Rural India Could Get Internet Access Via Railway

Anonymous Coward writes "The BBC reported today on a pilot project underway in India that would bring the Internet to rural India in an affordable way. They are using the spare capacity of the communications and control cabling used for the electrified railway tracks. They also plan to set up cybercafe kiosks at the railway stations." And remember, there are more than 38,000 miles of railway in India.

Comments

Look out

[Lozzer]

Those Railroad Tycoon guys will have the little lightbulbs flashing

Re:Look out

[QSYS]

They already have. Phil Anshultz owner of Santa Fe RR, the former D&RGW RR Union Pacific etc. is the majority share holder of Qwest. The buying of the railroads wasn't for freight. it was to use the railroads right of way for fiber optics.

Hmmm..

[Reality Master 101]

I have this mental image of little bits travelling to the outer reaches of India, saying "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."

I think it's time for my Lithium pill now.

--

Re:Hmmm..

[Signal 11]

Actually, it'll sound more like...

I think I can, I think > 1 #an, , ,I think I _+ can>>, I th#$_ I can, , Ith#*$!, I th-nnk..#&/BODY>^NO CARRIER

This is the 'net, right? :)

Re:Hmmm..

[muldrake]

I have this mental image of little bits travelling to the outer reaches of India, saying "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."

There are probably places in India where they don't even have railroad tracks. I recommend they implement RFC-1149 technology there. [That's A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers.]

Rural Internetification Association

[timbu2]

Makes good sense to me. Before you have reliable power, make sure you have access to the internet.

Although, I am a big fan of networks, the internet, and what not, does this really make any sense. Isn't it more important to have electricity you can rely on before you worry about internet cafes?

Well, maybe I should get in on something early.

How about I wire the moon for cable TV?

timbu

Re:Rural Internetification Association

[Erasmus Darwin]

Makes good sense to me. Before you have reliable power, make sure you have access to the internet.

While they might not have reliable power, they do have some power. Imagine if a number of people in the area started doing the digital equivilant of menial labor via telecommuting (say simple HTML markup in some area where the reliability of a given employee isn't critical). It seems that they'd be able to at least start generating some revenue, which in turn could be used to help improve the infrastructure.

Even better: Consider the possibility of a company finding the available labor force worth the cost of investing in region. By creating a tangible, albiet "flimsy" link to the outside world, they're setting it up some that companies can actually see results before being required to invest further.

...and if all else fails, the people of rural India can fall-back on using All Advantage.

Re:Rural Internetification Association

[Pig Hogger]

Do you really need 100% reliable power? Computers work with a power supply that steps down the AC power down to a voltage manageable by batteries.

UPSes are wasteful in that they step-up voltage from a battery to 100 volts, then the computer's power supply steps it back down to low voltage. Why not design computers à la laptop, that is that have batteries between the transformer and the voltage regulators?

That would be much cheaper than a run-of-the-mill UPS, and would allow for operation with unreliable power sources.

Nowadays, everything you use works on low voltage, so it comes with a cumbersome transformer. That include halogens lamps. Why not wire houses with 12 volts, which could easily be supplemented by inline batteries? Big power-hungry appliances would simply get their separate high-voltage feeds, just like water heaters and ranges and clothes dryers and strip-heaters do nowadays.

And, especially for third-world countries, this would be much cheaper and could even be run by makeshift turbines on little streams.

--
Here's my mirror

Re:Rural Internetification Association

[mistered]

Well, here's a UPS-on-a-card which would accomplish what you suggest.

Even better, a Netwinder runs straight from 12V, so you can just use a battery across its power supply for a UPS.

As for wiring a house with 12V, the problem is that a lower voltage implies a higher current, for the same amount of power. A 60W light bulb is only 0,5A at 120V but 5A at 12V. You either loose a lot of energy in your wiring, or have to use large-diameter, heavy and expensive wiring.

Re:Rural Internetification Association

[Score Whore]

He is right. A minimum standard of living is more important than some nebulous idea called "information." You sound like you would rather send internet connectivity to africa rather than food, water and medical supplies.

Re:Rural Internetification Association

[Ed Avis]

Well, an internet is a big network connecting several smaller networks. The Internet is one internet which uses the TCP/IP set of protocols.

Re:Rural Internetification Association

[foghorn19]

Well, my family doesn't really have the money to buy any UPS's and we sure can't afford to pay the state electricity board the one thousand rupees it takes to get our electrical connection back on every six months.

But gimme a 386 with a mono monitor and my brother and I will take turns on our bicycle-mounted dynamo, while we surf the net.

Re:Rural Internetification Association

[mikpos]

Well they're not mutually exclusive. The infrastructure (railway lines in this case) are already existent, so the costs hear are near zero. The people are presumably the ones who are going to pay for their Internet access, so I don't see how giving them a choice is a Bad Thing.

How fast can railroads travel?

[wsabstract]

I wonder how fast railroads can support in terms of connection speed. I for one am spoiled by cable.

---------------

Re:How fast can railroads travel?

[jorbettis]

Remember the old adage (modified slightly):

Never underestimate the bandwith of a station wagon full of CD-ROMs, or a train full of mag tapes.

Bandwidth?

[crovax]

I would imagine that the bandwidth would not be all that great. But I'm sure that the realativaly(sp?) small number of users will help solve that problem.


-----
If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.

in other news...

[Phexro]

...a ddos attack was initiated against the indian railway system. approximately 300 are dead after two trains smashed head-on into each other...

--

Two Issues Here

[Alik]

(Boy, I seem to spend a lot of time pointing out problems anymore. Yeesh. I'm turning into a leech.)

1) You're running on the spare carrying capacity of a dedicated control system? Just how much spare bandwidth is there on this thing? Knowing how much money India generally has to toss around, I can't imagine that they've built a whole lot of extra in there. If this gets implemented on a national scale, won't there be congestion from hell?

2) What do people in the villages need with the Internet anyway? They're currently working on a model where there's one woman who's the "phone lady" and who acts as the primary link to other villages. Despite what pundits claim, you can't really get much of an education from the Web alone (yet). If I were a person in a rural Indian village, I'd be more interested in getting me some of that modern plumbing and health care before I wanted to go read Slashdot. It's basic Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs stuff.

Then again, maybe somebody wants to auction off a used water buffalo on eBay...

Re:Two Issues Here

[Anonymous Coward]

1) They have plenty of money to toss around on nukes, it seems...

2) Hmm could've sworn I saw one of those villages on an IBM commercial ;)

Re:Two Issues Here

[an_mo]

On the second issue, I think that Internet may not be useful *yet* (as you say) to small rural villages; on the other hand, it has the *potential* to break the cultural barriers, especially for small and poor villages. Let's face it: how many families owned Encyclopaedia Britannica last year, and how many own a PC and access to britannica.com today?
Internet is *necessary* and relative cheap way to to improve education to the poor

Re:Two Issues Here

[Alik]

1) They have plenty of money to toss around on nukes, it seems...

Well, nukes ain't as costly as they used to be. I mean, when you get right down to it it's just some lumps of fissionable material and a device to keep them apart until you want the thing to go boom. Most 50-year-old technology is pretty simple to implement these days.

More importantly, though, being able to nuke the Pakis is clearly more important that educating and improving the lifestyle of the populace. If you educate them, how will they be dumb enough to go and sit in Kashmir and freeze and be shot at? Geez. Don't you know anything about public policy? :-)

Re:Two Issues Here

[Alik]

. Let's face it: how many families owned Encyclopaedia Britannica last year, and how many own a PC and access to britannica.com today?
Internet is *necessary* and relative cheap way to to improve education to the poor

But use of britannica.com assumes a whole lot of skill sets. The biggest one I can think of offhand is that you've got to be able to read and type English. A rural village in India is not like a bumblefuck Midwest town (to use a stereotype) where people are a bit set in their ways but still cognizant of basic civilized skills. A rural village in India contains people who cannot read Indian dialects, let alone English. In many cases, there is nothing even resembling a school. These days, the kids are likely to have been vaccinated thanks to the WHO, but that's about it. Before they can make use of the Internet, they've got to get a whole lot of knowledge about what a computer is and how to use one.

These aren't the poor we're used to. I've been to India a few times to visit my family there, and I've seen their poor. It is, quite literally, a whole 'nother country. Technology does not yet truly exist out in the Indian countryside. In another decade, it may, but I still think they'd be better served with clean water and health care than a T1. If you ask them what they'd like, I suspect you'll get much the same answer. (Yes, they do see education as a way to assure a future. However, in order to get a good education, one must be in decent health.)

Re:Two Issues Here

[jonnythan]

FWIW, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a classic model of how NOT to do psychology. It's an interesting, captivating, intuitive look at the human psyche, but it was based on no evidence. The massive amounts of studies done on it have proven it wrong over and over. People tend to skip severeal layers at once, ignore some layers, etc.

Re:Two Issues Here

[Alik]

Hey, we listened to that Sigmund guy for years, and nobody ever bothered to validate his theories. Even stranger, some people are actually helped by psychoanalysis. If it works, it works...

People tend to skip severeal layers at once, ignore some layers, etc.

I don't think that invalidates the model, though. As I understand it, the degree of each need is individualized; if you don't have much need for a given layer, you'll probably just pop right up to the next.

I'd be interested in some pointers to those studies that invalidate it; post here or use my email, I don't care. They're still teaching the Hierarchy to psych majors, so I'd like to see if there's a gaping flaw in my education.

Re:Two Issues Here

[anticypher]

1) There are almost always spare cables pulled when a control system is put in, for future expansion. Much of the cabling was put in when 1 signal == 1 pair of wires. Now, with modern computerised signalling techniques, 100's of signals == 2 pairs of wires. The extra wires can now be re-used for other things, they won't be carrying railway signals any more.

The highest cost of the internet, magnitudes higher than the routers and PCs, is the physical connection between distant points.

These signal lines will probably not carry web traffic, but lots of store and forward protocols such as email and batch file transfer. But a single linux box in an internet kiosk could provide thousands of villagers with an email address. Larger centres with higher bandwidth could have web browsing available.

2) Not all of indian villages are as primitive as the lowest tier model you mention. Many towns and villages are fairly modern by indian standards, but wireline telephone services are severely lacking because of many problems, copper is stolen by bandits, the population is quite evenly spread out everywhere, with only a few very dense centres making the economics look good. Electricity is starting to penetrate even into the most desolate places. Reliability is poor, but even with 6-12 hours of electricity per day, that's still good enough to route some email.

The most striking thing about india is that many of the poorest people seem to have a lot of free time. If they could be in school learning, they would. If there were jobs available for them, they would be working. With so much time available to them, I would love to see it channeled into learning about the internet and linux and all the other benefits a little knowledge brings. But that can't happen until the internet gets out to kiosks in railway stations in their area.

Maslow's Hierarchy isn't completely relevant here. People who have lived without plumbing don't absolutely require it before starting other projects to improve their lives. As their lives improve, then they will fill in the missing parts. But that doesn't exclude using the internet until there are enough doctors in india to meet everyone's needs.

the AC

Re:Two Issues Here

[Alik]

The most striking thing about india is that many of the poorest people seem to have a lot of free time. If they could be in school learning, they would. If there were jobs available for them, they would be working. With so much time available to them, I would love to see it channeled into learning about the internet and linux and all the other benefits a little knowledge brings. But that can't happen until the internet gets out to kiosks in railway stations in their area.

C'mon. What do most people do with this powerful learning tool? They pirate MP3s, buy stuff, and download gigabytes of porn. People are people. They want pleasures. I know that most of my Internet use could not be construed as educational; it's social interaction at best.

Not to mention that if bandits are willing to swipe the phone lines, they're probably willing to swipe a Web kiosk...

Maslow's Hierarchy isn't completely relevant here. People who have lived without plumbing don't absolutely require it before starting other projects to improve their lives. As their lives improve, then they will fill in the missing parts. But that doesn't exclude using the internet until there are enough doctors in india to meet everyone's needs.

This is true. However, there is a finite amount of government money to spend. I maintain that there is more social benefit to be reaped from fixing health problems than from handing out Internet connections. The Internet is a really sweet toy, but in the end it still serves most people as nothing more than a toy.

Re:Two Issues Here

[baudtender]

> 2) What do people in the villages need with the > Internet anyway?

I have decided that anyone stupid enough to ask
this question doesn't deserve Internet access.

You are hereby sentenced to spend the next year
crapping in your hand and sucking water from the
atmosphere in order to inconvenience Us Really
Important People to the smallest possible
degree (and tell your damned kids to stay the
hell out of MY BANDWIDTH.)

Come back next year and tell us if you've got it
yet.

Baudtender

Re:Two Issues Here

[DgtlGhost]

More importantly, though, being able to nuke the Pakis is clearly more important that educating and improving the lifestyle of the populace. If you educate them, how will they be dumb enough to go and sit in Kashmir and freeze and be shot at? Geez. Don't you know anything about public policy? Besides, if you give them access to information, you can't keep them from gaining acess to the 50 y/o blue prints for a Nuke. Let's face it, even the US still thrives on the gaps in its education system. Does anyone in the US understand why we still use an electoral college, it's not like that many votes are cast, and we count them all anyway....
Sorry, that wandered a bit OT

-Earthman

Re:Two Issues Here

[DJerman]

C'mon. What do most people do with this powerful learning tool? They pirate MP3s, buy stuff, and download gigabytes of porn.

You remind me of Minerva ("Veto, baby") Mayflower from Hudson Hawk :-).

Oddly enough, I don't use the web to pirate MP3's. The stuff I buy on the web is not at my local store (nor, I imagine, is it trucked through India by itinerant peddlers). And I do use it to participate in discussions with people who just don't think things through (present company excepted, of course :).

Bandits steal copper from the poles in the middle of nowhere, so they have plenty of time to run away. The rails are patrolled regularly, and kiosks will be in businesses, railway stations or private homes, where they're much harder to steal.

And doctors are more expensive than you seem to think. I'd bet (some number much less than 10,000) doctors would probably cost more than using the Internet to get basic health and contraception information to all the "internet ladies" in India. In a country of more than a billion, 10,000 doctors would be a drop in the bucket... especially if they have to order supplies by mail :-).

Re:Two Issues Here

[zeck]

If I were a person in a rural Indian village, I'd be more interested in getting me some of that modern plumbing and health care before I wanted to go read Slashdot.

How much do you think it would cost for the Indian government to lay and maintain brand new pipes to bring modern plumbing to the Indian countryside? I'm no expert, but that sounds like a longterm, multi-billion dollar project.

How much do you think it would cost to bring modern healthcare to the Indian countryside? Even if you just had travelling healthcare facilities operating on a minimal budget, it would still cost millions if not billions.

Now weigh those figures against how much it would cost to utilise existing cabling to bring internet service to the Indian countryside. A few big routers and some local kiosks, and you're done.

Re:Two Issues Here

[Alik]

I have decided that anyone stupid enough to ask
this question doesn't deserve Internet access.

Meaning, as far as I can see, that you can't answer the question. I existed before I got my connection. (I didn't have as much fun, but this isn't being billed as an entertainment thing.) The Internet is not a necessity of life. It is not a necessity of civilization or of education. It is a combination of toy and tool, and for many modern users leans more towards toy. It's a wonderful thing, but if I have to choose, I'll take plumbing.

Re:Two Issues Here

[Alik]

Oddly enough, I don't use the web to pirate MP3's. The stuff I buy on the web is not at my local store (nor, I imagine, is it trucked through India by itinerant peddlers). And I do use it to participate in discussions with people who just don't think things through (present company excepted, of course :).

One notices that you didn't deny porn. :-)

You have to admit, though, that most of the bandwidth these days is going to entertainment and commerce (at least as far as I can tell), not educational purposes.

kiosks will be in businesses, railway stations or private homes, where they're much harder to steal.

Fair point.

And doctors are more expensive than you seem to think. I'd bet (some number much less than 10,000) doctors would probably cost more than using the Internet to get basic health and contraception information to all the "internet ladies" in India.

Hey. I'm a med student. Don't you go telling me how much I cost. (Just for that, I'm telling the Secret Medical Conspiracy to aim the Carpal Tunnel Ray at you.)

In all seriousness, though, they don't need full MDs. The major improvements in public health come through sanitation, vaccination, and nutrition. Practically speaking, that sort of thing can be handled by a competent nurse (maybe nurse-practitioner). True, it won't be as good as having a doctor in every village, but it'll be a lot better than nothing. Given the current trend towards volunteerism in aspiring health professionals, one barely even needs to pay them; you just send your volunteers through on a monthly or weekly basis, or have them staff a reasonably distributed clinic system. People will volunteer for anything these days; it's just a matter of funding the program. (Hell, you can probably get Bill Gates to buy the actual supplies; he's already donated large sums to vaccination programs.)

Re:Two Issues Here

[Alik]

Now weigh those figures against how much it would cost to utilise existing cabling to bring internet service to the Indian countryside. A few big routers and some local kiosks, and you're done.

Now factor in cost of keeping the damn things operational. And teaching the locals how to use them. And upgrading the equipment. And powering all of it. And providing useful content (because the Web as it stands now doesn't seem very useful when I put myself in a poor farmer's shoes-he'd-have-if-he-could-afford-them).

Admittedly, a sanitation infrastructure takes work too, as would clinics. On the other hand, I think those things are going to have a much better return in terms of improved productivity, health, etc. than the Net at the present time. This is great for a feel-good solution, and it's certainly a good PR opportunity for whoever wants to donate their shiny new Internet appliances (AOL? You listening?), but I don't see that it's likely to seriously help.

Re:Two Issues Here

[zeck]

Do you honestly believe that the cost of installing and maintaining internet kiosks and teaching locals how to use them would add up to even one hundredth of the cost of installing and maintaining a useful sanitation infrastructure?

Re:Two Issues Here

[Chris Pimlott]

Exactly. Right now, there's perhaps one "phone lady" as the primary communications conduit between one village and the next. You don't think the ability of any person in the village to have a direct link to millions of people throughout the world isn't useful?

It's sort of a useless question, anyhow. The rail companies has the cables and this is what they can do with them. I'm sure if you can come up with a way to run plumbing through copper wires they'd be interested to hear about it.

Re:Two Issues Here

[Wah]

(Hell, you can probably get Bill Gates to buy the actual supplies; he's already donated large sums to vaccination programs.)

How about giving a bit to the Outlook developement team? (ba-dum-dumb:)
--

Re:Two Issues Here

[Alik]

Honestly? Yes. Do you honestly think an Internet infrastructure is inexpensive to run? Do you think maintaining a network the size of a country through a single agency is going to be easy, given how often routers can fail? Do you realize that any kind of sanitation, even "the toilet flushes it into the river" is better than the current situation of "wherever you can find a place to squat down"?

The fiber (or coax, or whatever) is in place. This is good. However, a network is much more than fiber, just as a sanitation system is more than just pipes. It needs admins. It needs security. It needs content that's relevant to the people using it. It needs a protocol for what to do when the train station's resident snake decides to make the kiosk's innards its new nest. (Yes, this can happen. My grandmother lives in Mumbai, and until she moved to a well-elevated condominum she still used to get the occasional cobra coiled around the water pumps. It's a lot worse out in the country.)

Keeping the network up so we can flame at each other costs a whole pile o' cash.

Re:Two Issues Here

[the_other_one]

1) You're running on the spare carrying capacity of a dedicated control system?

I can just see the headline now. Train derailed by DDOS attach on switch ()and/or /. effect.

Re:Two Issues Here

[Pig Hogger]

1) You're running on the spare carrying capacity of a dedicated control system?

Railroad signalling is not very bandwidth-hungry. Signal and switches operation instructions and acknowledgement of both reception and execution are extremely reduntandly transmitted (you just can't allow 0.0001% of error there, unless you don't mind picking up a 1000 ton pile of scrap metal seasoned with mangled human remains), at a very low rate (in the range of dozens of baud).
The rest of the bandwidth is used to transmit movement orders and requisitions and to track the movement of rolling stock, all things that classify as mundane data-processing tasks that are certainly as bandwith-hungry as an ICQ session.

* * *

By the 1920's, US railroads were heavily "computerized", since the ICC requirements for detailed freight and passenger statistics made them good clients of ye olde Hollerith tabulating machinery companie...
Their extensive telegraph networks also gave them an early distributed teletypeprinter capability; so, in essence, railroads were at the edge of technological progress...
Railroad signalling is also an interesting logic development, in that the large "interlocking plants" controlling railroad junctions were nothing less than computers programmed to disallow conflicting train movements.
It's always interesting to study railroading history: they've been through exactly all the very same problems faced by airlines and UPS and networked companies over 120 years ago, and it is hilarious to see those who ignore history to stupidly repeat it...

--
Here's my mirror

Re:Two Issues Here

[zeck]

Keeping the network up so we can flame at each other costs a whole pile o' cash.

But next to the costs involved with a sanitation system, that pile of cash is nothing.

This is not an issue of "we have the money for an internet infrastructure or a sanitation infrastructure, but not both." The two things are not even close to comparable. You are grossly underestimating the cost of any meaningful attempt at a national sanitation system.

Re:Two Issues Here

[CiaranMc]

Just so you know, the phrase 'Paki' is quite a bad racial slur in Britain. It's right up there with 'nigger'.

So, you know. Be careful what you say in international forums.

-Ciaran

Re:Two Issues Here

[DHartung]

>What do people in the villages need with the Internet anyway? They're currently working on a model where there's one woman who's the "phone lady" and who acts as the primary link to other villages.

Actually, it turns out that the internet is an excellent way to replace the "phone lady". Often poor families have the primary breadwinner working far out of town, even out of the country entirely. E-mail even better than the telephone for communicating important news and financial arrangements, without requiring perfect timing at both ends, and much faster than postal mail.

>Despite what pundits claim, you can't really get much of an education from the Web alone (yet).

India has a big chicken-and-egg problem: how to get from a prehistorical agricultural economy to the information age. They never had a strong industrial base, so there isn't anything to build a middle class off of or to sell to other nations. The solution India is working on is jump-start to a full information economy, more or less, by turning as many of its children as it can into engineers and computer scientists. Not surprisingly, many of these people end up working in or at least for companies in the US.

>If I were a person in a rural Indian village, I'd be more interested in getting me some of that modern plumbing and health care before I wanted to go read Slashdot. It's basic Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs stuff.

It's hard to judge from this article, but I'd say that some of those needs ARE taken care of. These are rural villages, and many of them are dirt poor by Western standards, but that doesn't mean that India hasn't already made great strides in meeting that "hierarchy of needs" -- they really have. Water, power, transportation, are already there. Even basic literacy has reached record levels. Now they're moving to the next phase, but they don't have time to wait for people to get factory jobs, join the middle class, buy ranch houses, etc.
----

Re:Two Issues Here

[dodobh]

It is not that nuking the Pakistanis is more important to us, but nukes here are a question of survival. Pakistan is fighting a proxy war in Kashmir (with plenty of help earlier from the CIA and the US govt.). We have two hostile nuclear powers to contend with (Pakistan and China).

From the past thousand years, India has been attacked whenever it was militarily weak. Our prosperity has been only when the country was militarily strong.

And the education problem is not what you say, its because otherwise our politicians will never be voted to power otherwise :(.

And, it appears as if being a nuclear power has its benefits, we get listened to a bit more at the international level :)

Re:Two Issues Here

[Alik]

To hell with individual replies. I'm consolidating.

1) Yes, I know "Paki" is a racial slur. Notice that that whole paragraph was highly tongue-in-cheek.

2) If it's going to small towns and not the actual villages, then I retract my statement that it's not useful. When I hear "village", I think of things that are still on a low-tech agrarian model.

3) Would someone explain why they think even simple sanitation is more expensive than a country-wide network? Sanitation only needs to work on a local scale, last I checked.

4) What good is it turning everybody into coders and engineers if you don't have the rest of the infrastructure for a society?

Sure, this will help some people. Maybe it'll even be a magic bullet for everyone, but I doubt it. For all the talk about how the New Economy or the Digital Revolution is changing things, society still seems to be on the same path it was 10 years ago, just with more reactionary elements.

Re:Two Issues Here

[jonnythan]

Well basically there's no evidence for it. every study that has attempted to validate it has failed miserably. THAT invalidates the model

pilot project?

[XyouthX]

Except from the fact that this is bringing internet access to what might be considered as a "third world country" on a larger scale (which is great), I can't really see what's so special about this. Because AFAIK one of the major Swedish networks, SUNET, has been built around the Swedish Railroads Signal System/network since the beginning, years and years ago.

What's next?

[diarrhea]

News flash!

The Chinese government announced today that the Great Wall's unused communications wires will be used for the internet. It will be the only internet connection visible from space, and the only one in the world with a human back-up capability. (If the cables fail, messengers will be sent on top of the wall)

News flash!

The world's deadliest internet connection went online today when the unused wires of the Los Angeles subway system were converted for data transmission. AOL, the owner of the new link, says it is not responsible for muggings and shootings.

News flash!

Scientists at MIT have succeeded today in turning a poodle into a 10Mbps data link. While the technology is still in its infancy, analysts speculate that in the future the internet will no longer rely on wires or satellites. Instead, roads will be artificially sprayed with water to form large puddles.

Re:What's next?

[djweis]

Scientists at MIT have succeeded today in turning a poodle into a 10Mbps data link. While the technology is still in its infancy, analysts speculate that in the future the internet will no longer rely on wires or satellites. Instead, roads will be artificially sprayed with water to form large puddles.

Well, I would rather slosh through puddles than poodles, but that's because I have a dog and know what they can be like :-)

Re:What's next?

[diarrhea]

Canine telecommunications? Hmmmmmmmmmm.... *LIGHT BULB*

Sorry about that, I typed it in a hurry :)

Possibilities in America

[John Goerzen]

While the US also has a rail network, we don't have this particular need. However, we could perhaps exploit it in a different way. Wouldn't it be nice to have Internet access available while you're *on* a train? Instead of having to rely on spotty CDPD, Amtrak could install Ethernet jacks. Assuming we also have such spare capacity, and that it can be tapped by the running trains.

Re:Possibilities in America

[dolanh]

Perhaps i'm wrong, but the new high speed trains that Amtrak will be using in the eastern corridor (and maybe someday, hopefully, out west), have some kind of net access on-board.

Re:Possibilities in America

[Dinosaur Neil]

Actually, we already have exploited it in a similar way; back in the 80's post Ma-Bell breakup, a then little known startup long distance company called "Sprint" decided to build a fiber-optic network from scratch, rather than rely on Ma-Bell's extant noisy copper wires. Initially, things were looking expensive and complicated due to old (and mostly irrelevant) government regulation dictating where they could lay their glass "wires", but eventually they overcame this by running their fiber along existing railway lines (in some complex but less expensive lease deal with the railrods) because the railroads already had all the requisite permissions. Once they had their "pin-drop" network in place, they had the money and wherewithal to lay fiber wherever they pleased, but they started with the railways...

Access on the trains could be tricky; any connection would pretty much have to be radio of some sort which means more (and expensive) hardware instead of "in situ" resources. Give it time though...

Re:Possibilities in America

[Mija Cat]

Hmmm, how about a wedding of sorts?
Something old (existing railway line and wires)
Something new (new technology)
Something borrowed (an idea, from India)
Something blue...bluetooth.

Think it through. Set up some kind of relationship between the train and intermittent (every couple hundered meters there's a control box or switch or an emergency phone) control point, let the train act as a repeater, using "cell" logic to pass from one node to the next.

Not that it'd work, it just made a great premise.
Meow

Re:Possibilities in America

[jguthrie]

Dinosaur Neil Wrote:
Actually, we already have exploited it in a similar way; back in the 80's post Ma-Bell breakup, a then little known startup long distance company called "Sprint" decided to build a fiber-optic network from scratch, rather than rely on Ma-Bell's extant noisy copper wires. Initially, things were looking expensive and complicated due to old (and mostly irrelevant) government regulation dictating where they could lay their glass "wires", but eventually they overcame this by running their fiber along existing railway lines (in some complex but less expensive lease deal with the railrods) because the railroads already had all the requisite permissions.

Oh, using railroad right of way for telecommunications wiring goes back as far as the railroad does. That's even farther back than the Morse telegraph, 160 years and more. (Started in England, or so I believe.)

Abour SPRINT, the story that I've heard is that SPRINT stands for Southern Pacific Railway INTernal communications. According to that story, the guys at SPRR decided that their long-distance telephone bills were too high. Since they were already leasing their right-of-way to various fiber optic companies (most long-distance carriers don't own very much of their actual long-distance connectivity--they lease it from various fiber and microwave companies) they decided to run their own fiber and install their own equipment. They wound up with so much capacity that they, bolstered by then by the court decision allowing MCI to sell long distance to end users, decided to follow MCI's lead and sell long distance services directly to end users.

I suppose that most ./ers are in one big city or another, so it doesn't look to them like this is something we'd want to do in the USA, but there's a lot of little towns out there that can't get decent Internet access because a high-speed feed from the nearest POP costs more than that town can support, economically. Long-distance wireless links are one possibility. The other possibility, since an awful lot of these town have train tracks running through them, is to lease right-of-way from the railroad and run your own fiber.

The problem there is to find small-town ISP wannabees that have enough savvy to know how to do that. I've got the savvy, but my ISP is something like 4 miles from SPRINT's Houston POP.

For on-the-train use, you'd use wireless, of course.

Re:Possibilities in America

[AArthur]

Of course there are many areas in the USA that are rurual and without railroads (mainly because there is no reason to run a track by them, or the hills are just too steep to run a track).

This is mainly a problem in small isolated villages in the Rockies or in the North East USA (New England -- VT, Eastern New York, Western Mass, etc., where hills and 10-20 mile distances seprate towns. Wireless won't work well here, many of the towns get poor radio reception, and cellphones have trouble. A nearby town, called Renselearville suffers from these problems, quite badly -- especially in the center of town which is in a small valley.

The one I had

[Greyfox]

The one I had was of people loading a bunch of CDs onto a train, shipping them out to the farthest reaches of India, waiting for the responses, and shipping them back. Talk about horrible latencies! But the bandwidth would probably be OK...

Re:The one I had

[Pig Hogger]

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station-wagon crammed with CDs, or a 747 full of disquettes!!!

--
Here's my mirror

Clever retooling of existing infrastructure....

[emerson]

I'm reminded of a story my housemate showed me at one point, where some telcos in South America were having trouble with people digging up and reselling any copper line they laid.

Solution? They placed 56K frame signals (or maybe it was X.25, my memory is fuzzy) on the existing barbed wire fences; nobody was going to cut those down and risk losing their cattle, in fact, that made for free repairs of the frame line, since the ranchers would repair the fence on their own dime....

--

Re:Clever retooling of existing infrastructure....

[Tei'ehm Teuw]

It's working here as well. Look at companies like Telergy in New Your state. They cut a deal with the power companies to use their right of ways and now are laying 15+ miles of fiber a week with essentially zero impeadance when it comes to right of ways.

US West is doing the same in their 14 state region and many cable companies are now looking at using the water right of ways to lay thier cable.

In Virgina where I live, it's common practice now to put up cell relays on high voltage power line towers which are owned by the federal highway comission. Look in the center of the exit ramps near you, I'll bet you see some. It's a much cheaper route to take when you don't have to purchace the land and file the easments or variances. In the US most of our high end fiber lines are also run along railroad right of ways. The avenue between West Texas and Wyoming (including Denver and Colorado Springs) is alsmost 100% along railroad right of ways, right next to I-25. Unfortunately this has some real negative impacts during train derailments and other disasters because the redundancy built into the systems usually have the backup strands running within a few feet of the main. I know, I've put hundreds of miles of fiber in the ground along this route.

Re:Clever retooling of existing infrastructure....

[348]

So would it be P/HG=(NP/G=HG*PT), where PT=your pants and HG=Steamy Hot Grits?

Just curious.

Re:Clever retooling of existing infrastructure....

[348]

Thnk you for the clarification, I'll just read quietly with hot grits in my pants.

thank you

Re:Clever retooling of existing infrastructure....

[Ed Avis]

In Britain before telecoms deregulation, the second largest telephone network was owned by British Rail. This was spun off into Racal Telecom, which was recently bought by 'Global Crossing' (whose web site is so poor I won't even link to it).

Similarly Energis is a company which sends data traffic over the National Grid power cables.

Re:Clever retooling of existing infrastructure....

[geekflavor]

fnord

Re:Clever retooling of existing infrastructure....

[PaulZ]

Does anyone have the URL for this story about the fences in South America?

An all new meaning to "Karma"

[spack]

Now, does the Slashdot crew need to update the faq for the new readers from India that explains how Slashdot karma works? On the other hand, it would be fun to imply that bad posts may result in being continuously reincarnated as spam messages for all eternity.

Kinda Like Sprint...

[TheZork]

which began as a unit of the Southern Pacific Rail Corp. (thus the 'Spr'). The telegraph and telephone lines that ran along the tracks became the backbone of their long-distance network.

Re:Kinda Like Sprint...

[anticypher]

Southern Pacific Railroad INterstate Telephone system. The sales end was known as United Telephone, and they would connect directly to companies near railroad tracks, bypassing the local monopoly.

The rail companies all had their own internal telegraph and telephone systems, since they already had the right-of-way going from town to town. Once they realised they could sell the excess, a whole new industry was born.

The old SPRINT telephone system was a great learning grounds for some early phreakers. Security against fraud was non-existant, and gateways to the regular phone system were almost untraceable. Not that I would know any of this first-hand *ahem* :-)

the AC

Re:Kinda Like Sprint...

[Pig Hogger]

The rail companies all had their own internal telegraph and telephone systems, since they already had the right-of-way going from town to town. Once they realised they could sell the excess, a whole new industry was born.

They still do. And they interconnect their networks toghether, as well to Bell local loops, so you don't have all those silly long-distance restrictions. Better yet, the telephone network is fully accessible trough the locomotive radios, so you can call anywhere in north america for free from locomotive cabs...

It great to order pizza when you're stuck outside Chicago on a freight train, waiting for traffic to clear... (I've done a few times. Once, in 11 hours, we only moved 5 miles)...

--
Here's my mirror

Re:Kinda Like Sprint...

[anticypher]

How difficult is it to direct a pizza delivery guy to the cab of a freight train in the Chicago yards?

I was really young when I first heard of the battles between Sprint and Ma Bell. By the time the justice department started to look at the monopoly status of ol' Ma, they started to interconnect to competing long haul carriers. A few years after you could connect from a Bell to Sprint, MCI was created.

Interconnect, that's where the money is!

the AC
are we off topic yet?

Re:Kinda Like Sprint...

[Pig Hogger]

How difficult is it to direct a pizza delivery guy to the cab of a freight train in the Chicago yards? You just call a pizzeria within earshot of the crossing you're stuck at, and to confirm it, you say, "go outside, and in thirty seconds, I'm gonna blow my whistle three short times" (nowhere in regulations you do have to blow it three short times)...

And if you DO have business there, railroad cops are amongst the nicest people around. They're so bored that they're happy to see new people! Social engineering galore!!!

--
Here's my mirror

Good Idea, but definetely some problems.

[krystal_blade]

I think this is an excellent idea, and one that should be checked out by other developing nations looking for a boost into the present.

There are several problems with using this, (not that it is a bad idea, of course, these are just some little facts...)

The first and foremost has to be the quality of the lines. I doubt they are of the highest quality, and definetely not noise free. So we'll get some packet loss, and voice over net won't work well.

The second is the exposure of these lines to the elements. Meaning, LIGHTNING.

Radhick: "2.50 for three hours? Okay, here you go."
sits down at the computer and grabs the mouse
Station announcement:"Storm Warning!! Storm Warning!!"
Radhick: "Hey, I think I'll check a weather si-YEEEEAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!" bzzt.

Another thing to consider (another packet loss and noise problem) is running the data lines next to lines that could have fairly large amounts of power running with them. Parrallell to them... Bad Ju Ju, If I recall.

Like I said before, I think this is an excellent idea. I'm pretty sure the folks doing this know what they're doing, and again, ANYTHING is better than nothing. Well... anything except for that whole lightning bit...

krystal_blade

Re:Good Idea, but definetely some problems.

[dolanh]

Another problem - unfortunately most developing countries (esp. those in south america) are in the process of destroying the rail systems it took so many years to build. So, by the time such a system becomes viable, there is no track to use it on anymore.

Re:Good Idea, but definetely some problems.

[DJerman]

These are the extra control lines, not power lines. They're already transmitting the signals that control and communicate between the switches and stations on the railroad. Oddly, I don't recall reading about a large number of storm-related deaths amongst railroad employees in India, but then, we don't get much news from there.

They're probably at least as good as telephone lines, and probably better, as a downed phone line doesn't derail a million dollars worth of rolling stock and kill a bunch of passengers ;-).

Re:Good Idea, but definetely some problems.

[krystal_blade]

Exactly what kind of control are you looking at though? Sure, in the U.S., and other countries, you could send a 101010 signal down a line and have it mean something, but I've got a feeling that when they are saying "dated" and "old" equipment in india, they aren't referring to something even resembling a trs-80.

They're probably referring to 50's/60's tech at best. Which means that 101010 signal is basically AC Power. The most basic functional component (also the cheapest, and one of the oldest) of an "on/off" circuit is a simple relay. And relays run on POWER. Not the huge, hoover dam style high tension power, but power enough to disrupt a fast data connection by tossing too much noise across lines via inductive coupling.

As far as the quality of the lines, if the lines are truly dated, the best you could hope for is a hoisted telco line like quality. Not very good. Old Telco lines are usually asbestos coated, which cracks over time, and allows all sorts of nastiness into the line. Not the type of nastiness that derails a DC voltage from making it's designated rounds, but just what the doctor ordered when it comes to disrupting even decent data rates. I'd say about 9600 baud tops.

Simple rail control methods have been in effect in the US since around the 1920's. There wasn't anything remotely resembling data communication back then, unless you want to count in the teletype. Those methods are probably updated a little, and made a little more reliable, but other than that, I'd say little else has changed. Why change a working object that is time proven in reliability with something that costs more, and isn't really proven?

krystal_blade

Re:I guess it's better than nothing, but...

[linuxonceleron]

You obviously have no idea, I know my mother's company (A large investment firm) has many people in India who write code for them. There are areas in India which *are* technologically advanced, mainly the large cities. Problem is, the Indian programmers get paid about 1/2 of the american ones, but the good ones get promoted to work in america. And so what if the less advanced cultures are trying to use the internet to communicate with other english-speaking people. You don't own the internet, and you can't say that its only for English Speaking Technoids, I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. I have to deal with people speaking broken/no english every day in school, but I deal with those people as best I can, some of them actually turn out to be decent people once you get to know them, so please try not to judge people based on how technologically advanced their country is but instead what kind of people they are in general

The Information Super-railway?

[MrKevvy]

Perhaps someone misunderstood the term "network engineer."

Re:The Information Super-railway?

[Tex Bravado]

Right; and why would you call it a pilot project, when clearly it's an engineering project ?

Re:The Information Super-railway?

[SkullOne]

HAHAHA!!!! Nice one, man :)
Systems Administrator
Servu Networks
http://www.servuhome.net

The same method is used in the states for fibre

[Money__]

This interesting article a few years ago on Wired talks about the methods used by Qwest to pull fibre here in the good ol' USA. Interestingly a railroad track is one of the few features that make the straightest line posible between 2 points, and also cut straight across political and zoneing issues.

From the article:"In Georgia, the rail plow is ahead of schedule, digging up the red clay at a rate of three miles a day. One moment Smith and Meiklejohn are calculating how long it will take the man who restores the gravel portion near the track to catch up with the unexpectedly fast work of the plow. The next moment they're determining where the nine-car train can be pulled off the tracks so a scheduled freight can pass."

Useing the existing railroad system solves many other logisticle issues such as how to get thousands of miles of fibre optic cable to the rail plow in an affordable way (by rail!, of course).
___

Hrm, railways...

[Shaheen]

(I'm from Bombay, India, so I think I can speak... :)

Railways are a bad idea, IMO. The reason is that more than half the people on the rail didn't even buy a ticket. They are literally hanging off the sides of the train, and the cops can't get them off because there's way too many of them. If they had any money to spend on Internet access, they'd be spending it on food.

A lot of the people who bought a ticket are most likely going to their families (whom they haven't seen in a long time because they didn't have the money...) and will hardly give a shit about 'net access. This isn't a sap story, it's the truth.

The other percentage that actually has the money to spend would be quite small and wouldn't give much of a return.

Where they *should* put this stuff is in those rich country club type places. Those are the only people who have enough money to put into a computer or 'net access anyway. And, placed correctly (like at a few select tables in the restaurant or something like that) could easily be a conversation piece.

Re:Hrm, railways...

[shri]

Jeez, I hope that was loaded with sarcasm that I did not detect.

Indian "dot coms" and the dumb ass press have conned the people into thinking that the 'nets all about money. Well sir, its not. The internet is at its best one of the best means of breaking down barriers in society.

Think about education when you think about bringing technology to the villages. About two decades ago, your argument could well have been applied to the remote village educational programs which were run using INSAT... well, you know what, TV brought about a huge change in our villages....

WAIT .. lets talk about the wonders that the Rural exchanges developed by C-DOT brought to our villages. People can actually make calls to anywhere in India from virtually anywhere else. Your argument could well have applied to telephones a couple of years ago.

Re:Hrm, railways...

[Lord_Sloth]

Breaking down barriers is pretty useless if you starve to death, from what I have seen (from some photos taken by a friend who visited) poverty is a major concern, the internet is a VERY minor concern, sure it might be good for tourists, but AFAIK (if anyone knows correct me if I am wrong) trade in Indian villages is mainly by barter.

Re:Hrm, railways...

[shri]

Absolutely, a large part of the poverty is due to a couple of reasons (other than western perceptions) which are corruption and illiteracy. The net can be tools used to fight both.

Poverty is relative. My equivalent culture shock was loosing my way around Chicago's downtown and ending up driving through the projects. Ugh! For a second I thought I was driving through the slums of Bombay.

Re:Hrm, railways...

[donutello]

I hope you're just trolling.

What does people not paying for train tickets have ANYTHING to do with using the spare bandwidth on the railway communication links?

The proposal is to make internet access available at remote locations. It's admirable that they realize the need to make internet access available to the masses - even if all they can afford at the moment is cyber-cafe type places.

Re:I guess it's better than nothing, but...

[pintu]

Everyone's got to start somewhere. Each new group of Net users has been greeted with the same comments (Demon, AOL...) People tend to wise up or get tired of their new abused toy.

I think the more people on the Net the better, and the more variety of people the better yet. Not everything of worth comes from those the same as us (from the point of view of the original US Netties, who would have expected Linux to come from outside the US?)

Ethnocentric or maybe even racist, perhaps; missing what I consider to be a big point of the Net, certainly.

Availability

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Well, having ridden the rails extensively in India, I agree that this is a good way to link lots of places together, electronically or otherwise.

But the availability question is a different matter. Tracks are continuously under repair and/or conversion to standard gauge. I hope that the network users are willing to use UUCP or some non-realtime protocol with a reasonable retry threshhold.
-
bukra fil mish mish
-
Monitor the Web, or Track your site!

Re:I guess it's better than nothing, but...

[isaac_akira]

Do we really need more posts like "how r u doin? do u study? i am 14 Indian. I m usin intrnet for 1st time"

I think this is a GREAT thing! Sure, YOU may not want to talk to that 14 year old from India, but get him talking with a 14 year old from Pakistan and see how long it takes for those two kids to realize they have a lot in common. When you have all the kids growing up and talking to eachother, maybe they can make a difference in their countries' relations.

I agree with the other posts about plumbing and electricity probably being more important in the near term, but don't underestimate the power of communication. So many problems we face today are the result of groups being isolated from eachother and not understanding eachother. The Internet is one way of changing that.

- Isaac =)

Not necessarily

[Ami Ganguli]

You're spoiled by the relatively reliable power available in the West. I'm sure the people in rural India would love to have more reliable power, but they're used to not having it. Rotating blackouts (because of lack of capacity) are a way of life.

The internet could bring with it educational opportunities that would be impossible otherwise. This is far more important in the long term than a few hours a day of extra power.

Plus, solving the energy problem would be very expensive. Power stations cost millions of dollars. That money would be better spent on sanitation systems. Internet access provided by existing cabling could be quite cheap.

Re:Not necessarily

[timbu2]

OK, good point. Reliable sanitation before electricity.

Still last time I check most internet access devices need electricity to work.

timbu

Re:Not necessarily

[DgtlGhost]

Let's not forget one of the main problems w/ an Internet Cafe, that implies they might have food... I'm thinking that Nutrition needs to be right up there w/ sanitation. But hey, now they can all look up the specs for flush toilets! Yeah, it's good, but not the best thing that could have happened to the contenent.

-Earthman

Re:I guess it's better than nothing, but...

[akgoel]

I think this is a GREAT thing! Sure, YOU may not want to talk to that 14 year old from India, but get him talking with a 14 year old from Pakistan and see how long it takes for those two kids to realize they have a lot in common. When you have all the kids growing up and talking to eachother, maybe they can make a difference in their countries' relations.

Dude, I so wish this could happen. Unfortunately, the hate and rhetoric run so deep between the two countries that it has trickled down to the kids. Both countries' children believe that the other country is a mortal enemy, and it would be difficult for two anonymous IM'ers to not get past this hate. If the internet can help even a few Indians and Pakistanis realize how foolish the war is, then this project is more than worth it.

Why not use rails themselves?

[MeanGene]

In the old early times of telegraph, they'd transmit the electric signal over the rails.

Now, judging by the girth there's got to be lots of bandwidth in those. ;-)

Made some calculations...

[loren]

Well... I made some calculations:

I started with the following:

• India has 38000 linear miles of rail
• India is 1.2 million square miles in size

If most rail in India is perpendicular (i.e. either North-South or East-West), and this is split pretty much evenly, then there is about 19,000 miles of rail parallel to each axis. Since railroad tracks are contiguous, you can estimate the average distance between parallel tracks to be 1,200,000/19,000 miles apart, or about 63 miles apart. Doing this you can then extrapolate that the average Indian homeowner lives about 32 miles from the nearest train-track.

In my opinion, that's still a large amount of cable to run... Especially when, in the states, we're so worryed about "the last mile" bottleneck.

Comments?

Re:Made some calculations...

[adc]

I don't think that the Indian govt. is looking to provide Net connection in every home. Heck, they haven't even provided telephone lines in every home (or even village!). Why talk of telephone - there is never ever any electrcity in these villages! The govt plans to use the Net for it's own administrative purposes (at least initially).

Re:Made some calculations...

[pal]

hi,

if you lay you a grid of squares 64 units on a side, then the average distance between a point in the plane and the grid is 32/3, a little less than 11. to arrive at this number you have to integrate the distance function over the square, and divide by its area. it's not obvious. (one way to see that your answer of 32 is wrong is to notice that 32 is the _maximal_ distance between a point and the grid. most points are closer.)

also, to assume that the population is uniformly distributed is really wrong. most everyone will live in clumps, and railroads will run right through those clumps. so the average distance is going to be much smaller than 11.

aside from that, they clearly don't want to run the connection straight to residences.

- pal

Re:Made some calculations...

[loren]

No... You are absolutely correct. Dividing 32 by 3 sounds like an accurate way to compute the average (mean) distance... I'm going to trust your calculus here... I haven't looked at a calc book in 2 years. You can also look at the median distance:

The proper way to compute this (still assuming, incorrectly uniform distribution) is to split the 63x63 sq. mi. square into 4 32 mile high isosolese triangles, and finding the point split them where the top triangle's area is equal to the bottom trapazoid's area, or (going back to the grid) finding the distance to an inner square where it's area is 1/2 the area of the 63x63 mile square:

The inner square would be about 44 miles on each side... 63/sqrt(2)

This would make the average distance about 9 miles from the track... (63-44)/2

Regards,

Slowest internet connection yet!

[mortenal]

That'll be some bitchy latency! You'll have to wait for the computer to print each packet, wait for the train to come, send the packets out on the train, (there will probably be a charge for each packet), where a person at the main station types your packets into the computer, gets the response, prints the response, and sends it to (hopefully) you via the next train... you then type in the packet, and (drumroll please), you get a webpage!!! (if everybody typed right). Imagine playing quake on that!

yes, i read the article. that was humor.

38,000?

[johnos]

38,000 miles of railway seemed a bit low to me for a country the size of India.

www.indianrailway.com/railway has the goods.

62,000 route kilometres, 1,007,000 track kilometres.

That's 38,750 miles and 629,375 miles respectively.

Re:38,000?

[Tex Bravado]

Well, they say 1,07,000; what is the number, really ? I interpret this to mean that along much of the 38K route miles, there are parallel rails. (I.e., 1 route mile with 3 parallel tracks = 3 track miles) If that's what it means, I could easily believe there are 107,000 track miles.

Re:38,000?

[aat]

That's correct 1,00,000 is a numerical unit known as the lakh, which is the same as 100,000 in American usage.

Arun

Re:38,000?

[johnos]

I stand corrected

Funny repercussions

[drix]

Just think - now some obscure village in India will have a 'fatter pipe' than you!

Groan and bear it :)

--

Re:Slasdot Moderation for Indian People ;-)

[WasterDave]

Overrated and Underrated are used for when you can't remember if the others add a point or take it away.

This is known as the "is flamebait a good thing" effect.

Dave ;)

Indian Internet Cafes

[nitro69]

My girlfriend is Indian and she complained a lot about the price of Internet cafes when she last went over there. It wasn't much to her of course, due to the exchange rate, but apparently her family insisted on paying.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Yes, the Right-of-Way is a _BIG_ help

[redelm]

One of the biggest problem in any transmission line/pipe is obtaining the right-of-way (space) for the cable/pipe. After that, the biggest problem is transporting materials to the line head where the work is going on.

A railways solves both problems neatly. With the right trencher, it should be possible to bury fiber just outside the ballast at greater than 10 miles-per-hour! If your signals system has enough spare power, you can use that for the repeater boxes.

All-in-all, a very neat solution.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Great Thinking!

[nileshch]

I feel this is a very good idea to use the railways' control system to bring internet to the villages in India. Here, all the people who have posted above are talking about providing basic amenities to the villagers before giving them internet access. But who said Internet access is for individuals? Even if there is one internet connection per village it is more than enough. People dont need the net for checking mail and chatting. People need the net for communicating with the various govt authorities. They need it for getting the latest market prices of goods(foodgrains, vegetables, etc) which they produce, so that they are not duped by cunning middlemen. They need the net for carrying out legal matters (Here in India a district office could be tens of miles away from a village and travelling is a nightmare without public transport) There are many other productive uses which can be exploited.

Nilesh C.

priorities

[phatboy77]

Isn't India going through one of the worst droughts. Shouldn't water access be more important than Internet access

One step better...

[EskimoJoe]

Whatever happened to the idea of using the power grid for Internet access? I know I've read an article sometime in an airline magazine on the subject. Some group in Dallas, TX was supposed to test it.

Re:I guess it's better than nothing, but...

[nileshch]

Come on, dont tell us, hatred runs so deep in the common Indians and Pakistanis. Its all political hype. And this is used for political gains only.
Mr A.K. Goel, Dont you know that Pakistani people love to watch Indian movies, Indians love to listen to Pakistani ghazal singers? This is just one example. If I go on, the list is endless.

I'LL TELL YOU WHY

[Anonymous Coward]

While I don't think we need some feel good flower child get eveyone connected crap, I disagree with you past that. Every new person is a potential solver of a problem and it's a gamble worth taking. Who knows some six yr old in India may come up with a way to increase bandwidth 500x.

Jason Salopek

jason.salopek@usa.net

IMO Slashdotters should learn to shut up and go on

[cOdEgUru]

I am from India.

It has one of the most colorful and diverse cultures around the world

It invented Zero thousands of years ago

It invented Plastic Surgery, long before Columbus decided to go on a journey to discover India and found United States instead.

The Pentium chip was invented by an Indian

Anyone heard of Chandrasekhars limit in Astronomy, related to Blackholes ?

It evaded the eyes of Spy Satelites and ever watchful CIA to test its most recent atomic weapons (though I am not too happy about it :))

It has practically amazed and held the entire world in wonder from the early stages of civilization to the present by its Intellectuals, Artists and its lush green beauty.

We have also been victims of racial discrimination and I wish it werent so.

Still in the Northern States of India, we still pay 2 Rs(1 Dollar - 45 Rs) as daily wage for the oppressed

I dont think Internet would bring an end to everything and I dont believe we have a one stop solution there. But what good is technology if it doesnt reach every home around the world (or at the least every village) and reach out and enrich their lives ? What good is Slashdot if it doesnt affect the way we think, the way we act ? If Technology or the knowledge of it, has turned us in to super human intellectuals, and we believe only we should rake its benefits, then we are both ignorant and pitiful.

I believe people in India are equally entitled to enjoy the benefits Internet provides, as much as any 14 yr old in United States or any other developed country. If we believe otherwise, then we are segregating the people on Earth and committing racial discrimination ourselves.

If anyone here were led to believe that India harbors or nurtures only criminal minds within itself, then they should checkout some of the bright minds that has sprung forth from that land. Take any major software player here (like HP, M$, Sun, Intel etc.) you would find us there. Not because we are cheap, otherwise you wouldnt find us in OS Kernel group, Compiler groups etc.

We believe in our tradition, our culture and our unity in diversity. Does any other country could boast about any of the above ? I didnt think so!..

Re:just what we need

[Astin]

Considering the majority of the people in India are Hindu, and the jihad is part of the Muslim faith, I doubt too many Indians will be making bombs for their holy war.

Hmm....

[CMU_Nort]

This should at least be a little faster than sneakernet.

Living in India and thinking of all this.

[da_King]

Living in the capital of India, thinking of all this being possible is very easy.

Just like I think one day after finishing college, Microsoft will pick me up and make me the heir to Bill Gates.

Very frankly (mark these as the words of a young Indian),

I am proud of my country for being so Adventurous !!

The country where we everyday hear about a new scam being unearthed, it is quite usual to find such plans being churned out everyday. Be not surprized if you read in the last row of your newspaper that half of the funds were missing in records.

The question is : Do these plans make sense when you can't even ensure full water supply and failure proof electricity even in your country's capital ? When you can't even ensure a single hospital/school in these rural areas....)

In Rural India (I am talking of the "most" rural parts), where people aren't even aware of what use does that black box called Telephone is of, we expect them to understand and surf to gain Knowledge ! What a great faith in the Internet ! Show me 100 politians who can learn to use the mouse correctly and I will believe.

Still, our country's intellectuals have the habit of thinking the difficult things first. And they many times succeed. (Yes World, remember the Bomb...) God bless them, and may this project be fruitful. amen.

Re:Living in India and thinking of all this.

[tweek]

My opinion is that the water and power problems (which happened at least twice daily in Bangalore) are due to the government's greed. If they would open up infrastructure to commercial companies then maybe these things would cease to be an issue.

Re:Living in India and thinking of all this.

[shri]

Yep this is what we can expect with every village getting 'connected'.

Re:Living in India and thinking of all this.

[Drashcan]

Hey Hindu,

(start cynism here)You are forgetting Hitler, Stalin and Mao. They also had some wonderful inventions. Hitler his V missiles and the seeds of the nuke, Stalin and Mao both got nukes. Look, what a great men they were. Moved their people forward. Besides your beloved neighbour also "invented" one.(stop cyn)

Fuck off you jackass. You are the proof that undemocratic idiots like you cannot be trusted with deadly technology.

I was always wondering how such a wise guy like Gandhi fitted among you primitives. That's probably why he was shot.

Calimero

Answer: grain prices

[tylerh]

What do people in the villages need with the Internet anyway?

Rural India is primarily agrarian. Historically, urban grain merchants knew current market prices, rural farmers did not. The internet could give farmers a more equal bargaining position, hopefully raising rural incomes and alleviating rural poverty.

maybe somebody wants to auction off a used water buffalo on eBay

Being able to this would be huge economic boon for rural villages: it would allow more efficient allocation of scarce resources. Think of it as a stock market for stock.

Re:Answer: grain prices

[Alik]

Rural India is primarily agrarian. Historically, urban grain merchants knew current market prices, rural farmers did not. The internet could give farmers a more equal bargaining position, hopefully raising rural incomes and alleviating rural poverty.

OK. I'll agree that this is a use for the Internet. However, it's not something that needs the Internet. One could have the phone lady place a call to the nearest city and ask. Alternatively, one could send a single guy from the village in on the train to the city every so often. (They probably do this already in order to obtain city luxury items.) A train ticket every month or week is probably a lot cheaper than running a web kiosk, and is something which a villager can use immediately in many ways.

The sun, the Gnome and the internet

[Money__]

I'm reminded of a book I recently finished called "The sun, the genome, and the internet in which the good Mr. Dyson (remember Dyson Spheres? yea. that guy) extoles the many advances in technology that will shape our near future. One of the more interesting points in the book was the emphysis on social justice (how much impact a piece of technology has on every day life around the globe).

Picture, if you will, an internet kiosk completly independant from the physical infrastructure now used to access the internet today. The AC outlet on your peecee might be replaced by solar power, the dataline replaced with a satelite link. This is not far removed from the Transmeta webpad with a 18" digital dish on top, and a battery pack down below.

Such a device would have a big social impact around the globe because it could, quite literaly, be droped from the sky and just do what it does for a few hours a day (I know some of you are picturing a sceen from "the gods must be crazy" when the coke bottle hits the native on the head).

Anyway, the continued focus on low power consumtion can be combined with an emphysis on a focus on "infrastructure indepentant technologies" to provide an affordable killer thin client.

Now, if we can only get that magical universal translator into the mozilla nightlys. ;)
___

India will have Unlimited Bandwidth

[CoderDevo]

Load as much data as you want onto Zip or DLT and load it into a boxcar. Sure the latency will be a few hours, but MAN the bandwidth!

Re:Perhaps you underestimate the Indian people...

[Ami Ganguli]

My experience in rural India is limited, but in the areas I visited I'd have to say that sanitation was a problem. Nutrition seemed OK, the power outages were a minor inconvenience (people just learned to live without for a few hours - wood stoves helped), but there were a lot of open sewers containing human waste.

I imagine some buried sewage pipes would go a long way to improving the health of the general population.

Bread Not Baud

[AntiBasic]

Its a shame that all the money being used to fund this project isn't going towards feeding the millions of starving people in India.

Sprint yes, MCI not at first.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

As I recall:

MCI was the first. It put microwave antennas on buildings and towers, and sold long-distance service. (They're those dishes with the red lightning bolt.) And it sued to break the AT&T monopoly on long distance service.

Once that monopoly was broken, Sprint was exactly what you described: It started as Southern Pacific Railroad selling unused capacity of their new fiber-along-the-right-of-way as another (the second?) competetive long-distance company. The name is an acronym for the railroad's original networking project - Southern Pacific Railroad Net .

Not to be outdone, MCI joined the bandwagon and leased fibre rights along another right-of-way. (If I recall correctly MCI made a deal with another railroad, and it was yet another company who cut one with a power company to run fiber under the big power towers.)

Re:Sprint yes, MCI not at first.

[348]

You are correct.

It was CSX, and just to set the recod straight MCI was originally Microwave Communications Inc..

This said, I must also add that I was a Sr. Manager with them for about ten years, they used to be great, but when Worldcom came in, the place went to shit. What a horrible marriage. MCIWorldcom has got to be one of the worst places to work, a complete sweatshop, no reward unless your an ass kissing exec.

Rural India Could Get Internet Access Via Railway?

[waldoj]

I like the idea of hauling in Internet via train. I mean, everything's gonna be a few weeks old, but I love the image of piles of Internet being dumped at the feet of willing villagers, who sell it off by the pound.

Ah, the smell of Internet, fresh from the fields. It takes me back to my youth in India...

Re:Kinda Like Sprint, MCI, Qwest...

[isdnip]

Not just Sprint. That started as the Southern Pacific Communications Company (SPCC) and got the name "Sprint" in an employee contest. SP was bought by GTE, who later sold it (in two steps) to United Telecommunications, an old telco, which adopted the Sprint name.

Railroads always have signaling bandwidth. The old SPCC/Sprint was built out of trackside microwave, later replaced by fiber optics. MCI got a lot of its rights-of-way by burying fiber optic cables along railroad lines. Qwest was created by somebody who owned the Southern Pacific for a while (Anschultz) and who kept the right to bury cable under it when he sold the rest.

So it's natural for a country like India, with lots of railway, to look towards the rail network as the basis of telecommunications. If it hasn't been done by now, it's probably because of the politics between competing ministries.

Neat side note

[tweek]

I just got back from India after a 3 week business trip recruiting technical candidates. I met some of the most amazing men and women there. One group that still has my attention is a group of people who are working on a project sponsored by the government to basically build the Indian version of arpanet. 6 major cities connected, then 16 minor cities connected to those major and then 32 outlaying cities connected to the minor ones and so on outward. My only gripe about India during the trip (despite the heat in New Dehli and the traffic in Bangalore) was the poor quality of internet access and extortionate phone charges levied by the government. The hotels I stayed at (Le Merdien) were charged Rs 150 just to get a dialtone by the government. I used my calling card the entire time to dial into the US for ISP access because it was faster, more reliable and cheaper than dialing locally.

To all the slashdotters in India, I can't wait to come back and see more of the country.

P.S. For some pictures of the trip if you are interested check out this link.

Re:Neat side note

[Russ Nelson]

Indians have an NIH complex. They'd do a lot better to just buy in foreign technology, except that they have to pay a 45% tariff. Their own government does to them in peacetime what an enemy would like to do in wartime (blockade them).
-russ

Re:IMO Slashdotters should learn to shut up and go

[krystal_blade]

I think the country of FlameBait does... BTW, when you speak of oppressed Indians, some Americans foolishly think about the countless nations of landowners who were oppressed, and moved into quasi concentration camps permanently during the 1800's. But those were American Indians. Life sucks. Have a cookie. kb

Williams Pipeline

[swb]

Williams Pipeline did/is doing the same thing.

What I can't remember is whether they're using the actual pipes to run the fibre in. That'd be cool -- an excellent raceway, and the old "WARNING, GAS PIPELINE" warning signs in the fields might keep county backhoes away more so than "Buried Fibre Optic Cable" signs...

Re:Williams Pipeline

[Tei'ehm Teuw]

Williams is doing the same, working for companies like Cavalier and such. However they are only using the right of ways, not the actual pipes.

Re:Williams Pipeline

[Russ Nelson]

The first time Williams ran fiber, they used a decomissioned gas pipeline. Only later did they figure out that fiber was safer from backhoes when near *working* gas pipelines.

All around the gas pipeline
The backhoe dug a trench.
The trench got too close to the fiber.
Pop goes the backhoe.
-russ

Re:Williams Pipeline

[Uart]

Quest did this first. It was started by Philip Anshutz (sp?) who was a major shareholder in the Southern Pacific Railroad and later the Union Pacific (which merged). When he was starting Quest he used his influence to get permission for quest to use the railroad right-of-way to lay their fibre-optic network down.

Calm down

[smutt]

Why are you flaming this guy?
He's made some very valid points that are more or
less true.

Who cares if he hasn't posted that much??
Everybody starts out small.

I lived in India for about 6 months at a technical
school in Kerala. We didn't have Internet access
there. Many people in neighboring states didn't
even have enough food or water. What he says is
true. People are starving and the internet won't fix that. So get your head out of your ass,
c()D3GuRu. Spend less time on your leet spelling
and more time on relaxation. We'll all thank you
for it.

Re:Calm down

[boobooyaayaa]

All Mallus UNITE! www.mallu.com Railway sounds like a wierd way to do it ... but ... in India ... anything is possible ..

Re:Kinda Like Sprint, MCI, Qwest...

[Fishstick]

>United Telecommunications, an old telco

Ah, yes... brings back memories. UT had their wireless division, United Telespectrum, which was spun off, acquired by Centel (another old indy telco) who was then bought by Sprint who spun off the wireless operations (once again) into 360-Communications. Makes you wonder what the h*ll was wrong with that wireless property that Sprint/UT had to get rid of it twice?!

Re:just what we need

[sachin_karol]

Jihad is a concept one asociated with islamic nations like Pakistan and Afghanistan, not a "secular" country like India. Read your news carefully!

internet in indian rural arias

[krazydiamond]

i think it makes more sense to get electricity (and clean water) there first!!!

Apparently, most of you have never been to India

[Electric Eye]

You're lucky if you can even get a PHONE to connect outside that country. I've seen better infrastructure among beavers. You think I'm kidding? I'm not.

I was there for a week a couple of years ago, and was amazed at how bad the phone lines (among a million other things) were. God help us if we had an emergency in that God-forsaken country. I mean no ill will towards Indians, but the country is in wretched state. The last thing they should be worried about are internet kiosks. How about cleaning the air and water first? Oh, and pay attention to the condition of India's rail system. Yeah, it's the largest in the world - and probably the WORST in terms of safety, modernization and.... well, you get the point.

I take it back!

[Electric Eye]

Seems the majority of you know the real deal with that place. Funny how the BBC story is such a fluff piece. Makes one laugh like a hyena when one knows what that country is actually about.

Re:Why?

[prodeje]

I'm glad to see that questionable Signal 11 moderations earn bitchslaps but morons like this continue to waste our precious moderation points.

Re:But I do believe in replying to a jerk

[da_King]

If you expected to start a flame-war with that reply, I must leave you disappointed.

You have no idea whatsover people like you are doing to a site like Slashdot.

Since I believe what ever I type in, in no case, is going into your head, I better give you no remarks or comments_of_same_level_you gave in after 5 hours of pondering.

Thanks anyway,

for letting me know the limit to which sick people can be found in this world.

And yes, please don't make Slashdot a place for your thoughts, its too unworthy a place for them. Thanks.

Agreed, but...

[da_King]

Agreed.

But the thing is....does it sense to just continue gambling all the time, and wait for 6-yr olds to come up? Infact, thats what has been happening to MOST of the GAMBLES played by India.

Occasionally, one of these gambles hits the jackpot, and we praise the scientists, the educationists, and EVEN the polititians for that !

Pile up millions of new projects, and wait for a 1000 6-yr olds to sprout up. I think it would be better if we have the solution providers ready before announcing the plans. Isn't it?

Safety, anyone?

[ugen]

Well, let's see - i am guessing in poor country
like India the railway control systems arent
an example of reliability.

So now we introduce a whole new banana in this
system and run a new signal on the same poor
abused copper wire.

For all practical purposes from the point of
view of a control system we created some noise
and complications in there.

How do you think this will affect train
traffic?

I really prefer to know that the grain train and
a passenger train will go safely through the
interchange - and nobody in the rural village
can shop on yahoo then other way around.

Re:I guess it's better than nothing, but...

[akgoel]

Perhaps your experience is different from mine.

The best example of the commaderie between Indians and Pakistanis is when I visited the border and saw the border patrol on both sides put on a show - afterwards, all the Indians and Pakistanis tried to shake hands, and I was impressed.

But, much more common, are my family: cousins who feel that Pakistan and Pakistanis are the mortal enemy. People on the "Hindu Students Council" listserv who would shoot a Pakistani on sight, people who were relocated on during partition who will not have anything to do with Pakistan, parents who will not let their Indian children date Pakistanis. This, much more than the first, colors my view of India/Pakistan relations.

Deeper issues involved

[anoopiyer]

I recently moved to Hyderabad, which is the chosen city for many American companies for their Indian software operations (including M$); Hyderabad is touted to be the cybercapital of India. Getting a simple dialup connection with POP3 access to work here took quite some doing. Even professional ISPs here don't understand technology issues.

The problem is not just a surface level problem of training and competence. In the Vedic age (10,000+ years ago) they had a flourishing civilization going (what the heck, they invented the zero, that's half the binary alphabet) when Europe and America had only nomadic tribes. Now civilization is passing through a phase when the tables are turned. It was the British Raj who really introduced modern technology to India. Now with the advent of computers and the internet, India has actually skipped several stages of development, jumping directly from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Technology did not get a chance to evolve here. We live entirely on imported technology. The main strength India in the IT industry has is labour; we can provide cheap labour to labour-starved western economies.

Infrastructure is definitely not our strong point. As the story says, most rural areas in India have severe power problems. And given the level of technical skills even in our cybercapital Hyderabad, I doubt if any railroad kiosk will ever be able to boot even Windows.

think positive slashdot

[nettarzan]

Why there is so much negative/pessimistic thoughts belaboring about the lack of power, health care, etc. Internet is a powerful which can bring definitive social changes if utilized properly. I do not see why Internet cannot be the enabler of basic needs. If internet can educate people and make them realize their condition, there starts the progress. Is not the famous revolutions fuelled by media like print etc. Infact one of the major facilitator of revolutions has been the invention of printing press. So why not can internet pull the same thing off. Think positive (TM)

Re:I guess it's better than nothing, but...

[Master Bait]

I won't call you a racist, but you are very ignorant.

The country with the largest middle class is... India. Realizing that there are 1 billion people living there might drive the point HOME.

I'm very happy that Malaysians and Philipino dregs can log onto the internet and piss you off with their bad English and their bad manners.

Tell U wuht, sport. Jus du no more bagg'n those ppl dat rn't a wimpie looser lik U.

blessings,
Master Bait

How will the villages use Internet

[Rsriram]

1. To cut down costs and more importantly speed of communication with the rest of the world especially other villages and cities. The costs of communicating through long distance calls is very high and the Internet can cut that costs by a tenth. When you realise that people in the villages do not have CASH to spend on communication they will welcome the Internet. However just because they do not have cash does not mean they are necessarily dirt poor. They dont need a A.C/fan to keep themselves cool. They dont need to drink coke. The food is very simple and easily available. They take care of their own most of the times unlike city folk who dont care for the people around them.

2. They can access Govt information which is one of the major costs since htey have to travel to the nearest city/town to get that. The govt in some states is also ensuring that all records and process information is available on the net for the convenience of the people.

3. They may access the net for education. While this may not be widely used, this is a possibility.

4. Medical help and information. The Primary Health centres in villages which are staffed by nurses can get help from doctors across the world and from databases. Medical Information can be maintained thru the net at a central location for help and analysis.

5. Information collection. One of the problems with India is the lack of reliable information about various things. How many acres under Rice, Wheat and SUgar Cane. What is the expected yeild. WHile this may seem worthless information to geeks, this helps the govt plan a lot of things such as how much should the waterflow thru a dam should be. HOw much electricity is needed, which will really help a country.

I should know becos I come from an Indian village.

How rural India will benefit from the Internet

[aat]

I've done a fair amount of traveling in India, though mostly in Urban/semi rural areas, but there's a fair amount of computer interest even outside the largest cities. On numerous road journeys in southern and south western India, every town (not as small as villages) had several satellite dishes, with cables stringing via electrical wire, bringing Cable TV to the villagers. In some of the larger towns, there were Internet access centers, and computer training classes.

When the state monopoly ISP, VSNL, was forced to allow other companies to hook up for access, ~ a year or so ago, cable modem internet services started springing up, first in the wealthiest areas of the largest cities, but spreading.

I recently found out that the district center of my native district has 12 cybercafes, with a population of under 100,000

All of these developments have only served to help out the richest Indians so far.

However, things are changing, and frankly improved communications via the net can impact the lives of even the poorest Indian villagers, not withstanding the protestations of Anonymous Cowards who think that Indians should improve their living standards by the same plodding methods that other countries did.

Studies that I've read have shown that the existence of just one phone in a village was enough to _double_ its average income. Why? Because, the increased communication allowed villagers, most of whom in India are farmers, to get better information about wholesale prices and get better deals from middlemen.

With one Internet connection to a village (imagine 1 or 2 486's running Linux, maybe hooked up with a bunch of VT100's running as serial consoles), villagers would be able to email bureaucrats and politicians, and get information on everything ranging from weather forecasts, to current crop prices, to even advice on animal husbandry.

Some objections that can (and have) been raised are costs, and also linguistic barriers. Given that an i-opener or cheap network computer has an approximate cost of $300 to make, it would cost a village of 500 people about 60 cents per person to purchase a computer, about half a day's wages for an average Indian.

Another objection raised is one of language and literacy. About 60% of Indians are literate, but people with at least a high school education can easily hired to run a place and help people whose literacy skills are weak. Also, people with a high school education are likely to have had a few years of English. A small fee can be placed for using the "cybercafe", the proceeds of which could be used to pay the operator and also pay for the purchase costs of the machine. This scheme is already being done in some areas of India.

With regards to the language issues, websites are starting to spring up in many Indian languages and scripts, making this less of a problem in the future.

Though it may seem that building better roads and a greater supply of electricity would be a better use of the money, helping them gain knowledge will help them increase their income several fold, which will in the long run help them increase their living standards by much more than institutional wisdom holds is possible....

Arun

Re:But I do believe in replying to a jerk

[cOdEgUru]

Oh!!!! I cant believe it... OOohh. "Duhhh_king" replied to my post and judging from what you wrote, I believe he was HURT!!!.. Ooooh.!!! Hurt!!!.. I am hurt!!!.. Oh! By the way..I forgot to ask..Did your momma drop you on your head...or did the neighbour fuck her while you were still inside.. Something has to explain that hole in your head... Har..har... I am quite elated by the fact that people like you hate India and what it stands for. You see, what more could I expect from a person like you whos got a Grandma dragging her old pussy around to get some meat.. :))).. I love you Boy... I really do... And no matter what I do..you would still come back for more..you cant help coming back for more..coz thats what your Momma always did...

Re:Kinda Like Sprint, MCI, Qwest...

[anticypher]

Now I don't feel like the oldest fart on /. :-)

You've got the SPCC bit right, but I thought United Telco, Centel, and dozens of others were the local interconnect companies who re-sold the capacity to large companies, and ensured connections to the local Bell and GTE plants. But my memory fails me in my old age :-)

SPCC was selling telephone service over buried copper trunks starting in the 1930s, from San Francisco to New Orleans and many other areas in the south. They added microwave capacity in the 60s. In the 80s they started to replace the copper with fibre.

I once saw a map of independent telcos in the US, and the ones that survived the longest and had the best connections were all along the SP track routes, and could negotiate long distance access because there was competition. The independents locked into an area with only Ma Bell to connect to were all eventually driven out of business by the abusive monopoly powers of Ma. Its what started the DoJ's anti-trust case which led to the breakup of Ma Bell. One can only hope the DoJ does better with M$ :-)

the AC

Team working on very cool ideas

[AnhZone]

I recently heard Ashok Jhunjhunwala give a presentation on this and other technologies his team is developing in India. He is a leader of the group running the Internet on railway signalling cables, and an engineering professor at one of the Indian Institutes of Technology (the Indian equivalents of MIT that have trained so many of the founders of Silicon Valley start-ups). His group is very sophistocated and focussed on developing a range of exciting technologies that make lower cost Internet access possible in India.

Low cost telephone and Internet connection technologies (with somewhat lower performance) are not being developed by U.S. firms because consumers and businesses will pay for more expensive higher quality connections, but essential for bringing Internet to Indian users. Using the railway signals network is just one of range of solutions the group is developing including microwave to local cable systems for Internet and telephony, and manufacturing their own network and switching equipment, which is being used commercially in several countries besides India.

A number of posters have questioned why India needs the internet before they have access to running water, sewage, abundant food, etc. The general reason is that India will not have any of these things without economic development that allows them reach higher income levels than are possible in a predominantly agricultural economy. Communications, electricity, etc. are necessary for this transformation, both to bring about higher productivity agriculture and to expand into higher productivity sectors. As I recall, IT now accounts for almost half of India's total exports from nothing ten years ago!

Internet makes sense even in a country largely made up of poor farmers with high illiteracy if it can be made affordable. Email and Internet is much lower cost than voice telephony and some of the people in almost any village are literate. To an area with no telephone access, the Internet brings the whole world's ideas and information to them for the first time.

Getting market information in distant cities is essential to allow poor farmers to bargain for competitive prices for their products. The Grameen Bank finds that its rural cell telephone centers in Bangladesh are used more intensively by the landless than higher income people because they are making calls to find employment.

There are plenty (hundreds of millions) of rural Indians who are just as clever as we are, and this kind of internet access could eventually allow them to earn the kind of incomes that we do, rather than just be clever subsistence farmers.

Re:Yes, No Doubt India will benefit...

[da_King]

But it will take a lot of time. I go by what you say. I haven't seen much of southern India in terms of travelling to small villages, but I can tell you there is very much a good future for the southern parts, with Chief Ministers of State like Naidu. If these people have their way, definitely it is on the brighter side for all of us.

The only thing that barrs is the track record of Indian Beaurocrats in handling the high-tech projects. But hope this time it will be for the better.

Re:Thinking Positive till Infinity?

[da_King]

Yes, I agree to think Positive in this direction.

But, is there any point just thinking positive when you know that people who cannot get food and water will get educated by the Internet and will start to realise their Basic needs?

Noone is opposing what has been planned. The opposition is to the priority of the planning people! They set aside the "Basic Needs" and first plan to setup Internet everywhere. I know that Information is Power, but to use information, you need food and education. Without getting it first, they are trying to go the other way round...which is disturbing to most.

every day

[ArchieBunker]

I thank southeast asia for the truckloads of solaris boxes running sendmail with relaying turned on. Sun finally fixed sendmail in solaris 8, which doesn't help the tons of spam from some box in taiwan or japan.

Re:I guess it's better than nothing, but...

[cage_lynx]

Incedentally....people from india and pakistan only seem to be fighting each other when they are in their own countries...and they get along really fine when they are out of their respective countries....and whats more the pakistani's apparently love the indian movie industry and in a resent mutual interest trip made by a group of student from Bangalore India to pakistan...they found that most pakistani students apparently "have the hots" for indian actresses....why cant u just get over what your stupid fathers where fighting about and gettogether u dumb blokes..... Peace....

Sweden - Alternatives to diggin

[Hubble]

I'm from Sweden and here there're some neat things that are being used in addition to regular digging (which lately have been massive).

We've got fibers along with the railway for a couple of years. From the beginning the fiber was used to signals and such, but they sold the spare capacaty. I guess they had to but in more fiber when the demand grew, or something.

We've also got fibers running between highvoltage poles. It's supposed to be cheap too, and fast to build.

/Andreas

Re:Perhaps you underestimate the Indian people...

[Srikant]

Yes, sanitation is probably India's biggest failure. Otherwise, basic progress in eliminating chronic hunger (achieved everywhere except West Bengal and Orissa) or ensuring access to safe water has been very good. In fact, access to sanitation has not increased in percentage terms in India in the last 20 years despite the great progress in all the other fronts.

Nuclear subs or clean inner cities?

[ghoul]

It seems people tend to think that if u r spending on defense u are flush with cash. No one spends on defense coz they want to they spend oz they need to. I am sure the money the US spends on nuclear subs can clean up all the inner cities and reverse the ghettoisation of the blacks but will the US stop spending on defense? I think I dont have to This when the continental US has never been attacked i the last 250 years while India on the other habd lost a war to China which resulted in the Chinese holding Aksai Chin a piece of Indian territory the size of the original 13 states I think spending on defense is a reality which we cannot escape from. I mean development without the capability to protect it is useless. To give an example Iraq was the most developed state in the Gulf with a public medical system matched by no other country in the world with the exception of maybe Cuba(and that is a communist country and by the very definition of communism the govt takes better care of the people than in a democracy.. They have to otherwise people will not give up the personal profit motive) But what happened coz they hadnt spent enough on defense The US bombed them back into the stone age DITTO for Serbia Once again very high on the UN Human Development Index but inadequate spending on defense and now they are bottom odf the list coz all their bridges factories power stations water supply sewage plants shopping malls have been reduced to rubble. Thus to spend money on development without spending on defense is useless. After all it only takes a $1000 bomb to blow up a $5 million factory

Re:Nuclear subs or clean inner cities?

[Jbrecken]

This when the continental US has never been attacked i[n] the last 250 years

The War of 1812 was less than 250 years ago.

Re:Nuclear subs or clean inner cities?

[MathPenguin]

The War of 1812 was really just a continuation of the Revolutionary War. You could argue that the United States wasn't recognized as a real until then conclusion of the War of 1812, and therefore wasn't really a country, although it is considered one at the time since the US won.

Railway conduits

[maroberts]

IIRC, railways are often used as routes for fibre optic cabling, (at least here in England they are), probably because there is little difficulty in securing planning permission and having only one authority (Railtrack) to deal with when it comes to digging holes and or layoing out cabling on the surface.

I would have thought it would be more natural for India to route their signalling traffic through some nice spiffy fibre optic cable which they just lay along the track routes. Presto - one third world country joins the first world.

OK I know this costs money, but it's got to cost less than their ongoing skirmish with Pakistan....

Not a bad idea...

[QZS4]

Over here in Sweden, Banverket (the company responsible for the railways) upgraded their signal systems a few years ago. The signaling is now done over fibers. And, since they were replacing cables anyway, they put in some spare capacity (well, a lot of spare capacity). This has led to that Banverket is now the single biggest backbone provider in Sweden, apart from Telia, the phone company.

However, over the last half-year or so, everyone and their mother seems eager to put their own fibers into the ground, so this may change in the future. But right now, I think I can say that almost all of the network providers in Sweden are renting fibers from the railway company for long-distance connectivity.

Towns not Villages

[stevelinton]

Realistically, despite the hype, this is not going to go to the VILLAGES in India (which may well not have railway stations, or reliable electricity) but to the smaller cities and towns. This seems a sensible step. In such a town, there will be a significant group who can speak, read and write English (school teachers, medical people, administrators) and a very plausible demand for email communication with other towns and higher levels of government heirarchy, and for access to information that the government can put on the Web.

I suspect the main market for the cybercafes will initially be tourists -- the Indian middle class is growing fast, but is mainly near the big cities, but if that subsidises an email and Web connection for the town doctor or secondary school, so much the better.

Re:Towns not Villages

[nbor]

English is not a prerequisite for using the Internet.
Are we going to teach a Billion Chinese the English language before we sell them Internet technology ?

A new RFC?

[Nate Eldredge]

I was expecting to read something about a new RFC: IP over Railway.

REQUEST FOR COMMENTS: RFC Ol' 97
STATUS: EXPERIMENTAL

Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams over Railway

Frame Format

Each IP datagram shall be transported on a single railway car. The data portion of the datagram shall be written onto magnetic tape or another practical medium and placed in the interior of the car. The header portion of the datagram shall be printed in hexadecimal on continuous-feed paper, banner-style; each digit SHOULD be at least 30 cm in height. This promotes ease in routing as the destination of the datagram can be observed without the latency of stopping the data stream.

Transport of the datagram requires an additional module called an "engine". The algorithm used by the engine is left to the implementor; among those found historically to have been successful are "electric", "diesel", and "coal". For efficiency, a single engine may transport several datagrams in a daisy-chain configuration; the resulting super-datagram is referred to as a Transport Reduction Algorithm Internet Novelty, or TRAIN for short.

Discussion

IP over Railway offers MTUs without precedent in size. Latency may be high (on the order of 1e5 seconds for transcontinental datagrams) but this is expected to decrease with improved infrastructure.

Packet collisions generally result in the loss of both packets, since no media in current use is able to withstand the rapid combustion generally caused by such an event. However, since IP only guarantees best-effort delivery (also described by Wells, Fargo et al), this is not considered a problem; a higher-level transmission control protocol should be used if reliable message transmission is desired. The "semaphores" and similar mutex devices installed on existing Railway networks may be dispensed with.

Security Considerations

Railway networks are historically vulnerable to "Robber" attacks. These traditionally involve a gang of masked men who obstruct the data pathway and then inspect and occasionally tamper with or destroy the datagrams. (See James and James, 1873.) Those who are worried can use available mechanisms for encryption and authentication, although Denial of Service attacks remain possible. Pinkerton et al have described an algorithm for Virtual Private Networks, albeit at somewhat greater expense.

References

Waitzman, D., "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", RFC 1149, 1 April 1990.

Watt, James. "Locomotion". London, 1800.

Re:arguments for the internet

[-brazil-]

Reality check: we're talking about people many of whom can't read , let alone use a computer. In India, the voting system relies on icons to represent the parties because too much of the populace couldn't read a text-based ballot!

Again the internet is a great thing, but technophiles need to realize that there are a whole lot of problems that it can't solve and there are other, more important things.

Precisions + beware of Indian hype !

[BigJim.fr]

A few technical details that are not mentioned in the article : the infrastructure will be mostly copper with DSL equipment at the ends. Technology will be brought by Dr. Jhunjhunwala's company (Tenet) and Satyam may be the partner ISP. If successful, the concept may be rapidly extended to other sections of the Vijaywada - Guntur line.
My experience about India is a study I conducted during a few weeks there back in February. I conducted face to face interviews with the CEO and top execs from MTNL in Delhi, with execs from Tata Teleservices in Hyderabad, and also with various actors of the Indian telecommunications industry.
I found that India is full of incredibly ingenious people that learn faster than you imagine (in the technical domain, marketing is another story entirely...) and will kick the butt of those who don't evolve as fast, but India is also full of experts in the art of crafting propaganda in the form of thundering press releases that will make Microsoft's own look like reasonable technical information.
When Andra Pradesh's chief minister's IT advisor assured me that videoconference facilities were available in selected post offices, I was excited, but when I got there to check it out, all I found after half an hour wandering from one clueless employee to the other was a PC with a 33 kbit/s modem : there had been two customers in six months and the employee could even remember the date the last one came ! I suggested that videoconference over a plain PC with a modem was stretching it a bit, and they told me that it was adequate, and even proposed to demo it, but at this very moment the lights went out (dry season came early and electricity is scarce when the dams are empty) and I decided I had seen enough. Just an example...
The reason lies in the political stakes that lie in the technological development of the country : half of India's 600000 villages still do not have phone and bringing basic information services there is a national priority. But instead of being pragmatic, politicians promise optical fiber every village, virtual universities for the masses and other grandiose expressions of demagogy, and they count on the private sector to implement their vision. the In return, private sector companies that collaborate in raising the hype get a better attitude from the administration.
A while ago, a story ran on Slashdot mentioning that Worldtel aimed at deploying hundreds of Internet cafes in Tamil Nadu. I read that the company even mentioned extending the project into Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. The facts are they did nothing like that and that all that remains is a shady national backbone project like what everyone else in India is planning. My opinion is that this was a gross ploy to get subsidies from a government honestly eager to foster the development of anything that can get the information age to the masses. This is a good example of things that happen on a regular basis in India.
But the strategy followed by the government is schizophrenic : the heavy regulation that burdens the telecommunications industry is intended to let incumbent take advantage of high tariffs to fund the development of basic telephony infrastructure in rural India. This is a good thing. Promoting new innovative projects from the private sector is also a good thing. But both are totally incompatible with each other and produce an incoherent quagmire : maintaining the tariff's stability is nonsense in the context of the structural changes that the industry is to go through while riding the technological wave; it is merely feet dragging from heavily lobbying incumbents reluctant to change.
To conclude on a positive note, I must say that I believe that this particular project is real and may be successful because it is reasonable in scope. Just beware of Indian hype : it is at least as bad as what you've got at home !

Somehow...

[zpengo]

...I get the impression that a barbed-wire fence isn't going to transmit data at optimal speeds.

Regarding history lessons -- SPRINT

[Steampunk]

Two railroads completed the Transcontinental Railroad: The Union Pacific (East Coast to Utah) and the Central Pacific (West Coast to Utah).

The Central Pacific evolved/merged into the Southern Pacific. Interestingly as a side-note, one of the presidents of the SP was Leland Stanford, who founded a small school in California by the same name.

The SP had quite a few different divisions, including shipping, communications, et cetera.

Which finally brought us to the...

Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications

...one of the biggest three telcos in the entire world.


aka SPRINT.

Re:Regarding history lessons -- SPRINT

[Pig Hogger]

The SP had quite a few different divisions, including shipping, communications, et cetera.
Which finally brought us to the...
Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications
...one of the biggest three telcos in the entire world.

And let's not forget about the goode ole Western Union ...

--
Here's my mirror

Good Idea

[cheesethegreat]

It's a better idea than just letting it all rust, but what is the cost of that, and if it's cheap, then why don't we try doing that in the US?

another stupid news item...

[chrome koran]

brought to you by the people at /.

who gives a shit? here's their big goal

"the team says it could potentially link 4,000 towns and 100,000 households to the internet within the next two years." wooooooooooo....100,000?!? that's a lot, huh? at that rate the whole world should have access in another century or so...what are you on the pr list or something?

hand-cranked computers?

[operagost]

Like the radios they're distributing in southern Africa? *grin* Seriously, it really does seem like they need to explore energy alternatives. As green as most geeks are, the limited amount of water resources plus the erratic availability, shall we say, of geothermal power points to the need for a small nuclear plant where it's needed most. I think that, faced with the (relatively low) risk of a nuclear accident but 24 hr power vs. 8 hr of power, they'll take the reliable power. They do have huge resources of coal, but we know what that does to the environment. However, they also have clean natural gas... could that be used?

Re:hand-cranked computers?

[Tideflats]

The guy who made the hand-cranked radio practical has been working on a hand-cranked computer, after having extemporaneously lashed up a working prototype in the field.

AC fan

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

They dont need a A.C/fan to keep themselves cool

Actually, in my Slashdot experience, Anonymous Coward fans usually bring flames.
__

Hope they can get decent encryption...

[GoNINzo]

Just wait till someone starts doing wiretaps to packet sniff the railroad.

'Is that guy downloading porn?'
'No, that's just the 405 on it's way to New Delhi.'

But, what can you expect from a country that left nuclear weapon computers available on the internet...

--
Gonzo Granzeau

Britanica in Hindu ?

[Midnight Thunder]

The other thing to take into account is that most Indians read/write in Hindu. This alphabet is very different from the Roman alphabet. It looks like those people who don't yet read and write are going to have to learn two alphabets, unless a substanial number of websites offer stuff in Hindu.

Oh and is there a Hindu version of the Britanica?

Re:Britanica in Hindu ?

[nbor]

This is a common mistake.
Hindu is a religion.
The language is Hindi.

Not just in India

[Hanno]

Arcor here in Germany, one of the major Telcos, is a cooperation of Mannesmann (a major German industrial conglomerate) and Deutsche Bahn (= German Rail).

Deutsche Bahn gives Mannesmann access to their excessive fiber network backbone that goes along the tracks of all major German rail connections.

As you Americans may not be aware of, here in Europe, the railway system is as closely knit as the American Greyhound bus system - there's a railway connection to almost every town.

Thanks to this cooperation, Arcor instantly had a major network backbone between all the major German cities.

------------------

Why Internet makes sense for India

[AnhZone]

2) What do people in the villages need with the Internet anyway?

First of all, the Internet by railway venture is not using any public money as I recall. It can live off the money that poor users want to spend for Internet and telephone connections plus some donations.

For why the Internet is relevant for India in general, see this article. Many of the large players are moving into the Indian market. Why should the rural areas be cut out of this new part of society in India any more than here?

Re:I guess it's better than nothing, but...

[Admirer]

That's true. Miscommunicatins result in misunderstanding and even further result in other tragedies. Internet plays a great role in at least bringing peaple together.

How do you learn

[Tony-A]

to read? By reading. Slowly you get better at it.

Wireless & Infrastructure problems in India

[SaidiaDude]

Hello, I recently visited India and was struck
by the population growth in the last decade or so.
Because of the immense growth rate, new wiring
is being laid at an astounding pace. Unfortunately,
there are lots of probs with the infrastructure:
the workers frequently cut existing
wiring (accidently), wiring is stolen from the
roadside, power goes off frequently during the
day, especially in the summer, etc. Most indians
are quite creative and find unique ways to work
around these "minor inconveniences" that we
in the west would not stand for.
Using the railroad system is a good way to work
around some of these probs. It is a decent
first step to get the villagers connected (BTW,
most villagers are quite knowledgeable about
the net, but haven't had "hands-on" experience).
However, the best solution for getting around
the infrastructure will be to use Wireless svcs
such as cell phones, etc. Cell phone usage in
India has skyrocketed in the last 2 years or so
(mainly amongst the upper and middle classes).
Prices are dropping, so villagers are considering
purchasing cell phones over traditional land lines.
I would bet that the wireless internet would
take off very fast in India - not on the limited
screen cell phones, but on larger devices.
Obviously, probs such as cost, wireless infrast,
bandwidth, etc would have to be addressed.
Anyone know of any projects in/for India that
would bring wireless internet connectivity
to the masses (not just the WAP stuff on small
screens for cell phones)?

Re:red lightning bolts

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I stand corrected.

similar thing

[rytier]

Similar thing is probably going to happen in Slovakia. The railroad company of Slovakia will become second phone operator after the end of monopoly of Slovak Telecom. I am sure it will extend its services towards Internet...

something to add to this

[rytier]

"...India is full of incredibly ingenious people..."
I have read (dont remember where) that India is the country with most progressive software development and with more software engineers than any other country of the world. Maybe its because of 1bil people living there... but it is strong reason for the government to provide Internet access for them, dont you think?

Re:Why?

[prodeje]

You can't even spell bigger. Pathetic.

Re:Thinking Positive till Infinity?

[nettarzan]

Think different. Just because other countries developed with means of power etc., does not mean that is the only way to achieve standard of living. I personally consider IT as one of the far reaching invention by human kind which is paralles the invention wheel and farming. Infact, it was of Gandhi from India who taught the world to think differently when fighting for one's cause. See those Apple ads with Gandhi picture.

Take it one step further

[RayChuang]

In all the comments about using the Indian Railway's wiring to setup Internet connection, that's actually a GREAT idea because the wiring infrastructure is already in place to do it.

In fact, one of the things that made the railroads in the USA a LOT of money during the 1970's and 1980's was making their right-of-way property available to lay down fiber-optic telecommunications cables. Southern Pacific did this on all their right of way locations using their SPRINT operation, and in fact if you have a chance to follow the SP (now UP) tracks in California you'll see occasional warning signs indicating buried communications cables.

I think what the Indian Railways ought to do is to use the right-of-way property on their rail lines to lay down high-speed fiber-optic lines all over India. That way, there can be a major boost in telephone, television, and high-speed Internet access capability all over India.