[governance] [1st-mile-nm] FCC Lifeline Program

Sat Apr 2 08:22:39 EDT 2016

Yes, of course.  

“Affordability” is only one of several elements that go into non-access/use so if the A4AI initiative is about extending (and ultimately achieving some form of universal) “access” and not simply about increasing markets for Internet corporations  why focus only on the affordability issue and ignore the others as the A4AI initiative (and particularly its market fundamentalist “Best Practice”  prescriptions for polices and regulation) so blatantly does?

M

From: Suresh Ramasubramanian [mailto:suresh at hserus.net] 
Sent: April 2, 2016 3:50 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [governance] [1st-mile-nm] FCC Lifeline Program

There are some other aspects that prevent this from being an easily solvable problem

Smartphones are fairly cheap and affordable - ok

Access is at extremely cheap prices - ok

Education / literacy levels in India are rather low - problem #1

Poverty levels are still high enough that many can’t afford even this - but these people have other, more serious basic needs (food, shelter <- and electricity that’ll charge a phone, clothing, healthcare ..) besides the literacy

Even among quite ill paid people (earning less than $150 a month) - the younger people use cheap smartphones and use whatsapp / the internet etc, while older people stick to using old nokia and samsung handsets that just do voice and text, and maybe play music off an SD card.

—srs

On 02-Apr-2016, at 3:56 PM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com> > wrote:

I think that what you have presented rather proves my case.

Most  <http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/india/> recent stats from India have only one-third of Indians as Internet users even at the rock bottom (and highly “affordable”) prices that you are indicating.  

What this suggests to me is that an “affordability” program (a la the A4AI) in India for example would be  concerned with increasing the numbers of those who are able (and willing) to take advantage of the competitive marketplace (thus of course, increasing the potential profits for existing suppliers) while not really tackling the problems of enabling service and use by the rural poor and the highly marginalized in urban areas.

For ensuring service (and use) by the very poor and marginalized a different approach and set of programs would be necessary than those market focussed polices and regulations being proposed and promoted by the A4AI.

M

-----Original Message-----
From: Suresh Ramasubramanian [mailto:suresh at hserus.net] 
Sent: April 2, 2016 2:59 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org <mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org> ; Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com> >
Subject: Re: [governance] FW: [1st-mile-nm] FCC Lifeline Program

You do have a local government owned telco stil providing internet access, along with landline and cellphone service (BSNL) but people hardly ever use them these days because of cheaper and faster service available from private players, not to mention BSNL’s proverbially lackadaisical and bureaucratic customer service.

For example a 8 Mbos plan (3rd column in this list) from bsnl costs inr 1275 ($19.25 a month)  <http://www.bsnl.in/opencms/bsnl/BSNL/services/broadband/BB_plans_high_speed.html> http://www.bsnl.in/opencms/bsnl/BSNL/services/broadband/BB_plans_high_speed.html

And on at least one private player -  <http://www.acttv.in/index.php/products/act-broadband> http://www.acttv.in/index.php/products/act-broadband (select “tariff” and choose say chennai or bangalore) - rates start at INR 999 for 40 Mbps ($15 a month).

Panchayats (village councils) - to say nothing of city municipalities - are already overworked in providing other infrastructure - roads, water, public health and such.  Even if there were budget there’s very little on the ground expertise in running an internet service provider so this would end up farmed out to a third party - with the typical governmen ttendering process.

I am sure IT 4 Change is doing a great job in one - or possibly more small towns - but a high touch approach of that sort with an NGO practically adopting a village - is just not going to scale, especially given the population of India, and its fairly unique connectivity patterns (mostly on mobile devices, these days, and with data + voice plans among the cheapest in the world (I pay $35 a month for 7 GB of LTE data + voice and text), plus an extremely large number of cheap smartphones imported from chinese and korean manufacturers or OEM’d there by local phone vendors.

> On 02-Apr-2016, at 3:17 PM, Michael Gurstein < <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com> gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> 

> In India I've never understood why the Panchyats overall have not been 

> used to develop local infrastructure, demand and capacity for Internet 

> use (although I belief there are some recent developments in that 

> direction coming from various states).

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