Indian Politician Promises 2 Megabit DSL For $4/month

BJP promises much“Affordable broadband for all Americans by 2007,” George Bush promised in 2004. That would have required confronting the powerful Bell lobby. Bush didn’t even try. Now, L.K. Advani of India’s BJP party has gone further, promising 2 megabits and unlimited uploads and downloads. Broadband would reach “every town” and village, mostly mobile. All rules on VOIP will be immediately eliminated. Mobile phones will be free to the poor, and soon all will be able to reach the Internet.

Amazingly, almost all of this is practical for India within a decade and not impossible within five years if political will is strong. Although broadband today costs at least three times that much in almost every country, BSNL has a low end, teaser DSL service at that price already. I’ve estimated the cost to offer DSL today in India is bullock_cart_webperhaps $5, and that will probably fall in half with Moore’s Law over five years.

Low-end DSL modems will probably drop from today’s $20-30 to perhaps $10 in huge quantities. In 2015, low-end DSL chips will probably cost no more than the chips inside today’s $10 digital clock or calculator. I can buy a nice Motorola mobile for $10, which is subsidized by TracFone/AT&T down from probably $20-30 they pay the manufacturer. Infineon and Texas Instruments are racing to develop chips that can bring phones below $10, possibly within 5 years. That means "free" not out of reach for units subsidized by the carriers and government.

Rahul Tongia several years ago explained why Indian communication costs can be so low. “Most of the cost of fiber to each village is labor, and labor in rural India is very cheap. Once the fiber is in the village, a WiFi or cheap GSM box on the highest building doesn’t cost that much.” Four years ago, Andhra next_billion_mobile_bagPradesh began a program to bring a connection to every village in the state; it’s time to do similar everywhere else.

Femtocells are miniature basestations. They are plummeting in price and will probably cost a few tens of dollars in five years. Similar technology with greater capacity can be low cost and low power. VNL brought a solar-powered base station to MWC this year that draws 50-120 watts and can be transported on two bullock carts.

Politicians worldwide make many promises. It would require strong political courage to achieve goals like this so quickly.

BJP’s plan to promote IT in Indian languages also has a good chance of success. There are more native speakers of Hindi than of English, 171M Bengali, 88M Punjabi, 70M Telugu, and 68M Marathi. As the Internet spreads across India, the different cultures are likely to generate demand for services in their language. India has gone from 100M to 400M mobile phones in the last few years, and is continuing at 9-12M/month. Advani’s goal of 1B mobiles in five years is just an extension of today’s trend.

I’m more skeptical of expectations that IT will deliver12M rural jobs, higher farm productivity, and water conservation. That’s not as extreme as the flat Earthers at the U.S. who claim that “broadband demand stimulus” would add $134B to the U.S. economy and 3-5 times as many jobs as likely from broadband buildouts. “India will equal China in every IT parameter in five years,” as China’s growth also is rapid.

The BJP platform also promises to standardize the government on free and open source software (bravo.) They also will require Indian manufacture of more hardware. In case anyone cares, I am in profound disagreement with many BNJ policies and action.Written by Dave Burstein

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