[governance] [bestbits] The unintended consequences of Free Basics campaign in India

[Mwendwa Kivuva]

On 15/01/2016, Deirdre Williams <williams.deirdre at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Mwendwa,
> Perhaps I'm using an inaccurate definition for the "next billion". It's
> within that context that I've been thinking about "free basics". If it is
> necessary to "connect the next billion" then it seems to me that they must
> be currently un-connected.
> I'm very interested to see the prices that you quote. Things are rather
> different here.And I'm not sure that solar chargers have made it to Saint
> Lucia, except possibly to the well off.

Here are the GPRS phones for $10 http://www.orange.co.ke/en/product/kaduda/
The Solar chargers which are very popular with the rural community are
here http://www.kebuysell.com/Sale/Solar+Lamp+With+Phone+Chargers/s3va12

> You don't answer my point about ISP subscription - but I expect this is
> probably because you are thinking of people who already have and use an
> appropriate type of phone, and therefore already pay a subscription

I agree with you that Internet prices remain high in many developing
countries and issues of access and cost should still be addressed.
Mobile service providers have come up with very small Internet bundles
of upto 7Mb for $0.05 but you can imagine what you can do with a data
limit of 7MB. This is actually very expensive because if you scale it
up, its like 140MB of data goes for $1


> Finally we may need to be a little careful about statistics. Mobile phone
> penetration in Saint Lucia is greater than 100% (I think this is true
> generally across the Caribbean) but that DOES NOT mean that everyone has a
> phone.

It would be interesting to know the barriers people face to owning a phone.

> It would be instructive to be able to do more comparison among different
> parts of the world - thank you for sharing your perspective with me.

Yes the statistics don't necessarily mean one to one ownership of a
phone but a ratio of phone ownership with the population.


>


-- 
______________________
Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya
twitter.com/lordmwesh

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