I wasn’t enthused with the project at all. Despite all the flash, it didn’t promise to really revolutionise the computing. Primarily, it would be assinine to expect families with $1 per day meagre wages or less to buy; there was some kind of a subversive pressure on the governments to subsidise which would have led to huge amount of outgo of public funds; organised gangs would have made sure that intended benefits for the “impoverished” would never reach them; the whole system wasn’t designed to plug in leakages et al.

The investments in public health are more urgently required. If the government is serious about spread of computing, let them abolish the taxes for five years, allow more manufacturers to set up manufacturing plants (but not the silicon as it’s environmentally very damaging) and encourage cheap unlimited broadband. Unfortunately, the policy makers need to get their heads out of sands and breathe some fresh air.

However, it was MIT’s decision to load up Linux which probably irked Microsoft; as if it thrust a whole pound of chilli paste up theirs in public view. It hurt them and this project seems to have been embroiled in a controversy.

The reason I post this here is because India is the intended beneficiary; while the technology demonstrator concept sounds good in theory; we’d be much better off minus all these public stunts.

Anyway, the above mentioned story was first reported on New York Times. (link via Rajeev Srinivasan.) Later on it was picked up byDigg.

Given the huge amount of money at stake, Linux popularity and bruised egos, it’s not hard to imagine the Bill Gates and his cahoots could sit back and lie down. Hence they tomtommed their own version of “cell phone with Internet facility”.

Craig Mundie, a Microsoft vice president and chief technical officer, said in an interview here that the company is still developing the idea, but that both he and Gates believe that cell phones are a better way than laptops to bring computing to the masses in developing nations.

We all know what horse crap is this all about. Here’s one of the world’s richest men making such a statement! Brains and money don’t go together. The problem is that they aren’t afraid to be the laughing stock of the entire world! I mean, imagine Gates grinning about Windows and saying that it’s the “best”!

Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project sounds phoney in the first place. Incidentally, I believe they were the same group who wanted to start something in India; the exact details elude me though.

Some business and development policy specialists have raised questions about Negroponte’s laptop, pointing to the price of Internet connectivity, which can cost $24 to $50 a month in developing nations. But Negroponte said networking costs would not be an obstacle because the laptops would be made to connect automatically in a so-called mesh network, making it possible for up to 1,000 computers to wirelessly share just one or two land-based Internet connections.

Not a good idea in my opinion; would someone enlighten me as to what would be the end user speed in this case? Secondly with almost next to nil investments in localised content creation and excessive zeal to block Internet resources, would this really benefit?

Something that we really need here is a thin client server model which would make sense. The laptop runs Internet wirelessly; we all know that intended countries have their telecom networks in shambles while BSNL gets abused like an overused slut who , linguistically speaking, cannot be raped more.

The intended beneficiaries are :
Thailand, Egypt, Nigeria, India, China, Brazil and Argentina.

To round it off, I would concur with the following statement by some worthy fellow:

Stuart Gannes, director of the Digital Vision Program at Stanford University, said a better way to bring computers into poor countries would be to put them into the hands of entrepreneurs and make them revenue generators. “We need to look at technology as a way to bring cash into the poorest communities,” Gannes said.

All we need is some common sense and freedom from tyranny of Governmental control.

Tags: Broadband, Broadband in India, BSNL, China, Computing, GUI, India, Internet, laptop, Linux, manufacturing, Mesh Network, Microsoft, Telecommunications India, Windows, Wireless

Opera is an excellent browser. Period. Though, I fail to understand as to why the hoopla behind the Opera vs Firefox debate. The other browser- Flock failed to create ripples so far. Let’s give them some time before they can really prove their merit.

There was a palpable excitement with the release of the mobile browser. I am excited for the fact that this browser can be used in Java Enabled handsets. It means, you can direct any WAP based browser towards the website and it’s as simple as downloading a ring tone. Further, it would do some good to the sagging fortunes of GPRS access and perhaps spur on more users to access Internet via mobile screens. I am not very enthused but it could mean a lot for rural access, if we can have localised content specifically for the mobiles.

Opera mini can be found here. Some screenshots to have a look.

( For those who feel miffled because of Opera vs Firefox statement here, this is an excellent blog post from an Opera Employee here. The much vaunted extensions are often lousy, broken and buggy. A low down of the various extensions can be found here and here.)

I would welcome any feedback in case someone has used Opera Mini on his (/her- very unlikely- similar to finding an “intelligent concerned BSNL employee”- you know the odds!) mobile.

Tags: BSNL, GPRS, handsets, Internet, Java, Mobile, Mobiles, Opera, Opera Mini, Telecommunications India

In case you wish to have a nice round up of the existing telecom scene, here is an excellent post from a venture capitalist Anand Sridharan. The link comes via Emergic.

(The best part of Emergic is that it focusses solely on the emerging technical issues which are relevant for this nation. Hence I find it useful to link over here. Further, it saves me much of the hassle to hunt for information online. Head over to Emergic for any more posts you wish to read on the same issue.)

So much for the platitudes. Here’s a low down at what Anand has to say:

Take all numbers with bags of salt (including the ones I quote!). Rather than get into estimates, let me say that we need to apply a quality-filter (e.g. not just talk about internet subs, but address hours used, frequency, non-email usage, quality of connection etc). I didn’t see any estimates for subscribers for whom Internet is a habit, with reasonable usage beyond email. I put this at 5 mn, give or take. (For a nation of a billion and counting, this a drop in the ocean. Forget about millions of so called broadband subscribers as TRAI and BSNL were happily gloating about.)

Online travel leads the way, especially Railways & Air Deccan. While all transactions use the internet, most of them are intermediated (travel agent, Webworld, call centre, booking office). They didn’t disclose share of direct internet bookings.

Cyber café’s are the primary mode of access. 60-70% of internet users access the net at cyber cafés.

Disagreement on definition of broadband. I was disheartened to see India’s internet pioneers say ’56 kbps is good enough for Indian customers’. Seemed kinda regressive to me! I know services need to be priced low in India to reach scale, but that doesn’t mean customers will put up with crappy service.

My medium-term target would be 30 million households having high quality (over 256 kbps), affordable ( under Rs. 500/month for PC-EMI + net access without download limitations)

Currently cable-operators and PSU telcos dominate the last mile. Frankly, both of these suck big-time! The former are controlled by political parties and local goons. The latter’s crappy service is a turn-off.

The rest of the post is devoted to increasing the PC penetration in the country. PC’s aren’t equated with anything worthwhile and there is a BIG unmet need to have Linux as the de facto desktop. With a huge number of replacement PC’s up for grabs, the second hand market can be rejuvenated by Linux on desktops without incremental need for hardware input cost. In schools and colleges, the thin client server models with broadband enabled access for a reasonable fees. Municipalities can pick up the tabs. I shall look in the same issue in a later post.

Tags: API, Broadband, BSNL, India, Internet, Linux, Media, Opera, Telecommunications India, TRAI, venture capital