Following up on the previous post, here is what the american daily had to say.

There is a comparison with the spread of electricity in US with the present day structure of broadband. Mind you, Indian Telecom companies follow discriminatory tactics like locking in with the crappy modems, or long term contracts. Much like their counterparts in the west. Primarily, we as consumers aren’t united in our approach. Nor there is any pressure group like media espousing the cause of Broadband.

Dealing with the frustration of poor spread of electricity in rural areas, a Rural Electrification act was passed. In effect this meant that municipalities were able to generate their own electricity. Unthinkable in Indian terms but remember, this was in 1935.

In 1935, he created the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), which gave loans and other help to small towns and farmer cooperatives interested in setting up their own power systems. The REA turned out to be one of the New Deal’s most successful programs. Within two years, hundreds of new municipal power utilities were up and running across the country, and within 20 years, virtually all of rural America had electricity, provided either by rural co-ops or big utilities spurred to action by municipal competition.

Last year, sensing their citizens were being stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide, Philadelphia’s leaders launched an ambitious plan to blanket the entire city with wireless Internet service. To provide universal, affordable Internet access, Philadelphia plans to construct a gigantic “wireless mesh network”—a system of interconnected antennas placed on streetlights, traffic signals, and public buildings. Each of these “nodes” broadcasts a broadband signal, which connects up with other nodes to create a cloud of Internet access for PCs, laptops and wireless devices. The technology is similar to the “Wi-Fi hotspots” that have popped up at cafes and libraries across the country.

Much like the Internet lampostsI had mentioned earlier.

Community Internet has the potential to revolutionize and democratize communications in this country. And that may be the reason why big cable and telephone companies and their political allies have launched a sophisticated misinformation campaign.

Much of this has relevance for India too.

Exisiting “Wi-Fi” networks operate in “junk bands” cluttered with signals from cordless phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors and other consumer devices. At lower frequencies–like in the television band—signals travel farther and can go through walls, trees and mountains. Opening up some of this spectrum would make Community Internet systems much faster and cheaper to deploy, allowing a new generation of broadband entrepreneurs to enter the market. The broadcasters are about to return a sizable chunk of spectrum as part of the digital television transition, a portion of which could be reserved for Community Internet if Congress doesn’t auction it all off to the cell phone companies.

While India’s IT “prowess” is debateable, we are clear laggards in mass adoption of Information Technology. It would be out of scope here to list out the reasons, but then here are the statistics for US.

According to the Department of Commerce, 95 percent of new jobs created will demand computer skills. And a 2001 Brookings Institution study estimated the widespread adoption of basic broadband could add $500 billion to the U.S. economy and create 1.2 million new jobs per year. Simply empowering local governments and community groups, in coordination with private entrepreneurs, to provide universal affordable, broadband may be the single best thing we can do to make America the pre-eminent economy—and democracy—of the 21st century.

Imagine the amount of employment generation it would be for India.

As I mentioned before, we need to have imaginative solutions for nagging problems.  

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