This newsletter went out to MediaNama subscribers on September 8, 2023. Welcome to this month's edition of our Talking Points newsletter, where we bring you a curated list of things to think about in tech policy: something that you can bring up to spark a discussion or debate. If TRAI believes in unbundling then why is it talking about convergence? [Kamya Pandey] In August, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) conducted an open house discussion exploring the convergence of regulations for telecom and broadcasting industries. During the discussion, TRAI’s Chairman, Dr. P. D. Vaghela, mentioned that the authority wants more players to enter the market and for services to be unbundled. The irony is that “convergence” aka the clubbing together of the two industries goes against the idea of unbundling, which quite literally means “separating the service from the service provider”. While Dr Vaghela argued that convergence and unbundling are different, the open house discussion told us one important thing: TRAI itself believes in unbundling rather than convergence, and the entire discussion was the authority’s way of fulfilling its responsibility as a regulator. Where biometrics fail: Why WorldCoin’s biometric authentication may not give the results it expects [Kamya Pandey] When WorldCoin launched in July this year, us and many other organizations reported on it. One of the points coming up in people’s coverage of this crypto project was its use of biometrics. The project was essentially giving people crypto tokens as universal basic income in exchange for their iris…
