Smart Grid with IPv6 for India

I made a presentation at IISc, Bangalore on Smart Grid for India as part of the TEC and IPv6 Forum India Work Shop on Greenfield Applications for Transition to IPv6 in India.

Mobile Broadband to reduce Digital Divide in India

I have come across many people who were confused between rural connectivity and digital divide, to clarify this, let me start with defining the digital divide. Digital Divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all causing unequal acquisition of various skills. This leads to the knowledge divide among the people and exclusion of a section of people in the society. By this definition, there are lots of people in metros and other cities, where the connectivity is almost pervasive, who do not have access to the information and communication technologies.

Figure 1. Number of Connections in India per 100 (Source: TRAI, June 2009)

Indian government tried hard (announce plans) to increase number of broadband connections for effectively providing access to ICT thereby reducing the digital divide. When Dayanidhi Maran was the Minister of Communications & Information Technology in 2007, he set a target of 20 million broadband connections by 2010, and 9 million by the end of 2007 (1). Today we are in the middle of year 2009 and number of broadband connections at 6.4 million (Fig.1.).

The number people connected in India is 33% (33 people have either fixed, mobile or broadband connection for every 100people), this number is even lower in villages at 12.62% while urban connectivity is relatively better at 81%. This shows that the digital divide in India is rather high making large section people almost excluded from the society (Fig.2).

Figure2. Connectivity in India per 100 (Source: TRAI, Dec 2008)

There are many reasons why Maran’s target was not met. Keeping the political reasons aside, the following are some of the key barriers for the broadband penetration in India: