India To Offer Free Broadband by 2009

codecracker007 writes "The Government of India is planning to introduce free 2 mbps broadband for all residents of the Indian subcontinent by 2009. The expected service shall be launched by the government owned telecom operators BSNL and MTNL. Quoting from the article: 'The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, through the state-owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. While consumers would cheer, the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it.' The India Times has an extensive editorial on the decision. It must be mentioned that the Indian government and its autonomous regulatory bodies are very proactive in holding the consumer interests above the operators', managing to reduce the long distance and wireless tariffs by a up to factor of 20 in less than 7 years."

It's not free

[Anonymous Coward]

You can call it "free" if you'd like to, but I doubt that installers will work for free and manufacturers will make equipment for free. So, what you really mean instead of "free" is "paid for through taxation". It's no more free than having police, roads, or congress.

Broadband -ne Food

[Syncerus]

Uhh, maybe it's me and my misplaced sense of priorities, but you might want to help the starving people dying people in the street before you give them free prOn.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Re:Broadband -ne Food

[Moggyboy]

Just like the States should spend it's budget on education and health care before invading another country. Can you spell hypocritical?

Better infrastructure = more wealth

[Futurepower(R)]

Free broadband will, of course, result in India becoming a richer country. I am happy about that.

Re:Broadband -ne Food

[Infonaut]

...you might want to help the starving people dying people in the street before you give them free prOn

How about the idea that by putting in a more modern infrastructure, more high-paying modern jobs will be created, and all boats will rise? By your logic, it was a bad idea for the TVA to provide rural electrification, because people in poverty don't need electricity, they need food.

I don't know that free broadband will have the effect the Indian government thinks it will. It may not even get built by 2009. But if the government wants to stimulate economic growth, it isn't an unreasonable component of a larger plan to make it easier to do business in India.

Re:It's not free

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks milhouse. Do you honestly think that anyone here actually thought that there was no source of funding for the project?
Come up with a term that concisely distinguishes between a pay-to-play broadband service and the act of offering a service at zero cost to its citizenry. Hey how about "free"?

Next time someone offers you a free beer why don't you refuse because you want paid professionals making your beverage products rather than volunteers. They're probably dumpster diving for hops and scrap metal to make the cans, huh? Don't ask where they get the yeast.

Re:Broadband -ne Food

[Falesh]

It's not quite as simple as that. India is getting a higher and higher GDP from the tech industry. If they pump money into that then the state will get more money to put into feeding its poor. If they spend the money on feeding their poor and none on development they will stay a poor country for longer.

Re:Broadband -ne Food

[CastrTroy]

Free internet is a good thing, but if the people in poverty don't have electricity, than how are they supposed to use the internet?

pro consumer = no tariffs

[darjen]

It must be mentioned that the Indian government and its autonomous regulatory bodies are very proactive in holding the consumer interests above the operators', managing to reduce the long distance and wireless tariffs by a up to factor of 20 in less than 7 years."

If they were really pro-consumer, they wouldn't have any tariffs to begin with. All this statement does is congratulate them for reducing a situation they caused in the first place. Hardly "proactive".

Re:It's not free

[ephedream]

Ok, I agree that maybe for India this is not the best thing if most of their population is destitute but in general, I think this kind of idea is great. I live in Canada and let me say I've been praying for government-funded fiber to the home for the last few years now. This would be much better to me than a telco that doesn't want to do anything unless the profits are enormous. I doubt that any cable/dsl companies will offer affordable fiber in the near future. Of course, if the government ever tried this, the telcos would definitely raise a stink about unfair competition, etc.

I say give free broadband to the masses!

I doubt this will happen any time soon, though...

Re:not a troll...

[HellYeahAutomaton]

Technology arrives to the masses in a curve, the first being early adopters,
the middle being somewhat savvy people, and inevitably the the laggards.
By the time every laggard has access to the technology it will be an expected
commodity. A good example of this is the telephone.

If the broadband is "too hard to use", it wouldn't have ever taken off and made it past the early adopters.

Making technology a commodity is more important than trying to push out an education program.
 

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Subsidized

[goldspider]

I believe the term you are looking for is "subsidized".

Government is empowered by people who don't know the difference between subsidized and free. Thanks for doing your part!

Re:Overnight...

[Frozen Void]

They got their priorities right.They think farther ahead.
The free internets are not for starving people.

Re:It's not free

[goldspider]

You wouldn't be at all concerned about your government controlling yours and everybody's Internet access? Just wait till some legislative do-gooder slaps restrictions and monitoring on it, in the interest of national security, the Children, etc. of course. I doubt you'd be so enthusiastic about that.

And you do realize that "government-funded", you're still paying for it. You just don't know how much.

If I were you, I wouldn't be comfortable with either.

taxation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least indian govt. is not sponsoring a war 'paid for through taxation".

Re:It's not free

[LeDopore]

So, what you really mean instead of "free" is "paid for through taxation".

The big question is "paid how much?" The three biggest expenses for big ISPs are:

1. "Last mile" connectivity
2. Advertising and promotion
3. Billing & accounting

With community- or government-provided networks, #2 and #3 go away completely, and most of #1 goes away too. Here's why.

Most of the expense of getting residents Internet connectivity comes from connecting up the last few miles to individuals' homes. ISPs could in principal do away with a wired "last mile" with the right wireless technology, but that would make it easy for people to share their connections and passwords with neighbours. Instead, ISPs are charging you a premium so they can keep you from sharing your Internet connection when they insist on using cable or DSL.

We're at the point now where the inefficiency inherent in having to advertise, charge for and segregate Internet service is greater than the inefficiency inherent in public sector projects, which means that financially it's better now to have government- and community-provided Internet connectivity.

"for all residents"?

[I'll Provide The War]

60% of households in India do not have electricity yet according to Reuters. I assume they are going to have to wait for a massive electrification program before that is possible.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N07237764 .htm [alertnet.org]

Jefferson warned us....

[goldspider]

"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

Be careful what you ask for. You might just get it.

Re:It's not free

[timeOday]

It's no more free than having police, roads, or congress.

You're right, but paying for something doesn't necessarily make you poorer. If it's a good investment, you get back more than you put in. India isn't doing this because they think websurfing is more important than clean water, they're doing it because computers are a big and growing part of their economy. This is a bold, competitive investment.

Re:You know what this means?

[forkazoo]

The amount of Indian porn is going to increase exponentially.

How can a country that has infrastructure and famine problems in some areas (a recent study suggested 47% of Indian children suffered from malnutrition) manage to provide this?

Well, first off, America has decent connectivity. Not the best, but decent. I have something 4 Mbps to my current house, and 8 Mbps is an inexpensive upgrade. Some regions have fiber to the home at substantially greater rates.

Yet, when I walk around downtown Denver, I am constantly walking past homeless people who are asking me for spare change so that they can eat/buy booze that night to consume while sleeping on a sidewalk. Whenever some new technology intiative is announced here in the US, I never see hoardes of posters complaining about American priorities. I never see people in large numbers saying how we need to make sure that absolutely everybody in the country has food and shelter before we allow anybody to do anything else. Yet, whenever India has some technology initiative, it seems like a very substantial percentage of the comments are nothing but comments about how India needs to feed the hungry.

So, no country has no hungry people. No country has no homeless people. It's impossible to "solve" the problem 100% before doing anything else.

Second, how the fuck do you think India will be able to feed their hungry? They just magically decide it's a good idea, and everybody gets fed, and then everybody gets on with their lives all happy and dandy? No. They need to create an infrastructure where more people are more educated, and can do better jobs in order to grow their economy so that all those hungry people can get jobs and feed themselves. Internet access for everybody is potentially a huge step forward in this aspect. you know the old "teach a man to fish" wisdom, of course. Well, give a man efficient internet access and he can post fishing tutorials on You-Tube and teach everybody to fish. Not into fishing? Fine. Give a man high speed internet access and he can easily set up an online store to sell his rugs or hats or novelty oversized fingernails overseas. Anything you can sell overseas means money coming into the economy, the tax base growing off of foreign money, and more leftover money for homeless shelters.

See how this works?

Re:Off topic

[808140]

Having said that, it seems that this is a case of a relatively small minority of religious fundamentalists getting their panties in a bunch over nothing. Most Indians didn't seem to have a problem with it. Of course he should have been more sensitive, but kissing someone on the cheek? Come on...

Of course, here in the US we also have small but extremely vocal groups of religious fundamentalists that make similarly ridiculous statements -- but generally, we try our best to ignore them, and the courts certainly don't side with them.

Indian Subcontinent

[oyenstikker]

Pakistan is on the Indian Subcontinent. I am very surprised that India would offer free internet access to Pakistan.

Oh.

I am not very surprised that the story submitter made a statement that is not in the story, and the Slashdot "editors" did not edit it out.

Indian Middle Class Population of America.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I see many postings about India should feed its starving masses first. First of all India has not had a famine since the 1964 Bihar famine.

Because the poor are numerous they are seen everywhere. Heart wrenching scenes of squalor abounds everywhere overwhelming the other part of Indian population. Half of India is on susbsitence level and two-thirds of India does not have any disposable income to speak of. That still leaves some 330 million people with disposable income, who form the middle class. That is bigger than total population of USA 300 million.

So let us not go overboard and think all Indians are dirt poor living in slums.

Re:Off topic

[drinkypoo]

Dude.... You've got to understand that in different places around the planet, there are different cultural norms & whether you agree with them or not doesn't make it right, wrong or absurd.

At one time it was a cultural norm to enslave, whip, rape, and occasionally hang black people in the South.

Whether I agree with that or not, I guess it's not right, wrong, or absurd?

Re:Forget about "kissing"!

[pinkocommie]

Yes they went nuts on it, no questions asked but take a gander at the video footage of the 'kiss' was more gere forcing himself on the chic with her trying to back out... couple that with the largely existant scarred psyche from the colonial era it doesn't take much to ignite the hysteria

Re:It's not free

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. And we all know how wisely governments use our money. You'll have a service that would cost $30/month per person, but the government will end up spending $150/month per person.

Look at the $100 screwdrivers the US government buys.

Re:It's not free

[k1e0x]

There is no service that the government provides that is cheaper than a private industry could provide.

Also, when you do this, you turn over control of all e-mail, all content viewed on a website, all media transmitted, and even what websites are viewable at all .. to the government. This is a VERY bad move.

Re:It's not free

[mattwarden]

In what world do you live where tax-sponsored programs don't have billing and accounting? I work in public sector, and I can tell you this is absolutely not the case. In many cases, it's more complex than in private sector.

Really the only thing you avoid is collection costs.

Re:It's not free

[LeDopore]

Sorry - collection costs are what I meant. You wouldn't have to interact with millions of users, just dozens of companies.

Re:Road and electricity should be first

[HiThere]

The thing is, if this is a wired connection we're talking about, it will benefit only the relatively wealthy. I.e., the relatively powerful. And if it's a wireless connection, then it's a lot cheaper than roads or electricity. And faster to build. (Consider cell phones vs. wired phones. Lots of countries appear to be just skipping the stage of wired phones, because it's so much cheaper and faster to put in cell phones.)

This may well be a reasonable use of resources. If you have a foot-powered generator, then charging the battery of a computer is reasonable, and if it has a wireless connection, then this will allow messages to get in and out, even when the roads are out. Could be important. IS relatively cheap.