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A More Down-To-Earth Way To Bring the Internet To the Rest of the World
An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk wants to bring the internet to less-developed countries using satellites. Facebook wants to use drones. Google's betting on balloons. These crazy high-tech solutions are interesting, but are they really needed? Mark Summer doesn't think so. His company focuses on building out internet infrastructure the old fashioned way: trenching pipes, raising cell towers, and getting local governments to lease what they've already installed. "A major problem in emerging countries is that when Internet access is available, it's often expensive. That's due in part to a lack of competition among providers ... While the costs of terrestrial Internet connections are high, they're relatively predictable. And the business model is proven around the world."
OK, but other people are working on those problems. Just because they have 1000 problems doesn't mean that everyone should drop everything and go into an entirely new field they're unfamiliar with to solve the problem that you deem to be the highest priority. This guy and his company have know-how, capital, employees, and hardware all invested in the process of building out Internet infrastructure. To scrap their existing plans and redirect their capital to medicine, plumbing or personal safety, would basically drain their capital, while accomplishing practically nothing.
Feel free to be an angel investor in companies or non-profits that are providing the things you think are high priority to the needy, but don't feel like you can tell other people what they should do with their money.
After all, you can make an argument that the Internet can be very useful for educating people with some of the ideas that might lead them to pursue a more civilized way of life. It also leads to 411 scams, but you have to take the bad with the good.
Why does it have to be an either-or? There are enough people in this country to pursue every progressive initiative we can imagine, and then some. It's just a matter of getting the right people with the right resources focused on the right tasks. Basically, it's a logistics and optimization problem; we have more than enough capability and more than enough resources to go around. It's mainly political and economic forces that make the system extremely resistant to positive change, no matter how obviously beneficial it might be.
The root cause in developing countries for the high expense and lack of competition is corruption. Bribes are required to install any infrastructure, which adds to the cost. And those who control the infrastructure have no incentive to make it available at low cost, their pockets are already lined.