Developing Nations Crippled By Broadband Costs 239
eldavojohn writes "If you live in the EU, you probably enjoy low broadband costs. If you live in Finland, it's even a legal right. If you live in the US, you probably pay a moderate cost. But if you live in the developing world, a UNCTAD report paints your picture pretty grim. Ridiculously high bandwidth costs are inhibiting developing nations from enjoying productive use of the internet — like online banking and market tools."
Development crippled by what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Heres the thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is undertandable... (Score:5, Insightful)
...You know why? Because for most developing nations, entire major cities are unplanned (read unmapped).
All they do when one is looking for directions is to say something to the effect..."Just near that big tower...behind the "Kofeko" market.
And I know because I am originally from one of those developing nations. The concept of an address does not exist. In fact, I had to think hard and ask my family what I should put on the visa application forms as an address before coming to these United States.
Nuff said.
Re:Development crippled by what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Broadband access, of course. I'd imagine that narrowly edged out security, stability, access to medical care, and clean drinking water.
Like many information technologies, broadband access reduces the cost and increases the usefulness of basic utilities: Online security with encryption and properly-designed systems can be faster, more tamper-proof, and has better fraud-prevention than traditional security practices (such as checks). Access to medical care is also improved by Broadband access, allowing doctors to telecommute, and rapidly research and connect with collegues who may be in remote locations. Clean drinking water, even, can be helped by broadband access -- the distribution of knowledge on how to build low-cost water purification systems. For example... a clear glass bottle and a cotton filter can clean water from many sources because UV light can sanitize the water.
Developing Nations Crippled by Road Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Development crippled by what? (Score:3, Insightful)
For example... a clear glass bottle and a cotton filter can clean water from many sources because UV light can sanitize the water.
Yes, for example, given wikipedia access, they could learn that regular window glass blocks pretty much all UV below 300 nm. You'd be better off simply placing an uncovered tray in the sunlight... Probably in a decade or two, solar powered hard-UV "flashlights" will revolutionize water purification, but just not quite yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Natural_sources_of_UV [wikipedia.org]
This discussion is a good example of how the average user spends most of their time online discussing urban legends and porn surfing, frankly, primarily the latter.
The term you are looking for is. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the term you are looking for is Economy of Scale [wikipedia.org].
In this case, in the African nations, the cost of Infrastructure and transport to other Internet connected companies is both relatively large (because of a large geographical area that infrastructure has to be deployed to), and has to be shared by a fairly small population of customers. Even if you tried to 'scale up' in Africa, by lowering the cost, there are many people so utterly poor they could not even afford the equivalent of $5/mo for Internet access. That's not to say African nations don't have wealthy people, but as a friend of mine from Nigeria described it to me, there is essentially no middle class in Nigeria (and I think that might be fairly typical of most of Africa) - you have people who are well connected with the government, oil companies, etc, and are rich, and then you have destitute poor people who are exploited by the rich.
Without a middle class, there's no way the ISP's in Africa can get the economies of scale necessary to make broadband cheaper (and, you know, if the only people who can afford your product are the rich, what is your business incentive to make it cheaper? To a rich person, making hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars a year, $500/mo is 'affordable', and to the poor, $20/mo is 'unaffordable', so why *try* to get broadband down to $20 or $30/mo? In 1st world nations, the pressure to get the price down is that, even though you might reduce your price by, say, 10 percent per month per subscriber, you have a possibility that you might increase the total number of subscribers by 20 percent oor 30 percent, meaning you actually make more money. Not so in Africa.
Re:Heres the thing... (Score:1, Insightful)
I am not sure I meant that.. A Comcast 6 mbps connection sets you back by 50 USD , but you probably earn say more than 3000 dollars a month. :)
I however, earn 400 dollars a month and pay 30 dollars for a connection which is 12 times slower tnan yours
Btw, most of the things are much cheaper in US. For example price of gas. Gas is more expensive in India than in US.
Re:'cause what the developing world desperately ne (Score:2, Insightful)
Being dismissive is easy. But online banking improves productivity, especially in rural areas where banks cannot afford to set up branches to serve a few customers. Online banking also eliminates the need to go to the bank. Simply visit the cybercafe and conduct transactions. It is not the luxury that people make it out to be, once they realize how useful it can be.
It is the same with cellphones - they were a luxury earlier. But now, they are necessities in rural areas too. Run a search for Reuters Market Light to see how they have made the cellphone a way of helping farmers earn more money and improve crop production.
Better availability of broadband can open up a new world for rural communities, give them better access to information. There is nothing wrong with striving for better broadband. Other basic needs and the internet are not mutually exclusive.
Re:Came to say this (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Development crippled by what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Content Bloat Management (Score:3, Insightful)
Just get rid of unnecessary graphics on their webpages and they don't really need "full" broadband. Most of the stuff moving over the web is useless eye-candy or gimmicky JavaScript junk. To do basic stuff requires very little bandwidth (by today's standards) if they simply design web-pages right.
True, international commerce-related info may still be bloated. I've been pondering the idea of a graphics-off-friendly browser addon. Most pages can be browsed with the graphics off if one could choose which graphics to keep activated, such as "image" buttons. Once you mark a page appropriately, then it either only loads those graphics you previously selected as necessary (usually for navigation), or gets them from cache.
Re:Development crippled by what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Development crippled by what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Key word: "Productive" (Score:4, Insightful)
The point here isn't the irony of delivering broadband to lost pygmy tribes with no indoor plumbing.
Hasn't anyone noticed that to use the internet efficiently for even mundane tasks it requires more and more processing power and bandwith? I wouldn't pay for broadband either, since I rarely use the web for video, gaming or large image downloads -- I could easily get by with dial-up and my PowerBook G4. Heck, I was using a circa 1998 Thinkpad two years ago. But both machines became an increasing hassle to use even for basic browsing of primarily text sites due to the ton of gimmicky overhead in the form of useless bells and whistles and un-optimized content.
I agree that people in the 3rd world probably have larger priorities than high-speed internet. But certainly the internet is a tool that they could benefit from, and the sad fact of the matter is that without high-speed, an increasing portion of the internet is functionally inaccessible. That is a legitimately dire state of affairs, IMO.
Re:Kleptocracy and Western Do-Goodism (Score:3, Insightful)
Africa has a smaller population than Europe, and a larger land area than Europe.
In other words, it's not overpopulated by a long way.
The poverty in Africa has many causes, mostly to do with what passes for government in much of Africa. But overpopulation isn't the issue.
Re:Development crippled by what? (Score:3, Insightful)
At the end of a gun barrel/tip of a sword is how most legitimate governments have established themselves. That's how we did it.
Re:Development crippled by what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The OP has a point though.
I am an Indian and I reside in India.
Yes, you are right in that India's growth has been incredible - by purchasing power parity, India's GDP is the 4th largest in the world ahead of Germany, Russia, UK etc.. And even now the GDP growth rate is very strong.
But let us look at some other statistics - though we are listed 4th in the world in GDP (by PPP), our per capita income is listed 142nd in the world. That means though India has grown so much, the majority of the population is still very poor. This goes to mean that the rich in India have gotten incredibly rich while the poor have remained very poor or have actually become poorer.
So while we have Rolls Royce, Ferrari and Lamborghini showrooms in India, there are poor people who live just a block away who don't even have access to clean water or basic sanitation.
This leads me to think that there are some serious problems with the Indian approach to economic growth - and so I wouldn't exactly be thrilled with other countries trying to emulate our model of growth.
Having said that - I must say that the Indian government has done a lot over the past decade or so to address the problems faced by the poor. But it is a huge problem - and not something that can be addressed or resolved quickly.
Coming to the whole point of this slashdot post - about whether broadband access will turn things around in developing nations - well, the whole premise behind that statement is that it is the lack of adequately advanced technology/science which is leading to poverty. I don't think that assertion is valid.
We can access all sorts of technology in India, but that is not removing the poverty here. So the problem lies elsewhere and broadband is most likely not the solution.