<div><em><strong>A total ban on Internet pornography in India could mean a hit of as much as 30-70% of data browsing revenues, writes Haider Ali Khan</strong></em></div><div> </div><div>The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, facing flak over its order to block access to 857 pornographic websites, clarified that its directive was only intended to prevent access to child pornographic content and not to curb freedom on the Internet. The government's order resulted in an angry backlash on Twitter and a debate about censorship in the world's largest democracy.</div><div> </div><div>The controversial order came at a time when most of the telecom companies are moving towards 4G technology. Telecom operators were worried about its impact on their revenues as nearly 70 per cent of income from data services comes from users accessing porn sites.</div><div> </div><div>Various Internet Service Providers (ISPs), we have been able to estimate that as much as 30-70% of the total browsing in the country is related to pornography. It is also alleged that the government is violating the privacy of an individual and their right to choose.</div><div> </div><div>Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jio is pumping crores of rupees into the system to roll-out 4G technology. Airtel, Vodafone and Idea cellular have already started 4G trial run in many cities. </div><div> </div><div>Bharti Airtel reported a 59.1 per cent rise in data revenue to Rs 3,085 crore with average revenue per user for data rising 32 per cent to Rs 176 in the quarter which ended on 31 March. Its mobile data revenue rose 70.4 per cent to Rs 2,324 crore and accounted for 17.6 per cent of the company mobile revenue compared with 11.5 per cent in the corresponding quarter last year.</div><div> </div><div>Idea Cellular reported a 60 per cent increase in its fourth-quarter profit, mainly due to increasing data usage. It is also because of non-voice services such as WhatsApp where users can access and exchange porn media.</div><div> </div><div>India stands at the fifth position worldwide in terms of number of daily visitors to porn sites, and fourth in terms of the number of worldwide visitors using a mobile device. The average duration of a visit from India lasted eight minutes and 22 seconds, slightly lower than the international average of eight minutes and 56 seconds. Indians generally visited an average of 7.32 pages per visit.</div><div> </div><div>Smartphones users accounted for 49.9 per cent of traffic from India while 47.5 per cent traffic came from desktops. The remaining was from tablets, says a study.</div>
