More Basic than Free Basics....Perhaps

At the outset, I wish to state that this is not an article to argue about the pros and cons of free basics. There is already a raging debate for and against free basics in print and social media. Having spent a major part of my work life in the past 5 years delving deep into the ICT enabled services in far flung remote areas of India, I am exposed to the stark reality of the ICT readiness in those parts.

Basic need is for a reliable internet connection. Different services need different internet speeds. If say the need is just to submit a form ( say for something like a birth certificate or a land ownership certificate ) then just a slow speed GPRS or EDGE grade connection at a few 10’s of kilobytes would suffice. But again this needs to be reliable and continuous. There are other services like say a telemedicine or tele-education, or say a video streaming service concerning information sessions on social aspects. These types need a broadband connectivity and as of now DSL ( at least 512kbps ) is the only option to reach the last mile in remote areas in rural India.

At least in the state of Karnataka, there is only one service provider who provides DSL in rural areas. Even that provider does not guarantee that all villages would be covered. In one particular project there was feasibility by an  operator to provide connectivity to only about 55% of the 1000 remote distributed locations targeted and only about 20% would function reasonably consistently. This shows that there is a huge scope for improvement on all parameters – laying of cables, reach, lighting up of fiber to increase capacity in the pipes, maintenance of exchange DSLAM’s, Power backups in exchange. It is also observed that the usage at Hobli and Taluka levels is also increasing due to the many cyber centers and with users preferring to watch streaming content.

As for the mobile internet GPRS / EDGE / 3G, an exercise to figure out the rural locations where at least 1 mobile data connection was available was done. There were about 900 target locations, and only about 70% was covered by at least one service provider, and the rest 30% did not have any of the three service providers giving coverage ( there were 3 service providers considered in the exercise ). One particular service provider was able to give coverage for mobile data in 570 out of the 900 locations. So it is obvious that there is scope for improvement in rural areas even for slow speed mobile data leave alone broadband DSL. There are some attempts to use the reliable Satellite channel for downstream and slow speed internet for upstream in an hybrid configuration.

So even before anything free is contemplated, first it is to be ensured that satisfactory service is made available for people in rural areas who are actually prepared to pay !! First let the carrier waves flow in the air….. the payload can only come in later !! Free Basics and Net Neutrality arguments will become relevant only subsequent to that ……. Need to achieve something more basic before Free Basics could happen ...... perhaps.