Bridging the Digital Divide

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Bridging the Digital Divide
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The Digital Divide

• The differential access to computers, Internet,
  telecommunications, and information in society.
• Typically characterized along the variables of
  income, education, race, age, ethnicity,
  disability and geography.

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The Digital Divide

• Digital Divide refers to the unequal access to
  knowledge, training, job opportunities, useful
  digital content, practices of the information
  economy, resources and so on.
• The divide is not only a technological but also a
  socio-economic and political problem.

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The Digital Divide
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The Digital Divide

• In the Human Resource Development report of 1999,
  Kofi Annan mentioned the Digital Divide as a
  source of growing inequality in the world and
  committed the UN to bridge this divide.
• - Nicholas Negroponte and
• UN secretary general Kofi Annan
• unveil the 100 laptop.
• (November 2005)

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The Problems

• Governance
• Literacy / Social Facilitation
• Service / Access Provision
• Content / Services
• Software Tools
• Devices
• Carriage Facilities

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The structure of the Solution
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ICT as the Solution to the Digital Divide Problem

• Most Information and Communication Technology
  initiatives provide a cost effective method of
  bridging the Digital Divide.
• The projects are generally the combined effort of
  the Government, Academia, NGO, Media, Community
  and CSR and Individual initiatives.

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Key Questions

• Is bridging the Digital Divide worth the effort
  and the outcome?
• Can the poor and illiterate use new technologies?

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POV (What critics say)
It Stinks!

• The cost of creating a working Internet
  Connection in a developing nation is the same as
  that of providing immunization against 6 fatal
  childhood diseases to thousands of children.
• The introduction of ICT into communities
  otherwise unchanged will merely heighten existing
  inequalities.

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POV (What BoP consumers say)

• I used to think the Internet was just for people
  working in offices, but I now realize it is also
  very useful for religious leaders and their
  communities. I know that many good things have
  been done by Americans in Mali. Now I am
  discovering that the same is true throughout the
  world. With the Internet, I can find information
  for the preaching I do on Fridays, and I can
  help other Moslems understand whats going on in
  the world. Im connected." - Imam Korobara (Mali)

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Snippets

• Poor, rural women in Bangladesh use GSM cell
  phones, despite having no prior experience with
  phones of any type. Many of the Grameen Telecom
  village phone entrepreneurs, despite their
  illiteracy, have memorized country codes and
  proudly help customers call anywhere in the
  world.
• Telecenters in El Salvador operated by
  Infocentros provide Internet conferencing to poor
  businessmen to negotiate sales of their crops.

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Snippets

• In Andhra Pradesh (India), SKS introduced Palm
  Pilots with smart cards as bank passbooks and
  issued them to the village womenfolk.
• The promising feedback led SKS to believe it
  would be able to scale up operations in the near
  future.

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Snippets

• In Kenya, NairoBits is successfully training slum
  teenagers to be Web page designers.
• In an experiment in coastal villages in India,
  local women were trained in less than a week to
  use a PC to interpret real-time satellite images
  of the concentration of schools of fish in the
  Arabian Sea, and could successfully direct their
  husbands to the right spots to catch fish.

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Snippets

• The M.S. Swaminathan Pondicherry Project,
  provides info-kiosks to provide farmers with
  information about agriculture. These info-kiosks
  were also, rather surprisingly, used to get
  information about government programs.
• In Gujrat, India, automated butterfat assessment
  equipment is used by the dairies, which has
  radically simplified the process of evaluating
  milk and paying dairy farmers.

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Reasons for Failure of ICT Projects

• Friction with Government Society.
• Financial sustainability, Cost Recovery.
• Lack of Standardization of codes.
• Unavailability of locally relevant content.
• Credibility Concerns.
• Commercial Funding.
• Impact of technical decisions.

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Case Study
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Grameen Telecom - Bangladesh

• One of the least wired counties with 97 of homes
  lacking telephones.
• Grameen Bank (a micro finance institution) formed
  2 entities
• Grameen Telecom A non profit organization which
  provides phones services in rural areas as an
  income generating activity for members of the
  Grameen Bank.
• Grameen Phone Ltd. A for profit organization
  which has come to be the dominant mobile carrier
  of the country.

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Grameen Telecom Business Model

• Accomplishes simultaneous generation of income
  and connectivity.
• GB approves financing of a phone, GT provides
  cellular subscription, the connection, hardware
  and training.
• The initiative has a shared access business
  model which creates high returns, thus keeping
  the project in momentum.
• Repayment rates for Grameen Bank are 90-95.

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Results and Benefits

• 213,000 village phones in 65,000 villages. (2005)
• Revenue per phone per month 93 USD. (2001)
• Secondary benefit is the employment and
  enhancement of status of Women since 95 of the
  phone operators are female.

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Grameen Telecom - Hurdles

• Most VP equipped villages are situated at the
  outer edges of the GSM cells resulting in signal
  fluctuations, dropped calls, revenue loss and
  customer dissatisfaction.
• Problem countered by introduction of external
  High Gain Antenna, which also extends coverage
  for VP operation without further investment in
  network expansion.
• Technologies like FWT and WLL are being
  considered as other solutions for extended
  coverage with good quality but set up costs are
  high.

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Grameen Telecom - Hurdles

• GP is experimenting towards finding cost
  effective ways (like the Mast Head Amplifier
  based BTS) to increase coverage in the rural
  area.
• Power for charging the battery is another
  problem. There are villages with network
  coverage, but without electricity. The number of
  such villages increases as with the distance from
  Dhaka city. Solar panel and DC batteries have
  been tested as alternatives.

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Grameen Telecom - Hurdles

• All the solutions of the present problems, i.e.
  extended antenna, solar panel, DC battery
  increases the start up cost, which is funded by
  GB branch. This results in increase of weekly
  installment for the operator. On the other hand,
  new BTS or MHA will increase the cost on the
  network operators. An optimum balance must be
  found.

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In the pipeline

• Educ. AR Argentina
• TARAHaat India
• ITAFE (World Economic Forum)
• Hole in the Wall Project
• Reusable PCs
• Low Cost PCs