India To Offer Free Broadband by 2009

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

Comments

Re:Broadband -ne Food

[eln]

There's an old proverb that relates to this. Something to the effect of "If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. If you give a man free porn, he'll die with a smile on his face."

I didn't know you could have milli-bits per second

[LotsOfPhil]

So you get 2 mbps. I guess that means 1 bit every 500 seconds. 1 billion people in India, 2 million bits per second. That's not that tough, but I guess giving everyone somewhere to plug in would take some infrastructure.

Re:Broadband -ne Food

[WrongSizeGlass]

Can you spell hypocritical? Um, H-Y-P ... dang ... can I hear it used in a sentence please?

India's Priority Listing:

[tdmg]

1. FREE BROADBAND!!!!!
2. Feed our citizens
3. Nuke Pakistan
4. Restructure caste system
5. $1 taco Tuesday
6. AIDS prevention? ....