Monday, April 21, 2008

Internet growth – key learnings from India

Though this paper deals with the issues in India, however, other economies facing the sameproblems would also immensely benefit from the suggestions put forth in the paper by theauthor. This paper starts with the importance of Internet for developing communities. Aftergiving an overview of the Internet in India, the author discusses some solutions to increaseInternet penetration and usage. For increasing internet growth, it is very important thatInternet access cost is made affordable to the common man and quality of services should be
improved. The suggestions include setting up of Internet Exchange to route domestic trafficwithin the country, thereby, saving international bandwidth, lowering of tariff for calls madeto access internet, encouraging wireless internet, encouraging development of local content,tax benefits for hardware, and the last part of the paper discusses how “metered” tariff forcalls made to access Internet is a barrier in the growth of Internet.
The Internet can be a powerful democratizing force, offering greater economic, political andsocial participation to communities that have traditionally been undeserved — and helpingdeveloping nations meet pressing needs. But unless we take concrete action to ensure thateveryone has a chance to share in the benefits of the Digital Age, information technologycould just as easily become another resource that is denied to the people who need it most.


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