The Hindu Business Line : Rural connectivity: Low-cost tech leads the way

SMALL projects with low cost innovative technologies are making waves when it comes to rural communication. Be it the Warana project in Maharashtra or the Akshaya project in Kerala or DakNet, the huge success of these pilot projects is showing the way to bigger telecom players to connect the 90 per cent of the Indian population who are still waiting for their first phone.

For instance, ITC's e-Choupal effort that places computers with Internet access in 25,000 villages. The project with an estimated revenue of Rs 14 crore a year is expected to break even by the fifth year.

While the numbers may seem small, it is quite significant compared to the losses being incurred by the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd on its rural phones over the last few decades.

Another project called n-Logue relies on corDECT, a fixed wireless local loop (WLL) technology to offer connectivity in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Prdaesh. Developed by the TeNeT group, corDECT supports simultaneous voice and data channels of 35-70 kbps to subscribers within a 10 km radius of its broadcast location. As on date, there are 30 functional projects, each connecting 70 villages through 300 kiosks. Each of these kiosks reports revenues of Rs 5,000 a month.

DakNet, an ad hoc network that uses wireless technology to provide digital connectivity, is evidence that the marriage of wireless and asynchronous service may be the beginning of a road to universal broadband connectivity. Developed by MIT Media Lab researchers, DakNet has been successfully deployed in remote parts of both India and Cambodia at a cost two orders of magnitude less than that of traditional landline solutions. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, working with Media Lab Asia, have used Wi-Fi to connect a 100-sq km area of the Gangetic plain in central India.

The Gyandoot project, launched on January 1, 2000 with the installation of a low cost rural intranet covering 20 villages, today has expanded to 31 kiosks covering 311 panchayats over 600 villages and a population of around half a million. Each kiosk is expected to earn a gross income of Rs 4,000 per month.

A recent report from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recognises that the list of such projects is expanding. "There is a lesson in these projects for all of us to recognise the benefits of rural connectivity, and if these efforts could be integrated in an appropriate policy framework, there would be an explosive increase in rural communications - the kind never witnessed in India before," according to TRAI.

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