Category: Tech Talk

India may have 25 million phone lines, but nearly the entire country of 1 billion has access to telecom. This is because 1 million of the phone lines go into Public Call Offices (PCOs). These manned telephone booths are there in every neighbourhood of the country. Similarly, we need Internet Community Centres, which provide need-based access to the Internet for the masses.

Cybercafes have sprung up across India, offering access for Rs 25-50 an hour. They may not be economically viable if they offer only Internet access. There is an opportunity to go beyond plain vanilla narrowband Internet access and do a lot more at these locations to build a business which makes money. India can learn from South Korea, where there are 20,000 PC Rooms. These Internet Community Centres can:

• Have the Access Devices or Multimedia PCs connected to a LAN, with high-speed Net access (512 Kbps, or more). Today in India, home users typically have better bandwidth (33-56 Kbps) than people in the office (shared 64 Kbps ISDN)! With high-speed access, the centres become attractive even for home users.
• Install Webcams, so that we can enable video chatting and video mail.
• Install Gaming Consoles like Playstation, so that these can become entertainment arcades. People can also participate in gaming via the PCs.
• Enable Communications by adding cellphone rentals and sales. As cellphone growth take off, there is an opportunity to build an incremental annuity revenue stream from sales and talk-time. A model here are Hikari Tsushin’s HIT stores in Japan.
• Offer Ecommerce fulfillment, like 7-11 in Japan. People should be able to place their orders, get delivery and pay at these access points.
• Enable Auctions fulfillment, by making these centres the meeting point for people who have bid in auctions so that they can exchange goods and money.

By creating multiple revenue streams and offering innovative applications and experiences, these Internet Community Centres offer the way forward for the mass market in India.

Send in your feedback to techtalk@samachar.com.

Today, in India, it costs Rs 24 (USD 0.50) per hour to be connected to the Net – this money goes to the local telephone company. This is a bottleneck for growth and usage of the Internet. Are there alternative networks to bypass this? Options: Paging, Cellular, Cable, Fibre, WLL.

Paging is the one that is the most intriguing. Paging networks have not done as well in India, but they do exist in 30+ cities. These one-way networks will need to be upgraded to two-way networks. In Shanghai, GWcom offers stock quotes and trading on a custom device over a paging network. Paging networks offer narrowband connectivity, but that is what is needed for the mass market to begin with.

Cellular (GSM) networks are circuit-switched, and as such can get quite expensive for connectivity. In India, costs vary from Re 1 to Rs 4 per minute for connectivity to the cellular network. The opportunity for this is in the future, with the packet-switched GPRS networks, which are expected to be rolled out in the next 6-12 months in major metros.

The current cable network is not two-way. It can be attractive because this also gives an always-on connectivity to the access devices. Significant investments need to go in to make it two-way.

Reliance is building out a 115-city optical fibre network, Spectranet has laid a fibre ring in Delhi. IIT-Madras’ Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwalla has a CorDECT solution which also could be cost-effective to provide a Wireless Local Loop (last-mile solution).

An interesting alternative would be to perhaps use the emerging 802.11b (wireless Ethernet) protocol to create a relay network, by linking together neighbourhood points of presence (post offices, railway stations, petrol pumps, banks). A Big, People’s Network in every city, perhaps?!

What is clear is that India needs cheaper, easy-to-rollout mass market network. The question is which of these solutions can address the needs for today. Perhaps the answer is still the humble telephone line, and the doing away of the connect charges for Internet time.

Send in your feedback to techtalk@samachar.com.

What would be the characteristics of the ideal low-cost access device for countries like India? The focus is on a narrowband transactional device, one which uses the Internet like a utility.

Inputs: on-screen keyboard (the mass market does not know how to type) with support for multiple local languages, audio (everyone can speak), and handwritten text captured as an image. Handwriting recognition is useful, but not critical.

Outputs: a display (like the Palm or Visor — monochrome would do just fine), speakers (combined with audio input, they would be great for internet telephony, which is still illegal in India). The speakers can also enable playback of MP3 music. Connectivity to a printer or a TV would be useful for “larger” displays would help.

Communications: a telephone line RJ-11 jack with a software modem. To start with, it could have IR or Bluetooth support so it can work well in the home, and doesn’t have to be in a fixed place.

Buttons: 4 buttons to offer easy access to email, instant messenger, a personalized page, and one for bookmarks to link to other favourite sites. Pressing any of the buttons should automatically connect the user to the Internet.

Storage: some flash memory, so this can also serve as an offline music/audio player.

Power: batteries, and external power. The batteries combined with IR/Bluetooth allow the device to be moved and used within the house.

OS: Linux, so no royalties need to be paid out.

Cost: USD 50, so that it is rentable for less than USD 4 per month.

Additional useful add-ons:

• One-way Pager, so that the device can receive alerts when email arrives or other such one-way communications. Later, this can become a Two-way Pager allowing for instant messaging (the equivalent of SMS on cellphones).
• GSM support, so it can use the cellphone network, thus enabling mobility
• Smart card reader for enabling payments
• A digital camera
• GPS support to enable location-based services

Do we have answers for 4 billion people in the world?

What would be the characteristics of the ideal low-cost access device for countries like India? The focus is on a narrowband transactional device, one which uses the Internet like a utility.

Inputs: on-screen keyboard (the mass market does not know how to type) with support for multiple local languages, audio (everyone can speak), and handwritten text captured as an image. Handwriting recognition is useful, but not critical.

Outputs: a display (like the Palm or Visor — monochrome would do just fine), speakers (combined with audio input, they would be great for internet telephony, which is still illegal in India). The speakers can also enable playback of MP3 music. Connectivity to a printer or a TV would be useful for “larger” displays would help.

Communications: a telephone line RJ-11 jack with a software modem. To start with, it could have IR or Bluetooth support so it can work well in the home, and doesn’t have to be in a fixed place.

Buttons: 4 buttons to offer easy access to email, instant messenger, a personalized page, and one for bookmarks to link to other favourite sites. Pressing any of the buttons should automatically connect the user to the Internet.

Storage: some flash memory, so this can also serve as an offline music/audio player.

Power: batteries, and external power. The batteries combined with IR/Bluetooth allow the device to be moved and used within the house.

OS: Linux, so no royalties need to be paid out.

Cost: USD 50, so that it is rentable for less than USD 4 per month.

Additional useful add-ons:

• One-way Pager, so that the device can receive alerts when email arrives or other such one-way communications. Later, this can become a Two-way Pager allowing for instant messaging (the equivalent of SMS on cellphones).
• GSM support, so it can use the cellphone network, thus enabling mobility
• Smart card reader for enabling payments
• A digital camera
• GPS support to enable location-based services

Do we have answers for 4 billion people in the world?

Send in your feedback to techtalk@samachar.com.

To put our Internet access discussion in context, let us look at some India numbers:

• 1 billion Population
• 150 million (mm) consuming Middle Class
• 65 mm TVs with 30 mm Cable TV homes
• 25 mm phones (0.6 mm telephone booths / PCOs)
• 4 mm PCs
• 3 mm Net users (about 1.3 mm Net accounts)
• 2.5 mm Cellphones
• 1 mm Pagers

So, what are the options for people to access the Net? PC, TV or cellphone?

The PC base in India is still quite small, and the cost of ownership at Rs 35-40,000 is still quite high. PC penetration is growing at 40-50% per annum, but will not achieve mass market penetration in the near-term due to the cost and complexity of usage.

Can the TV be the answer? I don’t think so. TVs serve as entertainment devices for the entire family while Internet browsing or e-mail is a personal exercise. In addition, the Internet TVs launched recently in India are still of the order of Rs 10,000, while TVs with set-top-boxes still cost in excess of Rs 7,000.

What about cellphones? The cheaper cellphones are available at about Rs 4,000 today, which is good. The problems are the small display, text entry on the 12-button keyboard, and the airtime costs (currently at Rs 2-4 per min, or Rs 1-2 per SMS message).

What India needs a low-cost, small foot-print access device for the mass market in India, a device which costs about Rs 2,500 retail (USD 55), and can be rented out for Rs 150 per month. At these price points, we can look at a target market of 25 million (similar to the phone lines / cable penetrations) in India alone, and a base of 4 billion people in the world like us in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America. What does it take to do this?

In August this year, India completed 5 years of commercial Internet access. We have just over a million unique Internet accounts, and about 3 million users. More new cellphone users are being added in India than are new Internet accounts. The Internet in India is still too elitist and growth still too slow. How can we change this? How can we get 10 times the current growth rate? How can the Internet impact the lives of 100 million Indians in the next 3 years? How can the Internet remove pain from our lives, how can it make a difference to us daily? How can the Internet become a utility in our lives — just like electricity and the phone?

What we need is creative thinking in terms of “emerging market technologies and solutions”. We need local solutions to our local problems. India has more in common with China and Latin America than with the US. The Internet in India will unravel very differently from the experiences of US, Europe and Japan over the past 5 years.

There are 5 components to building a mass market Internet and making it a utility service:
– Access Device: Multiple options are becoming possible for accessing the Net. What will be the mode of access? Will it be the PC, TV or cellphone?
– Access Network: The telephone company still makes Rs 25/hour when we connect to the Net — significantly more than the ISP itself! Are there alternatives?
– Community Centres: 1 million telephone lines going into PCOs serve the communications needs of 75% of India. Can something similar happen with the Internet in India?
– Payment Systems: Few Indians (about 3 million) have credit cards, fewer are keen on using them on the Net! Can we eliminate billing and use pre-paid? Are smart cards the answer?
– Applications and Services: How many Indian sites make you visit them daily?

To make a difference, the Internet has to add value to our lives. How can the Net remove pain from our lives? What will be the killer apps in India?

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Postscript: Tech Talk began life on Tech Samachar.