopolies are dislodged by innovations, and this is described as ‘creative destruction’ by Joseph Schumpeter. Innovations create new giants. Thus the answer to monopolies is not government control but innovation.

IBM dominated mainframes in the 1970s and this continued till early 1980s. PCs and laptops ended this monopoly. These are now challenged by smartphones. MySpace had 74% social network traffic in 2008 Facebook with its superior technology ended this monopoly. Nokia ruled the cell phone market, till Samsung and Apple came on the scene. Nokia has since been acquired by Microsoft. Kodak was a photography king, but digital cameras ended its rule. Later cell phones with cameras displaced even digital cameras. In music, Apple’s iTunes had a huge market share. iTunes was disrupted by Spotify and Pandora which are streaming services. These days consumers get free music from many sites such as YouTube. Netscape browser was favourite in the 1990s, the early days of Internet. Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with all the PCs having windows operating system, and it became a default browser. However, by 2008, Mozilla made a dent. All bowsers have been overtaken by Google’s Chrome. Xerox was a generic name for photocopying, but soon HP, Canon and Minolta challenged it, and now it is an also-run. In search engines, Yahoo was a monopoly. Google has overtaken it.

Thus breaking up the company is tricky and unnecessary. Yes, there could be regulation over some aspects of the Big Tech firms.

The Indian M&E industry is expected to grow at 10.1% CAGR to reach $55 billion by 2024 (PwC Entertainment and Media Outlook 2020-2024). The sectors expected to drive growth are OTT, internet advertising, video/games, e-sports, music and podcasts. The report predicts a K-shaped bifurcated recovery.

The largest gain will be registered by OTT video — 5.2% by 2024. It will be followed closely by internet advertising. India will be the sixth largest market for OTT video in 2024. Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) will be the prime driver of revenue.

Though India will continue to be the world’s biggest cinema market in admission terms, cinema revenue in India will contract at a 2.6% CAGR to total $1.5 billion over the next 5 years.

Internet or digital advertising will grow phenomenally in India — it will be the sixth largest market in Asia-Pacific region. Mobile will be the primary driver of revenue in digital advertising. Data will be more affordable. However, from the global perspective, digital advertising in India remains underdeveloped and there is massive headroom for growth.

Gaming and e-sports too will grow phenomenally — a projected 33% CAGR. Podcasts too is expected to grow at a 13.5% CAGR.

In October, 2020, House law makers in the US completed a 16-month investigation into Big Tech firms — Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook and suggested that their dominance should be curbed.

Justice Department filed a major suit against Google on 20th October, 2020 relying on anti-trust laws. If the company uses restrictive contracts to protect its dominant position, and undermines competition, and consequently harms the consumer interests, it violates the existing anti-trust laws.

Eleven other states have joined the justice department in the suit. Google’s exclusive deals with Apple have been cited. The same is true for other partners. This stifling of competition harms the consumer interest. There are fewer choices available to consumers.

Google calls this a flawed suit. This is happening after 22 years. In 1998, a similar suit was filed against Microsoft which dominated the PC operating system — Windows. It was using its gatekeeper power to block the potential threat from other browsers. MS has restrictive contracts with PC makers and others to stop the distribution of Netscape. It worked. It was proved that MS repeatedly violated the nation’s anti-trust laws.

Microsoft bundled software of its browser for free along with Windows. Less competition could mean less innovation, and less consumer choice. Thus the US government calls Google a competition crippler, a reducer of consumer choice and stifler of innovation.

All Big Tech firms are on radar — Google in search, Amazon in commerce, Facebook in social media and Apple in cell phones.

Facebook has acquired 100 firms, but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) just enquired about one acquisition — that of Instagram in 2012.

Google claims that the wider use of its search engine is because it stands in a class of its own. Its index has billions of webpages and exceeds 10 crore gigabytes in size. This scale requires an investment of billions of dollars. Its maintenance would cost millions of dollars. It has 88 per cent share of the search market, Bing has seven, Yahoo! has less than four, and DuckDuckGo less than two per cent. Apple signs Google because it is the best.

Google is blamed for the failure of Amazon to develop something like Android. However, a lot of R&D has gone into development of Android.

Google has positive spin offs. The US created Internet, expanded it.

According to Obama, the US perfected internet in ways that others cannot compete. This reality US cannot ignore.

If confrontationist approach is taken, the law makers will be provoked to write new laws aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech,

There is still no consensus as to how the global digital giants could be taxed. Many such firms may not have physical presence in different geographies, but do still generate revenue and profits. Europe and India could gain additional taxation revenue. Some principles could be considered to do so. The essential component of the principle must be that a company must pay tax in every geography-market where it generates value and makes profits. Thus the global profits are assigned to the different markets. Here the sales revenues of a particular country could be considered. And profits on such sales could be arrived at. That would be the basis for levying an appropriate tax rate. This is called BEPS or base erosion and profit sharing. There is a nexus between gross sales revenue and overall profitability. We have to allocate income to this nexus. We have not to consider only the residual profits.

Another principle could be the minimum corporate tax an MNC would be required to pay. However, if the first principle is applied, this becomes superfluous.

There is a difference of opinion amongst the telecom companies about the adoption of Indian-centric 5G norms. Reliance expects India to adopt Indian standards to generate intellectual property rights. (IPR). These have been proposed by Telecom Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI). These standards, among other things, call for deployment of 5G services in the 3.4 GHz band and suggest mobile towers to be spaced 12 km apart in villages to ensure ubiquitous coverage.

Bharti and Vi, however, say that these standards fall short of interoperability with global standards, and hence not commercially viable. They do not mesh with global standards recommended by 3GPP (the 3rd Generation Partnership Project). These standards govern LTE network operations worldwide and its suggested 5G standard has been backed by International Telecom Union (ITU). Telecom companies in the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, China, Russia and the Middle East, among others, have rolled out 5G services based on 3GPP’s standard. It backs 5G deployment in 700 MHz band and wants the towers to be spaced 6 km apart.