Today we make friends on social media. We date people. We express our views and opinions online, and establish allegiances. Big data helps us to select our marriage partner, without depending upon parents or community networks. In fact, an algorithm serves as our parents — matching us with our partners. This is the way, society has been reshaped fundamentally. In a way, the significance of big data has increased in the last 20 years. Big data has become absolutely fundamental and disruptive.

Just an entry in the search engine, and there appears a whole lot of information in a second on the topic. What an amazing agglomeration of data!

Some innovations in the previous century changed how data can be used. Had it not been for these innovations, we would have faced the issue of finding a needle in the haystack, while dealing with big data. Both these innovations have emerged from Google. The first innovation is Hadoop. It allows the storage of unlimited data in multiple locations on economical servers — this is what we call the Cloud. The second innovation is crawling or searching the data haystacks in a very short time. The credit for web crawling goes to Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google.

Big Data has generated methods like tracking, cookies, and mobile fingerprints which could be used for surveillance. Digital advertising uses it for precise targeting. Advertising has been reshaped by data.

Brands collect first party data and third party data through cookies and fingerprints on consumers. All this goes to the DSP or demand side platform. The publishers of media too collect data received by SSP or supply side platform. There are Ad Exchanges where the requirements of DSPs and SSPs are matched, and they sell insertions of digital ads.

The centre for Department of Telematics (C-DOT) has been established as an autonomous premiere research body to boost the telecom sector under the aegis of the Department of Telecommunications. It was established in 1984. India’s technocrat Sam Pitroda was roped in. The telecom sector expanded and the credit goes to C-DOT. The analogue system was replaced by digital exchanges. The PCO booths were seen ubiquitously all over the country. There were successive waves of 2G, 3G and 4G rollouts.

C-DOT’s latest achievement is the design of 5G standalone core by October, 2023. C-DOT’s 4G and 5G NSA cores are fully hardware independent. These can be adapted to the PCs and servers. It has emerged as an apex national research institution.

C-DOT is set to launch its first domestically developed 5G radio and antennas, along with 5G Radio Access Network (RAN). VVDN Technologies and IIT, Hyderabad are collaborating with C-DOT for the RAN.

In digital advertising, there is user interface. In such interfaces, there could be deception or manipulation. To illustrate, a product’s price may not be correctly displayed. The consumer is made to pay a higher price than what was first disclosed. Such manipulative practices are called dark patterns. These are used by various platforms. ASCI has spelled out four key practices that it intends to address :

Drip Pricing : Here only a part of the price of a product is revealed. The total price is disclosed only at the end of the buying process. The final price is thus kept ambiguous. The price quoted must include all the taxes, fees and charges to the buyers, insists ASCI.

Bait and Switch : Here a consumer selects a product at a certain price, say X. Later he can access that product only at a higher price, say Y. The intended outcome is changed from X to Y.

We see an X on the top of right corner as an instruction to close the app. Instead, X can mean ‘accept or proceed’.

False urgency : They can show limited availability of a product. It could be a falsehood. In fact, there is no shortage of the product.

Disguised Advertising : Editorial matter and advertising material cannot be distinguished. Paid for messages do not disclose they are ads. There are influencer posts, paid reviews.

Of course, the line between patterns and legitimate targeting and persuasive tactics blurs. Dark patterns are under scrutiny. They ruin consumer experience. The consumer becomes suspicious of the whole online commerce.

In digital advertising, there is the wastage of advertising budget to the extent of 20-25 per cent on account of brand advertising appearing in brand unsuitable environment. A company would not like its ads being spotted next to offensive content. Companies put safeguards while advertising on social media. Media targeting should be focused. One has to be sure where the ads are going and the target audience being catered to. Secondly, it is necessary to use third-party verification tools. These tools ensure that ads are placed in a brand-safe or suitable environment. Thirdly, social media and digital platforms do take certain steps to ensure brand safety and advertisers must understand these. There are manual and automated checks to eliminate unsafe content. There are embedded algorithms to identify key words, pictures and content which are unsafe. This could be blocked.

Sophisticated tools can be used to crawl through the content to eliminate unsafe content. Some platforms allow users to flag off offensive content. Most platforms have backend teams to monitor content and get rid of unsuitable content.

However, despite this, the unsafe content slips through the cracks. There are companies such as DoubleVerify that offer software solution to advertisers for brand safety.

An advertiser’s policy regarding where to be present and where not to be present must be understood and accordingly a list of inclusion-exclusion of sites must be made.

There are firms like Integral Ad Science and mFilterit which provide a suite of products and services that address this issue.

CT scanner in hospitals scans the body, and crunches the data, and provides a picture on the machine. With the introduction of 5G, the data to be processed could be sent to the cloud, where instantly a picture would be created and sent back to the hospital. This will make CT scanner a much simpler machine. It will be economical too and more and more hospital would be able to afford the MRT and CT scanner machines.

Data on the cloud in combination with 5G will enable medical professionals to access the data from anywhere. It will facilitate patient care.

CBDCs are being developed by 50 countries in the world. Almost an equal number of countries are exploring CBDCs. The US and UK are the laggards. As all interbank transactions are digital. it is easier in India to try CBDCs for wholesale transactions. The use of CBDCs by individuals, that is retail use of CBDCs, will be a step to supplement the cash.

CBDCs are going to be a part of the payment system. One can pay for products through a wallet. Several such wallets are in use in India. CBDCs will be one more such wallet. The RBI is likely to follow a centrally controlled database, as distributed ledger technology may not cope with the scale needed for Indian population.

CBDCs could be a step to make the society cashless. Sweden is the most cashless society — 98 per cent of the population uses digital payments such as credit/debit cards Norway follows suit. Here too 98 per cent transactions are digital. In Holland, 91 per cent transactions are cashless. Finland is going to be more and more cashless by 2030. Ireland is also going digital. China, the UK, S. Korea, Australia, the Netherlands and Canada are on the way of being more and more cashless.

The Central Banks world over would save the printing and administrative costs of handling the physical currency.

Central Banks are not favourable to private cryptos. That is one reason for them to introduce CBDCs. It is difficult to classify private cryptos — whether they are a commodity or an asset. They do not have sovereign backing. They are not subject to public scrutiny. As the KYC norms are not followed, these could be used for dubious transactions.

CBDCs would facilitate the cross-border remittances economically.

It is necessary to have international standards to ease interoperability of CBDCs.

Edge computing has picked up by reducing the distance to computing power. Instead of doing the processing in the cloud, the processes are run on the edge server or even locally connected IoT devices.

Such processing distributes power across the network and reduces bandwidth requirements at central location. More devices thus can be added in remote locations. However, there is added possibility of cybercrime due to the spread of devices and their vulnerabilities. There are issues of network visibility and control. Loopholes in the edge security are opportunities for the hackers. Data Centres provide protective physical access and network security umbrella. In edge computing, the computational resources are closer to the data sources. There are vulnerabilities caused by default passwords. There is no hardened physical security of centralised assets in edge computing. The disk drive is removed from the edge resource. The data is copied from single memory stick. This compromises the vital information. There could be physical tampering of the devices. The number of devices too is more. These are widely spread. It is easier to carry out physical attacks.

Organisations must implement Zero Trust Edge Access. The minimal amount of access is allowed for each connected device. There is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). This architecture brings wide area networking (WAN) and network solutions into a single cloud solution. It reduces complexity and automates background security tasks. There are controls to avoid physical tampering of devices. It includes adding malware to assets, swapping or interchanging devices, encryping data in-transit or at-rest and automating patching.

Cloud computing world will see a revolution through the edge computing. However, securities concerns must not be neglected. Edge computing should be as secure as the central computing.

Gatik provides a driverless delivery service from the warehouse of products to the retailer’s outlet in Toronto, Canada. Gatik is founded by a US-based trio who are of Indian origin. It is the last mile B2B operation — mostly from the warehouse to a retail centre. In the warehouse, the employees we hand-held devices where they punch in the code to command the truck to take off after collecting products. The truck runs on the predefined route, navigating the urban traffic. It reaches the destination and comes to the bay. It is unloaded and then the employee punches in the code for the truck to return.

The consignments can be moved multiple times a day. This in fact is a complementary service to their regular delivery network. The service can also cater to online buyers, who can have a wide variety of products from the warehouses direct.

Gatik is unique since it provides commercial deliveries on a daily basis.

Walmart is the American customer of Gatik. In addition, in the US Gatik serves Fortune 500 companies such as Georgia-Pacific. There is growing consumer demand, and there is shortage of drivers. Gatik moves the supply chain closer to the end consumer.

Gatik was founded in Mountain View, California. It later extended itself to Canada. It exploits AI/ML skills available in Canada. It has a workforce of 500, and is still adding employees.

The autonomous driving software track has been developed in-house. Their fleet has 30 light to medium-duty trucks. They are on lease. They are custom-made. They work closely with regulatory authorities, and brief them about the technology used.

Though the trucks are autonomous, they are not without supervision. There are remote supervisors to monitor multiple trucks for any issues on the route. However, supervisors cannot drive the trucks. Remote driving is dangerous. The controls are all on the trucks.

The company wants to expand the fleet ten fold. They want to cover more locations in the US and Canada.

Gatik pioneered driverless truck for Walmart in Bentoville, Arkansas in August 2021. Since then, it has travelled a long distance

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) takes cognisance of the anti-competitive practices of the digital companies too. While dealing with the business practices, the Commission takes broader consumer welfare as the guiding principle. Formerly, it was said that monopolies rule the prices. However, in digital space, the Commission has to go beyond the narrow price metric. The CCI’s order in 2018 against Google held that though Google users do not pay anything to avail of its services, but they provide personal data to the search engine. It is as good as paying an implicit price. Google gains from the use of personal data in its advertising business.

Digital companies operate as intermediaries between the market participants, say advertisers and the website visitors. This creates an eco-system where a few data-rich platforms cannot be avoided. They become dominant and this has been recognised by the CCI.

The rules that govern the relationship between the platform and their users are exploitative. The platforms have unequal bargaining power. The CCI questions this. In the Android operating system case, the OEMs have no option but to sign the agreement that prohibits them from distributing competing OS versions. It makes competition infeasible. It is also mandatory to install Google Search on all Android devices as default widget on home screen. This agreement is restrictive. It escalates Google’s data advantage.

Anti-competitive practices affect the market entry. WhatsApp privacy policy offers lower data protection. The CCI feels that this may lead to exploitation of consumers. It could be used to leverage the neighbouring markets such as display advertising. It creates entry barrier. This matter is being investigated.

The dominant players can extract huge rents. They can even oust the trading partners. Competion law is expected to improve economic outcomes to maximise gains from trade. It should encourage innovations by providing incentives.

Playstore is controlled by Google. It is a critical gateway between app developers and users. Playstore gives Google power to compel app developers to compulsorily use its payment systems.

Indian businesses use digital platforms for visibility and entry. Several verticals are filing cases. Unfair practices, huge bargaining power, asymmetric information, bottleneck facility, gatekeepers, dependence — all these have entered in competition law lexicon.

There could be a combination of behavioural rules and competition rules in competition legislation. Data protection law is being contemplated in India.

The Indian Telecommunication Bill, 2022 is expected to replace the Indian Telecom Act, 1985. Indian Wireless Telegraphic Act, 1933 and Telegraph Wires Act, 1905. It aims at creating minimum but effective regulations, regulatory certainty, right-of- way (RoW) mechanism, protection of users and promotion of innovation and employment.

The existing legislations governed the telecom sector for the last 100 years. There is convergence of technology now — telecommunications, IT and media, so far distinct, have now converged in various ways. All could be synergistic in a new eco-system. There are cross-sector financing, cross-platform developments and manipulation of information. The legacy sector operated in silos, independent of each other. There were sector-specific regulations Technology has now two dimensions — technical and functional. Technical aspects refer to the ability to transport any type of data. Functional aspects refer to integrate the data seamlessly through apps for the consumers. Broadcasting sector has contributions from cable TV, telecom service providers and IT companies. Thus there is a need to address the issues emerging out of convergence. The Bill is a step in this direction. The Bill must be clear about the definitions of certain words. There is an issue of the dilution of the power of TRAI. Licensing should not extend to the use of internet in various organisations such as data centres, cloud services, hospitals and smart grids. The Bill must provide these safeguards.

The telecom service providers must assume the responsibility and accountability of the delivery of services to the users. The sector must set up its own quality standards.

The Bill attempts to regulate both content and carriage. It could be confusing. There are many unlicensed components. They use the infrastructure of licensed TSPs who use radio spectrum. A blanket inclusion of everything under license regimen by itself will be a regressive step.

There should be clear distinction among carriage, content and applications. There should be proper sector-specific allocation of expertise between Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Ministry of Electronics and IT. The three areas of content, carriage and apps can have separate specific legislations.

The revised telecom Bill will list the guidelines for satellite or orbit spectrum. Several stakeholders have argued for separate provisions. It is a limited resource used for satellite broadcasting, communication satellite and weather satellite services. Terrestrial spectrum refers to the transmission of signals through radio waves from earth-based transmitters. ISRO feels that satellite spectrum should not be regulated as a part of the revised Bill, but should be regulated separately.