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Between the Bytes
Who’s afraid of the digital divide? - IV
When the hype surrounding the digital divide was at its peak
4-5 years ago, millions of dollars were being poured into pilot
projects aimed at taking technology to the deprived. Many of these
projects-commendable as they might have been-were not sustainable
once the funding plug was pulled. In other cases, ICTs were being
touted as the solution to a range of problems, when in fact many
of those problems could be better tackled by alternative conventional
means. Further, the particular local needs of the people identified
as beneficiaries were not always addressed, and the fact that these
needs could differ considerably from region to region was often
ignored. In many instances, locally relevant content in languages
and interfaces that could be understood and exploited by the intended
beneficiaries was insufficient.
 But
things have begun to change. A characteristic of all the projects
quoted as examples in Part III of this series is that they have
dealt with and got round the inadequacies of their predecessors
quite admirably. It is not entirely coincidental that many of these
projects have been initiated by private companies with a profit
motive. But regardless of that, in all successful cases there have
been sound business models and clear roadmaps. Even if initial investment
is high, incubation periods lengthy, and profit margins wafer thin,
the long-term volumes linked with the opening up of hitherto untappable
markets make it all worth it. This is in addition to the obvious
social benefit that accrues from a well-thought out deployment of
technology in these environs.
Management guru C K Prahalad of the University
of Michigan is convinced that a major source of market promise for
the future lies in the billions of "aspiring poor" who
are joining the market economy for the first time. This group consists
of about 4 billion people-two-thirds of the world's population-at
the bottom of the global economic pyramid, subsisting on an annual
per capita income of less than $1,500, based on purchasing power
parity in US dollars. But products and services that the western
world has grown up on tend to be resource-intensive, wasteful and
excessively polluting. Prahalad is of the view that any attempt
to recreate such patterns of consumption in developing countries
for this bottom tier of the pyramid would be disastrous. The multi-trillion-dollar
market that this group represents is a fortune waiting to be made,
but it needs innovative products and solutions that are cost-effective,
environmentally sustainable, and yet profitable.
Clearly then, there is something more than philanthropy
in operation here. Conventional models of information technology
deployment that have worked well in the developed world would be
definite failures if merely duplicated in the developing world.
Innovation in solutions and shrewd business models, coupled with
extreme frugality, are mandatory prerequisites for addressing the
markets at the bottom of the pyramid.
Some multinational technology firms are keen to
extend their reach to the bottom-tier four billion. Companies like
Hewlett-Packard, Intel and others, faced with increasing levels
of saturation in their existing markets, are eyeing the developing
world and working at perfecting low-cost devices and unconventional
business models to get a foothold in these potential goldmines.
Of course their main markets still remain the developed west and
they need to maintain price points in these markets by enhancing
value and adding on features to their existing products in order
to sustain growth. For instance, there have been only feeble attempts
by mainstream companies to bring down the price of the personal
computer to radically low levels by providing just the essential
functionality. And the considerable cost of proprietary software
constitutes a large chunk of the price of the final product, putting
it beyond the reach of all but a tiny percentage of people in developing
countries.
All other obstacles notwithstanding, on-the-ground
implementation of technology in rural settings of developing countries
is a huge challenge in itself. Organisations working in these areas
have had to face seemingly insurmountable hurdles such as erratic
and intermittent power supply, poor connectivity and stifling government
regulation. To add to all this are the cultural disparities and
natural resistance to change by rural communities.
Perhaps a completely different computing paradigm
is what is needed to make deployment of technology in such hazardous
environs a success. And it seems likely that local start-ups that
also have a closer understanding of the local idiosyncrasies and
greater staying power in the hostile conditions will come up with
the most viable solutions. Any such solution would necessarily entail:
- Drastic reductions in the cost of hardware
- Drastic reductions in the cost of software
- Affordable and reliable connectivity
- Alternative inexpensive power sources
- High levels of ruggedness and reliability
- Localisation of content, applications and interfaces.
Fortunately, with the current sophistication of
technological research and the stage of evolution that the computer
industry is in, we seem to be at a threshold that indicates a revolution
is in the offing. New prototypes of hardware design, form factors,
thin-client configurations and display technology could result in
equipment price-points plummeting. Open-source software has reached
a level of maturity and usability that's making it a viable alternative
to expensive proprietary operating systems and applications-this
can dramatically reduce software costs to the bare minimum. The
new computing paradigm is beginning to take concrete shape and is
now moving past the experimental and pilot stage. Here are some
of the more promising innovations, as representative evidence that
alternative paradigms are realistic and feasible.
Simple computing:
The Simputer is a hand-held computer developed by four professors
at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 2001. While unlikely
to live up to its initial billing as the "poor man's computer",
the innovative design and features of the Simputer have ensured
that it has gradually made inroads into e-governance projects and
rural applications. The main features include text-to-speech synthesis
in several Indian languages, pen-based input, a smart-card interface,
very low battery-based power consumption, open-source software platform,
touch screen capabilities and so on. Innovative applications are
spurring sales of the Simputer, after a slow start.
Pedalling power:
The 'Infothela' project devised by the Indian Institute of Technology
at Kanpur in the Uttar Pradesh state of India consists of a bicycle
rickshaw fitted with a computer that's connect to the Internet via
high speed wireless links. The computer kiosk is designed to withstand
the shock of bumpy rides on potholed roads as the cycle moves from
village to village within a 50-mile radius of the institute, providing
basic computer education to children as well as relevant agricultural
information, inexpensive Internet telephony, and telemedicine consultation
to indisposed villagers. The battery on which the computer system
is run is recharged via a pedal generator that derives its input
from pedalling of the cycle. Similarly, to deal with erratic and
fluctuating power supply, ITC's e-Choupal kiosk system is fitted
with battery-based uninterrupted power supply that's kept running
with solar battery rechargers; the company is also installing specially
designed UPS units that can tolerate fluctuations between 90V and
300V.
Inexpensive wireless
connectivity: In India the cost of providing a conventional
telephone line is about Rs 35,000 ($800). At this level, revenue
of Rs 1,000 per month is required for the operator to break even,
but this is affordable to less than three percent of Indian households,
making it unviable for providers to expand to low subscriber density
areas. A wireless in local loop (WLL) solution called CorDECT, developed
by Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala and others at the Indian Institute of
Technology in Chennai has brought down the per-line cost to Rs 8,000.
The solution provides a simultaneous telephone and 35/70 kbps Internet
connection. In contrast, mobile phones currently provide data rates
of just 9.6 kbps at a higher cost. 50,000 Indian villages are already
hooked up via CorDECT, and the system is also operational in South
Africa, Tunisia, Kenya, Kazakhstan, Fiji and Yemen. Jhunjhunwala
had to fight stifling government regulation and irrational bureaucratic
resistance in India for years before he could make his solutions
widespread.
Wire-mesh connectivity:
The cost of Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) access is being brought down
rapidly as ordinary wire mesh is being used to put up relay stations.
One company, US-based Geekcorps, has developed what it calls BottleNet,
put together with wire mesh, used plastic bottles and bamboo poles.
An antenna with a 3-5 kilometre range costs less than a dollar,
claims the not-for-profit company, which is a division of the International
Executive Service Corps, and has been installing these access systems
in Mali and other parts of Africa.
Electronic ink displays:
Researchers have been working furiously on developing electronic
paper and digital ink, technologies that could revolutionise computer
displays. The two most talked-about initiatives have been Gyricon
(from Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre) and E Ink (an MIT Media Lab
spin-off). Significantly, electronic paper does not need to be backlit
(like LCD screens) or have a continuous source of power to refresh
the image once it's formed. A colour version is in the pipeline,
and is expected to cost just $30-e-ink is akin to a long roll of
plastic material, making for tough yet flexible screens, rather
than the glass-based displays of today. Both hardware costs and
power consumption would thus reduce drastically once this technology
becomes widespread.
Negroponte's $100
laptop: Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, recently
announced he'd developed a prototype for a notebook computer that
would cost $100. Instead of a hard disk, this laptop would use flash
memory as storage and have a gigabyte of main memory. It would have
an inexpensive electronic ink screen instead of an LCD display and
be powered by the tapping of the keys while typing on the laptop
(a concept know as 'parasitic power', which is still being perfected
at MIT Media Lab). The laptop would run Linux and other open-source
software applications, and be Wi-Fi enabled with mesh network wireless
technology (wherein each laptop itself acts as a relay point in
the network). The laptop is to be powered by a microprocessor provided
by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which recently launched its own
low-cost computer called the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC).
Negroponte hopes to be distributing a million of these laptops in
China through the Chinese education ministry by 2006. While the
$100 laptop announcement has been met with extreme scepticism by
most experts and observers, it's an indication of the possibilities
that current technology sophistication thows up.
Thin-client technology:
Although there have been several attempts to design low-cost computers
in the past, many of the projects have not gone far beyond the drawing
board. But one alternative paradigm which has been gaining credence
is that of thin-client architecture. Stated simply, what this involves
is a stripped-down, inexpensive client computer at the user end,
connected via a combination of wireless and wired broadband links
to a powerful central server. Several companies around the world
are working to make this model viable for mass-market deployment
and are at varying stages of readiness. One company in the United
Kingdom is attempting to bring the thin-client down to a single
chip. Another company in India, Netcore Solutions, is perfecting
its 'Emergic' model where customers will purchase an inexpensive
$100 thin-client and then pay a $15 monthly fee for access to software,
connectivity, content and support based at the server end.
All in all, these examples serve to show that
we are now closer to making highly affordable computing a reality
than ever before. However, no matter what the levels of sophistication
and affordability that hardware and connectivity ultimately reach,
the trump card still remains localisation of applications, content
and interfaces. And that's something that every one striving to
help bridge the digital divide needs to be aware of and work towards
simultaneously addressing.
Conclusion
While the digital divide continues to remain
a serious concern today, a confluence of new technologies and computing
paradigms could soon make affordable and ubiquitous computing a
reality. But this is not an end in itself. The true benefit of ICT
comes from its potential as a means to alleviate a range of human
problems and societal inadequacies. Following the initial hype and
rhetoric surrounding the concept of the digital divide, much-needed
maturity has set in and the emphasis has shifted to sustainable
models of ICT for development. While affordability issues are now
being admirably addressed, equal attention needs to be paid to content
localisation and relevance. Meanwhile, it is of supreme importance
that a concerted effort is made to record the successes and failures
of all such projects and share the learnings within and between
countries.
Val Souza, Consulting Editor
valsouza@expresscomputeronline.com
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