ToI reports a 18000 crore broadband push by government to improve broadband access to every gram panchayat. While the initiative is welcome, it raises several questions:
- Investing versus creating an environment to invest: Government spending at such massive scale has been shown to be inefficient over and over again. What are the incentives that the government can create to attract private investment in this sector? The initiative around Common Service Centers is an interesting one – what will it take for that initiative to include backend infrastructure in addition to just the centers?
- Access versus ownership: The big success story around access is the PCO. That was 20 years back – that story has been substituted by the mobile revolution, which is a story centered around ownership. Ownership creates a level of value that can not be matched by access alone. What are the incentives and policy initiatives to encourage ownership? Incentives on broadband, on ownership of laptops/desktops, applications? Broadband access targets at every district level?
- Rural versus inclusive: The exclusive focus on rural areas is surprising. The state of broadband access in urban areas is dismal, and perhaps represents the bigger bang for the buck. Why are such initiatives confined to rural areas? What will it take to make these initiatives inclusive?
There are several recommendations that the industry has put out around solving these issues – I am no expert at that. I also welcome this initiative, rather than not doing anything. However, having seen what all of us have in the mobile world, it seems like a huge loss of opportunity to not address this issue with greater force.
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@ Alok
I’d be really interested to know your thoughts on “realizing the true impact of the internet”.
From what I know of the access initiative, the plan is to bring the backhaul to every panchayat with an associated access point. The fact that the backhaul now is available everywhere will open up the last mile opportunity to broader (perhaps ownership driven) businesses. Personally, I think this is a great way to spend some of the universal service obligation fund or other cash windfalls from telecom licensing fees to create a fabric for information services across the country. But your point is well taken on efficiencies and the need for opening up the end points of the vast network to ownership based business models like micro-ISPs, computing centers, etc.
I’d look at it this way – The demand for telephony comes from the need to talk and the government or private telecom companies never had to face the lack of demand of telephony. Going from access (PCOs) to ownership (mobiles) is just a way this industry evolved.
However in case of broadband, before we can debate on access vs ownership, we must have a confident answer to the question ‘Why would an average middle-class citizen want to access or own Broadband?’.
Some people say “infrastructure & apps” is a chicken & egg story. I say its definitely NOT. The most common sensical way of making broadband successful is to bring-in compelling content & apps on existing infrastructure (we have enough of it already), and as the market demands roll out the next level of infrastructure. The real challenge is to devise and popularize packages of killer apps… whereas infrastructure is a no-brainer brute-force exercise.
So in my opinion a large chunk of investment should first go into content & apps and when people respond like street children did to hole-in-the-wall (remember?), thats the time they really want to access & own broadband.
@Raghu – I hear your point and quotes on applications loud and clear. However, i think the biases embedded in these quotes are the same ones which are leading us to access based initiatives rather than ownership based ones. This set of applications is fairly transactional, and might cover one aspect of the internet well (which by itself is good). However, it leaves a big gap in realizing the true impact of the internet – in the same way that PCOs were good, but no where close to the revolution that mobile phones have caused.
I also fail to see why “electronic games” would have been any more relevant in other countries than they’d be here. I think we underestimate what entertainment can lead to… except that our politicians do understand it well – look at the means of information dissemination in elections – its all weaved around entertainment.
This initiative is good but i feel government should tie up with private company and give contract to them. Also before internet they must think about 3G service also which is a very good technology which can change alot of things.