'Net user base growing fastest in India'
Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit organization that aims
at ensuring a stable, secure and unified global internet, has recently
appointed Samiran Gupta as its India head.Through its co-ordination and
policy framing for the internet's naming system (domain name system
-DNS), ICANN plays an important role in the expansion and evolution of
the internet. The appointment comes at a time when the US is gearing up
to turn its stewardship of the DNS into a multi-stakeholder community
. Gupta shares his views on some key issues:
How do you see India's role in internet penetration, governance and domain names uptake?
We live in a fast-changing world, with the number of internet users increasing tenfold from 1999 to 2013. In 1995, less than 1% of the world population had an internet connection. Today, that number is around 40%.
The growth of internet users has been an explosive one. The one billionth internet user came online in 2005, the second billionth in 2010 and by the end of this year, we will reach the three-billion mark. In fact, it is very likely that these next billion users will mainly come from Asia where we already form almost 50% of the global internet population.
But India needs to catch up.
According to Internet Live Stats, as of July 2014, India had one of the lowest internet penetration rates with only 19% of its population online. However, it has the highest yearly growth rate and currently has the third largest number of internet users globally. The recently approved “Digital India” programme is timely and promises to transform the country into a connected knowledge economy.
What is IDN and what prompted ICANN to usher in IDNs? In your view, what does this mean for India and its internet users?
IDNs, or Internationalized Domain Names, include characters other than the letters of the English alphabet in Latin script, numbers and hyphen.
This means that users will be able to register domain names in local languages.
Earlier this year in August, India launched the IDN ‘dot bharat’ in Devanagari script covering eight languages. This is a huge step forward and, together with the “Digital India” programme, India looks set for the transformation into a connected knowledge economy. India also has this IDN approved by ICANN in Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
For a nation with so many languages, most of which are based on non-Latin scripts, IDNs can serve as a powerful tool for broadening India’s internet capacity and accelerate local content delivery and related services in India’s rural and remote areas.
In March this year, the US government announced that it will transition the stewardship of IANA functions. What does this mean?
On March 14, 2014, the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intention to transfer its stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions to the global multi-stakeholder community. It also requested that ICANN — which is the IANA functions operator and the global DNS coordinator — convene a multi-stakeholder process.
ICANN’s current contract with the NTIA expires in September 2015, and a transition proposal based on community consultation should ideally be presented to the NTIA several months prior to that date. Should a transition proposal not be presented or accepted before the contract expires, the NTIA may extend the IANA contract with ICANN as necessary. Shortly after the NTIA announcement, ICANN launched a multi-stakeholder process and several meetings for discussions have been held at which India has been a participant. As with other stakeholders, we welcome India’s participation.
How do you see India's role in internet penetration, governance and domain names uptake?
We live in a fast-changing world, with the number of internet users increasing tenfold from 1999 to 2013. In 1995, less than 1% of the world population had an internet connection. Today, that number is around 40%.
The growth of internet users has been an explosive one. The one billionth internet user came online in 2005, the second billionth in 2010 and by the end of this year, we will reach the three-billion mark. In fact, it is very likely that these next billion users will mainly come from Asia where we already form almost 50% of the global internet population.
But India needs to catch up.
According to Internet Live Stats, as of July 2014, India had one of the lowest internet penetration rates with only 19% of its population online. However, it has the highest yearly growth rate and currently has the third largest number of internet users globally. The recently approved “Digital India” programme is timely and promises to transform the country into a connected knowledge economy.
What is IDN and what prompted ICANN to usher in IDNs? In your view, what does this mean for India and its internet users?
IDNs, or Internationalized Domain Names, include characters other than the letters of the English alphabet in Latin script, numbers and hyphen.
This means that users will be able to register domain names in local languages.
Earlier this year in August, India launched the IDN ‘dot bharat’ in Devanagari script covering eight languages. This is a huge step forward and, together with the “Digital India” programme, India looks set for the transformation into a connected knowledge economy. India also has this IDN approved by ICANN in Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
For a nation with so many languages, most of which are based on non-Latin scripts, IDNs can serve as a powerful tool for broadening India’s internet capacity and accelerate local content delivery and related services in India’s rural and remote areas.
In March this year, the US government announced that it will transition the stewardship of IANA functions. What does this mean?
On March 14, 2014, the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intention to transfer its stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions to the global multi-stakeholder community. It also requested that ICANN — which is the IANA functions operator and the global DNS coordinator — convene a multi-stakeholder process.
ICANN’s current contract with the NTIA expires in September 2015, and a transition proposal based on community consultation should ideally be presented to the NTIA several months prior to that date. Should a transition proposal not be presented or accepted before the contract expires, the NTIA may extend the IANA contract with ICANN as necessary. Shortly after the NTIA announcement, ICANN launched a multi-stakeholder process and several meetings for discussions have been held at which India has been a participant. As with other stakeholders, we welcome India’s participation.
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