Challenges for Internet in India

Low per capita availability of high speed net access is still the ground reality and the ready availability of [relatively] high speed internet is only a big city phenomenon in India so far. And in semi urban and rural India, which account for over 90% of the population, internet is either a novelty or an unknown world. What needs to be built is a positive feedback loop by connecting this large population to the internet so that their aspirations can get molded by the infection of knowledge and they can, in turn, drive the growth of internet as a medium of communication as well as a business. Internet is still seen as a luxury so far and not as an enabler to move up the social and economic value chain. Unless this notion is corrected, it will be hard to make internet access a commodity as it is in the west. The skeptics might say that first solve the problems of water, food and electricity availability in the country and then talk about internet availability but this argument is flawed as information and knowledge has emerged as the biggest enablers and if we can build this ‘soft’ infrastructure, there will be much larger number of brains and hands to solve the problems of basic infrastructure. In 60 years of independence, the successive so called governments in India have not been able to provide basic necessities to all the people and, given the quality of people in Indian politics, future governments will never be able to solve these problems (can we have genetically modified politicians please!) We have to empower the people to solve their own local problems and internet can be one of the mediums to do so. Of course, we have to address some of the structural rigidities to make it happen. Here are some basic thoughts on what tools and ideas can be useful to make it happen:

• Cellular networks have the promise to bridge the connectivity gap as India now has very good wireless network connectivity all across the country. The number of Indians accessing internet through their mobile phones is now over three times those using the PC to connect to the Web. India has 9.27 million internet subscribers as against 31.30 million users who access internet through their mobile handsets—GSM or CDMA—to read and reply to mails, download content and for online transactions, according to latest figures released by telecom regulator Trai. Trai’s figures for the quarter ended March 2007 imply that one out of every five mobile users (there are 165.1 million subscribers to mobile services) in the country connects to the internet through the handset. Technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and WiMAX can be very effective to make this happen. One other possibility is power line internet
  

• Power is another issue as it's not regularly available and can be the biggest impediment in the way of better internet penetration. Low power/battery operated computers hold a much greater promise to bridge this gap.

• The cost of owning and maintaining an end user computing devices (aka computer) is still very high for low income group. One novel concept in this direction that I get to know recently is the idea of NetPC from Novatium, which is a low cost terminal placed at user’s place and connected to central computer to provide internet access. The idea is to provide an internet enabled terminal to users in less than $100 with very low per month subscription cost (less than $5 per month.)
  

• For emerging economies, it might be a good idea to think of applications that do not take connectivity for granted (applications that do not stop working if connectivity is not available and sync the information as and when the connection is available - taking a cue from Adam Bosworth’s old blog) This can be a powerful enabler, especially for educational applications.
  

• Wired networks in India were not built for success - they started cracking as soon as usage starts going up exponentially and required large additional infrastructural investments. If this can be calibrated better going forward, it will be a boon for the country and will give rise to other usages to achieve optimum utilization of network bandwidth.

I am sure some of these ideas can be generalized to some extent for most of the emerging markets and, to use an old cliché, third world countries.

Emerging Trends in the Internet

I am back after a small hiatus to mull over some of the trends as I see them emerging (well, some of them have already ‘emerged’; only I am beginning to slowly understand them now!) The internet has passed over its novelty phase, at least in the so called developed world and showing signs of becoming a basic service that people expect. There are two side effects of this maturity - the customer’s real self has started to show on the net (demanding, selective, looking for 'value' rather than 'experience') and possible consolidation in the industry. The richness and reach of internet is peaking in developed countries but both are increasing in emerging markets - this might cause the balance of the speed of innovation to shift towards emerging markets. However, whether it will really translate into real business is still to be seen - more than on this later.

The second trend and the popular one is social networking, though I am yet not educated enough to declare that it a real business trend or just a fad (if valuations of companies like Facebook are anything to go by, this seems to be the biggest trend in the industry, but it is yet to be seen if valuations are based on real revenues or just an aura created by M&A hungry wall street analysts.) Let me dive in by classifying the internet networking into three parts - social networks (http://www.orkut.com, http://www.facebook.com, http://www.myspace.com, etc.), content networks (http://www.digg.com, http://www.flickr.com, http://www.YouTube.com, etc.) and professional networks (http://www.linkedin.com, http://www.openbc.com, http://www.connectbuzz.com, http://www.businessnetworkingme.com, etc.)

If we closely look at it, social networks try to bring back some old world charm to our cyber lives - a close knit community where we can anything and everything with people we might or might not know in the real life. I still remember the small colony of around 200 families where I spent my childhood - all the people knowing almost all, either directly or indirectly, decision making (at least about buying products) being more social than individual and the word of mouth being the most important opinion maker. The social networks seem to give the same feeling to people like me. On the other hand, they empower the individuals to convey an opinion or message on an international stage, if not make it count.

As the opinion of the community starts counting in want of a differentiator in a product or service, any good or bad publicity can be a very potent reason for success or failure of a product or service. This is making organizations circumspect if not heavy advertisers on these channels. They definitely don't want negative publicity on the net for their product or service. Also, as these networks tend to be groups of people with similar tastes, likes and dislikes, it is possible to do very deep targeting - something that eluded the advertisers worldwide so far, which makes the social networks a ripe target for advertisement dollars. Now will it really flow in and provide greater ROI is yet to be seen. One problem is on how to do advertising in a very non-intrusive way so that not to influence the basic nature of social interaction happening on the social network.

It feels strange to come back in this space after a couple of years. But this time it is for keeps - that's my promise to myself. I would like to scribble my thoughts on some of the diverse topics I have been thinking about off late. These are some questions I have been grappling with in various lives I seems to live:

• The evolution of Internet and how is it going to change the way we live, connect and do business.
• How to build successful and self motivated teams?
  
• Is global warming really the biggest threat to mankind?
• Why is it easy to explain an economic downturn than to predict it?
  
• Is there really a model for investment in stocks that can give guaranteed results?
• Semantic web and building applications for it

In next few weeks, I will be jotting down my thinking/learning in these areas and hope to start some conversations with anyone who would like to share and enhance our collective understanding.