Developing World Looking for New Models to Get People Connected
Companies in the developing world are looking to spectrum sharing and new models for accessing the internet because old models have left many unserved, speakers said Wednesday at IEEE’s virtual Connecting the Unconnected Summit. Experts said just having access to a simple phone can transform how people live.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
“One of the biggest challenges in Africa is that we have so many young people who are jobless, and we need to create jobs, and at the same time connect to the next level like connecting sensors to these networks,” said Fisseha Mekuria, senior lecturer at Malmo University in South Africa. There’s a lot of mining in Africa, but little of it has been digitalized, he said.
“There is a whole lot of spectrum lying idle” that can be made available for broadband, Mekuria said. “That’s happening now in South Africa, and we want to roll that out in other African countries,” he said. “Mobile operators are very big, but they’re only investing in the city areas with high population,” he said.
Only 7% of homes in India are connected and “people want more and more internet,” said Satyam Darmora, founder of Delhi-based i2e1, which is targeting the developing world with broadband service. The world is moving “from pipelines to platforms,” as evidenced by Uber and Airbnb, he said.
Uber is “just a software experience on top of existing infrastructure,” creating “a new market,” said Darmora. He said i2e1 allows broadband customers to sell excess capacity to people who otherwise can’t afford service, for pennies a day. In the past six months, the company has added more than 25,000 nodes and more than 100,000 users, he said.
“Not every customer would be able to afford every kind of service, and we have to keep creating services which meet their needs and also are affordable,” said Rajeev Gopal, Hughes vice president-advanced programs: “There’s a big improvement between no phone and a phone, which can provide some connectivity.”
Phone prices are determined by what people can afford, Gopal said. “I have been to parts of the world where you can buy phones for literally 1/10th, 1/15th of the price” in the more developed world, he said. “Maybe they don’t do everything, but they are able to provide basic chat, voice, and … some apps also, maybe some primitive videoconferencing,” he said: “Everyone should have their own phone. I have seen what a difference it makes in many developing parts of the world -- that you give a phone to fisherman, a vegetable seller and how their business improves … because they have connectivity.”
People don’t have to be trained on how to use a smartphone, Gopal said. “They find the right apps, and they start using the apps,” he said.
The second-hand phone market is thriving in India, with “good and decent-sized smartphones” available for as little as $10, Darmora said. The government has also been providing tablets to students over the past two years and people are buying TVs that can be used to access the internet, he said.
In the U.S. the urban digital divide is an area that often gets too little study, said Michael Brough, CEO of data analysis firm M2Catalyst. In downtown Detroit, people have an 11% chance of having poor or no wireless signals from their carriers, which climbs to 71% in the city's poorest areas, he said.
Wakoma, which offers open-source solutions, is working with entrepreneurs globally who want to build their own networks, but “many are having a hard time actually moving forward because the hardware they need is unavailable or very expensive,” said CEO Eric Nitschke. The chip shortage exacerbated the problem, he said.
Companies can build their own routers, which is happening worldwide, Nitschke said. “Anybody can take the designs and build their own,” he said. “We’re also working on decentralized manufacturing of other network hardware,” he said. Some companies are also using the hardware they have and mixing it with other components, he said.
“There are several open-source projects that enable one to take the antennas and routers that you already have, regardless of the manufacturer, flash the firmware and use them to build a wireless community network,” Nitschke said: “This is especially important for under-connected communities that may not have access to the latest and greatest hardware.” Collectively, millions of people have already been connected through open platforms, he said.