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Rural India Could Get Internet Access Via Railway

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the mother-of-invention-chugga-chugga dept.

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.

6 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Two Issues Here by Alik · · Score: 5

    (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...

    1. Re:Two Issues Here by Alik · · Score: 5

      . 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.)

  2. Clever retooling of existing infrastructure.... by emerson · · Score: 5

    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....

    --

  3. Re:I guess it's better than nothing, but... by isaac_akira · · Score: 5

    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 =)

  4. Re:Kinda Like Sprint... by anticypher · · Score: 5

    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

    --
    Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
  5. How rural India will benefit from the Internet by aat · · Score: 5

    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