Till 2016, Harisal was known as the malnutrition capital of India. Though deaths due to lack of nutritional food had come down to 400 in 2013-14, from the highs of 1,000 fatalities in 1996-1997, the nondescript village in Maharashtra was in a sorry state. But ever since US tech giant Microsoft, and the State Government chose Harisal to showcase a new technology, the village is slowly beginning to shed its infamous tag.

Microsoft’s new technology, called White-Fi, uses unlicensed broadcast spectrum to offer wireless internet connectivity in remote villages. Until then the village, with a population of less than 2,000 residents remained under-served as it was inside a forest reserve.

“Internet connectivity has been a blessing for us. It gives a chance for our children to get educated in ICT (information and communication technology),” says Ganesh Yevale, the up-sarpanch of Harisal, which is 150 km from district headquarters of Amravati. Harisal is now emerging as a model digital village.

Once the village was put on the Internet map, start-ups like Virtual Agri Services came forward to train farmers use online tools, including an app that offers farm inventory management and helps monitor crops by placing cameras in the field. "Now people from all nearby villages come to Harisal to get their birth certificates and Aadhaar cards. The ICT training, which is provided free of cost is a big boost for the village kids who earlier had to travel 24 km to Dharni district and pay ₹3,000 a month to learn computers," Yevale says.

About 1,300 kilometers up north from Harisal, a similar transformation is taking place in Agrakhal, a village near Rishikesh, ever since Facebook launched a Wi-Fi project here. At a speed in excess of 4Mbps, Agrakhal village has a Wi-Fi access that is hard to find even in the much larger Rishikesh. Agrakhal, which sits at an altitude of about 1,800 meters above sea level, has no mobile phone connectivity except for BSNL, which is quite patchy.

The new wireless internet service by Facebook, called Express Wi-Fi, has created a lot of excitement in the small village. "Before the Express Wi-Fi became available in the village, it was difficult to find answers to queries posed by students. Accessing internet was both difficult and costly. Now, whenever there's a query from anyone in a classroom, I can quickly search it online,” says Rekha Shekhawat, a school teacher.

Filling a gap The projects being undertaken by the likes of Facebook, Microsoft and Google ( see Connected @Kharagpur ) are few examples of initiatives being undertaken by private players, other than traditional telecom companies, aimed at ramping up India’s dismal Internet network. Although telecom networks have been in existence in the country since 1994, it is only since 2012, that traditional operators have started rolling out broadband networks.

As a result there are only 355 million Internet users in the country, one- third of the consumer base. According to a recent study, India has only 32,000 Wi-Fi hot spots. In comparison, top ranking countries like France, United States, and United Kingdom have significantly higher numbers at 13 million, 9.8 million and 5.6 million hotspots, respectively. The roll out of optical fibre network has also been slow in the country with just about 15 million km of cable being rolled out a year, compared to 250-300 million kilometre a year in China.

An ambitious national optical fibre network project embarked by the Governmentto connect 2.5 lakh villages with high speed broadband connectivity has been delayed significantly. Although the speed of this roll out has gathered some momentum over the last year, visits done by BusinessLine to some of these connected villages over the last three years found that most of the network was lying idle. Not many knew what to do with Internet.

“The traditional telecom operators have done a good job in ensuring basic voice telephone connectivity across the country. But we need more projects and participants like Facebook and Google to ramp up broadband reach quickly,” says TV Ramachandran, President of the industry advocacy platform, Broadband India Forum.

While this may sound altruistic, the tech giants are investing because they want more people to use Internet, which in turn will improve usage of their products like WhatsApp, Google Search and Facebook. "With the internet market in US and China almost saturated, the tech giants need to get the billion users in India online quickly if they want to sustain their growth. It so happens that Youtube, Facebook and WhatsApp are among the first few apps that a user connects to after getting online," said an industry expert.

Microsoft’s Harisal project is only a pilot as of now. The project faces uncertainty after the tech giant recently decided to draw the curtains on using the White-Fi technology for the project. That's because the Telecom Ministry is understood to have declined to give the spectrum band for commercial deployment of White-Fi. The company, however, continues to run the Harisal project using the traditional cellular network through an arrangement with one of the telecom operators. As a result the available Internet speeds have slowed down. Several projects that rode on the high-speed internet connectivity in Harisal now stare at an uncertain future. These services will now have to rely on the traditional mobile network.

On the other hand, Facebook is looking to ram up the Wi-Fi network.

The rural connectivity project at Agrakhal, is a part of the social media giant's Express Wi-fi initiative wherein the company partners with telecom companies, internet service providers, and local entrepreneurs to help expand connectivity to under-served locations. This is the second big initiative by the California-based multinational after it was forced to drop its Free Basics programme in India after howls of protest.

“We are not looking at making any revenue from this initiative. Our mission is to serve the under-served and under-connected. By charging users for the service, we are ensuring that it is a sustainable effort at an extremely affordable cost for the consumers,” said Munish Seth, Head of Connectivity Solutions, Facebook Asia Pacific.

Facebook has 700 hotspots running in partnership with Internet service providers such as AirJaldi in Uttarakhand, LMES in Rajasthan, Tikona in Gujarat, and Shaildhar in Meghalaya. The service is being sold in packages, starting from ₹10 a day for 300 MB, and ranges up to ₹300 for a monthly subscription. Facebook’s Express Wi-Fi software provides retailers top-up software to manage billing and provide customers with login. To access the service, users do not need a Facebook account. By allowing local ISPs to charge for the service, Facebook has ensured the project is self-sustainable even if it stops the funding.

Ground impact The initiatives have started to make a change. In Harisal, the first thing anyone would notice is the lack of mobile connectivity, except for Idea Cellular's network. Therefore, all the digital projects running in the village, right from a common service center to e-health facility, to ICT training to the ATM, are heavily dependent on internet connectivity offered by Microsoft for free. In Agrakhal’s small bazaar, which is frequented by nearby villagers to savour local delicacies, a small gift shop sells coupons to access Express Wi-Fi services. Devendra Kandari, who offers photostat services, is among the few retailers that offer recharge coupons for Express Wi-Fi. Kandari sells recharges worth about ₹1,000 a day, on which he gets 17 per cent commission. "The service is cheaper and faster than mobile internet plans,” Kandari says.

Thirty kilometres further uphill in a district called Chamba, the impact of the service seems much less apparent. The area already has multiple mobile operators offering their mobile and internet services, which although slightly pricier than Express Wi-Fi, gives the locals the flexibility to connect to the Internet from wherever they are. Express Wi-Fi on the other hand, works only near market areas, making it more handy for shopkeepers or people who frequent the market on a daily basis.

Rohit Sawant, a shopkeeper selling curtains in the market says he has to use both Express Wi-Fi as well as mobile internet to ensure he gets access everywhere. "I often have to show customers designs that are not available in the shop but can be sourced from the bigger market. It helps retain the customer. Sending and receiving these images are faster using Express Wi-Fi but I can't use it at home because the connection doesn't reach there," he says.

Also read: From madrasa to blind school, Internet makes life easier

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