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Indian Consortium To Offer 2 Mbps At $2.30/month
leoaugust writes "The State Govt of Andhra Pradesh in India, has awarded a contract for a fiber-optics based network to a consortium led by Aksh of India that aims to charge just Rs 100 (around US $2.30) a month for a domestic broadband connection. The project will provide services with a minimum bandwidth of 2Mbps. The execution of the project is scheduled to begin in April 2005 and will be completed by December 2006. The strength of the consortium is evident by the participation of top-notch Indian corporations which include Railtel Corporation India Limited, Tata Indicom, VSNL Limited, INcable Network (Andhra) Limited, Spectranet Limited and Nuziveedu Seeds Limited."
Roll with the outsourcing trend! Simply put two servers into each home in the region, and share the bandwidth.
:-)
Let the indian family use one, and sell the other as ultra-cheap hosting
And are there good employment perspectives?
It depends, are you ready to be paid like Indian workers ?
Good initiative but unless the operating system, office programs , games are translated into their local language it will not benefit much. In India still the internet and outsourcing are the possesion of a prized few who know english. There are many more analtycal minds tied up just for the lack of english knowledge. If only could the Indian government unshackle the internet and make it truly multilingual then it is true freedom for indians.
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
The middle class, if you would, is a newer concept (thanks to the tech boom).
No, Middle Class is not a new concept here, in India. No, its not due to "the tech boom". And, No, all Indians definitely don't work for offshoring companies. Its a complete country with all kinds of jobs and economic classes and it has been like this for decades.
In other news, it was discovered today that people in India generally make far less than the average American/European and have a lower standard of living.
It was also discovered that Slashdot editors know nothing about economics and that you can't just convert things to US dollars and declare "it's cheaper!".
News at 11.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Where do you get the idea that the US dollar is strong gout of this??? Lets say that a roll of Kodak film cost $3.50US in the USA that same roll of film in India cost $0.35US in India. The roll of film hasn't changed it is still the same roll of film. The only thing is that it cost you MORE in the US because the US dollar is WEAK!!!! it ain't worth as much as other people's money. The roll of film hasn't changed has it??? No the only diffenance is what you pay for it. Your buying power is not as great which means you money is no good!
In 1972 I made 3.10 and hour here in the US. I had a nice house a car took trips and could afford to go our on the town every now and then. Now I make $20.00 per hour and I can't hardly afford to live. My life style hasn't changed except for the fact that a dollar will not buy what it would in 1972. Personally I would rather work for the $3.10 and be able to buy a loaf of bread for $0.35 and a gallon of gas for $0.50
You have been buying into the media crap too much an not doing your own math. The reason labor is cheap there is not that their money is no good but that ours is no good. Labor is labor and has its own worth. What regulates worth is the value of the money. Not the value of the work.
Buying Power = Money Value
Yes I will work for $5000.00 a year if I can have a nice apartment, eat go out, go on a vacation, and be able to enjoy life. I'm sure not doing those things with the powerful US Dollar we have now!!!!!!!
Unless the Indian companies backing this project take a very hard-line anti-spam and anti-virus stance (anyone know what the market penetration of Windows vs. Linux/BSD/MacOS is in India?), I can see this turning into a giant clusterfuck for the rest of the Internet.
You think the American zombie botnets are bad, wait 'till there are a couple hundred thousand Indian Windoze boxen all on 2-meg symmetric connections. This has the potential to bring an entire country to its knees if the virus authors co-ordinate properly and the Indian users are just as clueless as their American counterparts.
Of course, if Linux/BSD/MacOS is significantly more popular there than Windows is, you can probably ignore most of this cynicism.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!