Industry, Government Lay Out Efforts for Affordable Internet to Globally Unconnected
Balloons, drones, fiber, satellites, TV white spaces and other technologies are being used worldwide to try to give the roughly 4 billion offline people, many in developing countries, affordable and fast internet service, said representatives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, the U.S. government and others during a New America event Thursday. They highlighted the difficulties and challenges of bringing connectivity, and the importance of such efforts. The way to solve the world's problems is to include everyone, said former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith.
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“Over 60 percent of the world's population is offline," said Manu Bhardwaj, former State Department technology and internet policy senior adviser, who discussed the Global Connect Initiative (GCI) that he has been involved with since it was launched 17 months ago to connect more people globally. Internet connectivity was recognized as a way to achieve sustainable development goals such as education, healthcare and poverty reduction, he said, adding people who are offline are predominantly female. Bhardwaj, now MasterCard vice president-research and insights, said the digital divide is "pretty striking" with 77 percent of people in developed countries having internet connectivity, but only 31 percent in developing countries.
Lack of infrastructure funds, minimal technical expertise in those places, corruption, political instability and free speech restraints also contribute to that lack of connectivity, Bhardwaj added. In the U.S., internet connectivity costs roughly 2-3 percent of personal income, but that could reach more than 100 percent of monthly income in developing countries, he said. He said GCI, which seeks to connect 1.5 billion more people in the world by 2020, has a lot of bipartisan support in the U.S. Jack Spilsbury, GCI senior coordinator at the State Department, said studies have shown a 10 percent increase in broadband penetration in developing countries correlates with a 1.3 percent increase in those nations' gross domestic product. He highlighted the departments' efforts in Argentina, India, Liberia and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Marian Croak, Google vice president-access strategy and emerging markets, said about 95 percent of the world's population lives within range of a cellular network, and two-thirds within range of broadband network or access to speeds of 3G or more. There has been rapid LTE network deployment in places like Cambodia, India, Latin America and in some parts of Africa, and in many of those areas there are larger younger populations living in more urbanized areas. Smartphone penetration in these markets is forecast to grow by 60 percent in the next two years, which is important, she said. "When people start using smartphones, it drives the demand and the usage of broadband networks.”
But despite advances, Croak said there's still a "huge disparity between the coverage that is available to people and the number of people that are actually using the internet." Seventy-five percent of people in Africa and two-thirds in Asia and the Pacific region are offline, she said. In India, the company plans to provide Wi-Fi service -- which can support hi-definition videos, for example -- to 400 of the country's 4,000 railroad stations by next year in collaboration with the government and local ISPs, she said. So far, 112 stations have Wi-Fi hot spots with 6 million monthly active users. Croak said the model could be replicated in other areas of the world, though India has better backhaul than most. She also noted the company's Project Loon that uses a network of high-altitude balloons to beam down LTE-level connectivity to less densely populated areas (see 1504090023).
Facebook's Robert Pepper, head-global connectivity policy and planning, said the company doesn't think any particular technology or business model can solve the access problem. He said it's not just about those who aren't connected to the internet but also those "underconnected." He said: "How do we really step up, to not only more people connected at faster speeds, but I tend to think of these multiple dimensions of abundance. It's more people. It's more devices. It's more coverage, more diverse devices, more applications and better quality and much more capacity.”
Pepper cited the company's Terragraph project, which aims to provides high-speed internet connectivity to dense urban areas through a multi-node wireless system, and Aquila, which would be a network of unmanned aircraft that would provide internet service (see 1611080019). Pepper also noted the Telecom Infrastructure Project, which includes Juniper, Intel, Nokia, T-Mobile and Vodafone, that seeks to "dramatically" change the capital and operating cost structure of internet networks to reduce the costs to the end users.
TV white spaces (TVWS) is one technology that Microsoft's Paul Garnett, director-affordable access initiatives, said his company is using to provide service in rural areas. He said the technology is cheaper than others and doesn't harm anyone. The projects with which he has been involved have seen no broadcast interference, he said. "It's all good and we’re going to be doing more with the technology over time," he said.
In one project in southern Virginia, Garnett said the company is using fiber to the schools and using TVWS to provide service from the schools to kids' homes. He said 50 percent of the homes that Microsoft is focusing on initially in the two Virginia counties don't have broadband access. "Whereas in emerging markets, often the issue is going to be about getting connectivity to a school, in the U.S., more often than not ... is how are we going to be getting connectivity to someone where they live," he said.