India's Improving Broadband Connectivity
Tele density has grown enormously, however other issues remain
Full disclosure: I currently work for a telecom firm, however, these are 100% my personal views alone and not that of my employer or any of the associations I’m a member of.
In the autumn of 2002 I quit 4 years of living in Atlanta and moved back to Mumbai for a job at MIT Media Lab’s India Lab called Media Lab Asia. I was inspired to work there and was treated fairly and felt understood. A year later I said no to a PhD admission back in Atlanta. It was a tough decision because they were willing to pay for my college and living expenses and offering teaching assistantship. Instead I decided to work with a group of IIT Bombay faculty in an Internet for Socio-Economic Development (ICT4D) project where instead of doing something academic in the sense of being limited to a lab/test environment, we would work with real villages, communities and improve their internet access. We created a discussion forum for progressive farmers and over the next decade this would grow to community spread across 550 of India’s 600 Districts, with about 1 post per hour coming in Hindi, Marathi, English, Tamil or Kannada. This success gave the project media attention, allowing us to explore other use cases in precision farming, such as crop disease forecasting. In 2006, we cofounded a mobile content company targeting Indian farmers of Maharashtra as content-subscribers, spreading later to Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu and North-Karnataka. Starting off with a Rs 1 Lakh investment and 12 Lakh loan, the company’s valuation grew to US$2.5 Million in four years. We also sold weather records and weather insurance from a real-time network of 25 automated weather stations, a use case in what we call IoT . Our flagship product is now part of mKrishi at Tata consultancy services.
The bigger picture: India’s Connectivity
India has made great strides in Urban and Rural Telephone Connectivity since 2002, when lone engineers like me were climbing 45 meter towers to load Parabolic Antennae and get 20km long-distance WiFi links to back-up unreliable BSNL leased lines. The sleepy villages six hours away from Mumbai, could have been called nowhere. Alternatives such as VSAT were too expensive. And yet here we are, its 2022, and the problem, at its core, has been solved.
Or has it? What evidence do we have to say that India’s connectivity has improved? The leading indicator for this is Teledensity.
Here is an example with figures from two states being compared with the National Average. Figures are from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI):
Tele-density can be again split into Rural Tele-density and Urban Tele-density, with Rural and Urban defined as in Census. Next few images here are from here.
The good
The not so good, more work needed
What about services: Lessons from History
A leading indicator like TeleDensity alone does not tell us the whole story. Information and Education would be the only use cases, if the new connectivity could not support commercial services. In 2006, The Government of India approved the National E-Governance Plan (NeGP) with an outlay of Rs 22,600 crores to introduce connectivity & e-governance on a massive scale in 5 years. This ambitious scheme aimed rolling out 100,000 [mostly] rural Internet PC kiosks called Common Service Centres (CSCs). These were to provide high quality and cost-effective video, voice and data content and services, in the areas of e-governance, education, health, telemedicine, entertainment as well as other private services. This was before 3G and 4G became buzzwords, around the same time the first iPhone had been launched in the US.
The result?
Except for a pocket of a 100 or so kiosks in West Bengal led by IL & FS - and I expect there were a couple more success stories like that one - none of them sustained. Not financially viable.
COMAT
Now normally Indians are bit skeptic about Public Private Partnerships and for good reason as the track record is poor. There were rare successes, the outliers like Comat and Aadhaar. Comat did some excellent work on the ground such as the land record digitization (Bhoomi Project) in Karnataka. They then rolled out 6000 CSCs in Sikkim, Haryana, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Unfortunately they all failed.
Why CSCs failed?
1. Infrastructure-related problems. No 100% connectivity, electricity, security etc.
2. Services - Lack of ready Government-to-Citizen services such as train booking, utility bill payments, License renewal, college admissions etc. (the IT infrastructure needed was still being built).
3. Marketing - Lack of adequate marketing and limited awareness among rural population about CSCs.
Eventually they got replaced by the ubiquitous private internet cafe centers powered by Destkop Publishing, online test taking, Student notes and projects and more colorful use cases like printing of astrology charts, love letters and greetings, proving once again, that local private entrepreneurship could deliver these services at scale without government support (and hopefully no government interference.)
The status in 2014
12 years passed. Internet and its cafes spread along highways and adjacent to urban clusters. Broadband (1 Mbps up & down) was still peppered here and there. NOFN - the government fibre connectivity project to all Panchayats was not making progress. (Source: NOFN work speed needs to rise by 50 times to meet target.)
The status in 2022
3G and 4G and use cases such as online delivery eCommerce has reached the hinterland. The rapid urbanization of India is creating economies of scale making it viable for partners in the ecosystem (Device manufacturers, App Developers, Teclos and Broadband providers, Communication equipment providers, Renewable power suppliers etc.) to serve these populations. While urbanized population are more likely to try out commercial services over the Internet the constant movement of people between cities and towns back to their villages spreads these use-cases through word of mouth. Rural populations are taking up videoconferencing, TikTok, file-sharing etc.
Fortunately a lot of what was rural 10 years ago, is urban today - so the definition of what is rural and remote is never constant.
Continued innovation in 4G/5G as well as Satellite Internet, Baloons and Drones help find more financially viable ways to connect the rural population. As Indians get more literate and mobile savvy, they use Apps to search for all kinds of jobs, to run their livelihood or run their small business. But then is the problem solved, what about the urban poor?
A leading indicator like Tele-Density alone does not tell us the whole story. Bridging the digital-divide - as this is commonly called - is necessary but not sufficient. Several other divides are to be bridged/in the process of being-bridged, simultaneously. Else we will only have young, rich, mostly male people using the Internet. Overall development: people with better access to roads, cold-chains, railways, markets, jobs, health and education and a more level-playing field for new entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Regarding Tablets and IT in Schools
The work of Anurag Behar at Wipro Foundation and Prof. Kentaro Toyoma at Microsoft Research India and several ICT4D or ICTD researchers is clear on this. Their work (easily found on the Web) shows that:
education needs better teachers, better motivation for teachers, better opportunities for teachers and better schools. Tablets and Internet have a greater role to play in College education and above - not in school.
Steve Jobs acknowledged the lack of impact that personal computers had on schools as one of his big mistakes.
So while computers and internet are needed for all municipal and government schools, a larger budget is needed for essentials: well-trained teachers, clean classrooms and toilets and other infrastructure. Large part of Govt. and CSR funds if spent there will have be best impact and outcomes.
Recently, the USO fund which was collected by taxing telcos for the past two decades was awarded to telcos for installing rural towers, where its otherwise not viable due to their smaller population. Whether this money will actually be paid to the telcos only time will tell. If it is done, this will further reduce the connectivity divide and increase rural teledensity.
Fortunately a lot of what was rural 10 years ago, is urban today - so the definition of what is rural and remote is never constant.
Wrapping Up
When I entered ICT4D or ICTD, ICTs for Development, this was the status of tele-connectivity or tele-density:
Fortunately, on telco infrastructure front, India is in good shape:
However, let us not get too excited with all the progress. A leading indicator like TeleDensity alone does not tell us the whole story. Let us remind ourselves that lots of other divides exist. Its not the GBs per minute or Google Pays per second anymore - social indicators are more important, moving forward. Until the urban poor, small policeman and farmer, nomadic tribes, forest tribes and remote regions can benefit from the Internet, it will remain unfair and some would argue, only for making the rich households, rich traders, rich farmers richer (as they are most likely to take advantage of new tech and services.) On the other hand we have some communities and people not even desiring connectivity. It is of course their choice since its not up to the government to decide how they ought to lead their lives. But unless all kinds of people including vulnerable women and disadvantaged communities begin using phones and the Internet as you and me: for calls, messaging, payments, livelihood, market prices, skills/education, shopping and entertainment (again, only if they want to), can we say that the quality of access has also improved. Local community, CSR, civil sector and Government have a significant role to play. Its a complex issue, as vulnerable women and children may not even be allowed to have a phone by the person bullying them.
Then there are a stream of serious issues such as hate speech, digital laws catching up, misinformation, limiting fake news, online fraud/phishing, crypto fraud, online stalking, bullying, surveillance etc. which remain for us to tackle as a community. Its like technology makes things convenient but also creates many new issues. Techno-optimism is not healthy, techno-skepticism is also needed, if we are not to repeat mistakes of the past. It takes good leaders at all levels - household, community, organization-level for us to create a more safe and equitable India.
What are the challenges in bringing the Internet to everyone in the world? There are many problems that will need be solved before. Ignorance. Food. Water. Electricity. Dictators...
-Bob Metcalfe, Lead Inventor of Ethernet and Founder of 3Com
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