The Indian government will roll out free WiFi to 1,050 villages across the country in the next six months.
The move follows on from efforts made by Facebook and Google to “get the next billion online”, an endeavour that has been slow to produce results. Most recently, Google unveiled a new “offline first” YouTube Go app, free public Wi-Fi at 100 train stations, and a series of measures designed to allow for more offline or low-bandwidth usage of its services.
The government, recognising the barrier to education and wealth that a lack of access to technology can engender, is now taking the issue on itself. The Digital Village project, revealed to CNN Money by Aruna Sundararajan, a representative from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, will see Wi-Fi towers mounted in the villages at a cost of $62 million. The project will extend nationwide after the initial six-month-long stretch. The plan, Sundararajan told CNN Money, is to "provide basic development services to rural areas using digital technology".
There are an estimated 462,124,989 internet users in India, making up 13.5 per cent of the world’s total internet users. But that figure is only 34.8 per cent of India's total population. By contrast, 92 per cent of the UK’s population is online.
The number of smartphone users in India is expected to reach 340.2 million this year. So the desire and tools are there - it is only the bandwidth holding up growth. The Indian government has taken on a huge challenge in connecting remote areas for free, particularly after it failed to make money by auctioning off 4G bandwidth late last year.
The move can’t come soon enough. As CEO of CollegeSpring, a non-profit organisation that helps low-income American students, Garrett Neiman pointed out in a recent WIRED World in 2017 article, technology does not simply improve the quality of life for everyone “by default”, it’s about “how innovation can be leveraged to fight inequality, rather than amplify it”.
“Technology is the raw material for fighting economic inequality: most economists agree that differences in technology adoption across countries account for a significant portion of differences in per-capita GDP, and the same concept can be applied to individuals,” writes Neiman. “If the top one per cent continue to swallow up the world's economic gains, entrepreneurs will be inclined to launch businesses that neglect the poor, perpetuating inequality. Declaring victory early is dangerous: when we say a product is ubiquitous before it is, entrepreneurs move on to the next invention for the upper and middle class while the have-nots fall behind.” He points to an initiative he is heading, ConnectHome, which will bring high-speed broadband to 275,000 low-income households across the US initially.
“Collaborations such as these are difficult and sometimes scale slowly. In fact, some venture capitalists boast they will not invest in such public-private partnerships to grow their businesses. We must eliminate this thinking and take into account the unintended negative impact of technological innovation. Otherwise, momentum for revolution will continue to build.”
The Indian government appears to have recognised that although the returns on its investment might be slow, the future will be more than worth it, for everyone in the country.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
