Cartoon as published in sify com
New Delhi/ Nagpur: Several experts and analysts feel that if a ban is put on internet pornography viewing in India, it will hit as much as 30-70% data browsing revenue generation in favour of internet service providers (ISP).
According to a senior cadre official employed with an Internet industry, having discussed at length with various ISP agencies, they have been able to estimate that 30-70% of total browsing in the country is concerned with pornography. But, it would be quite difficult to be specific in this connection and lay norms for inspection as to what the users are watching, which may even be mistaken for trespassing their privacy, in legal sense of the term, a breach of privacy, he said this on the condition of anonymity.
Indian telecom companies are growing with competitive marketing strategies in the country as the voice services have visibly gone up. Telcom companies like Bharati Airtel Limited, which is considered the largest telecom company due to its high revenue generation as well as number of subscribers, and also the companies like Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (of Mukesh Ambani) are investing billions of dollars to install 4G-based wireless networks across the country while 3G-based data services in many parts of the country have already been installed by Vodafone India Ltd and Bharati India Cellular Ltd among several others.
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It may be mentioned that by the quarter ending March 31, Bharati’s revenue shot up to Rs 3,085 crore (59.1%) with average revenue per user (ARPU) for data rising 32%. Bharti mobile data revenue increased 70.4% last year.
Non-voice revenue is now recorded as 23.7% of total mobile revenue in India. Mumbai-based telcom service scores non-voice revenue as much as 24.5%. Non-voice service includes WhatsApp, one of the most popular message option where users access and exchange porn-media.
Comedy and torrent sites included in porn ban
According to Mumbai-based analyst, “We have not seen what the impact will be. But if porn is such a big part of usage, then there can be some worry.” A study of Quartz, whose 857 porn sites have been blocked, carried out in November 2014, reveals that in association with Pornhub, the largest pornography sites, Indians are the fifth worldwide daily visitors to this site, using their mobile devices.
The study further reveals that average duration of a visit from India is 8.22 minutes, slightly lower than the international average of 8.56 minutes. The study also tells that Indians generally visit an average of 7.32 pages per visit, slightly lower than the international average of 7.6 pages.
Smartphones accounted for 49.9% traffic from India while 47.5% traffic from desktops, and remaining was from tablets, the study highlighted.
