Hello. I am a researcher and journalist in India and have been following the discussions with great interest. As Judith pointed out, research and documentation of uses of the Simputer would be critical. Moreover, these findings should be made available to as many people as possible - through the Net, print media, etc. - so that the learnings can be applied in many sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, etc. and a multiplier effect of sorts is created.
The Simputer would be a great tool for the women's self-help groups and micro-finance network. For instance, there is this NGO in Vishakhapatnam (India), YCO, which helps support and improve rural livelihoods in 150 villages. http://whynotvisakhapatnam.blogspot.com/2004/10/what-to-learn-from-25-years-of-systems.html. The Simputer could be a very effective tool for this NGO to reach out to these villages. The other issue is that unless the Simputer is seen by the people, particularly rural villagers in India as beneficial to improving their livelihoods/incomes, it will not be adopted widely. A company that has been doing a lot of interesting work in the area of rural connectivity is n-Logue (www.n-logue.com), which has been set up the TeNeT Group at IIT, Chennai. It has innovated a low-cost rural telephony system called CorDect. The TeNeT Group of IIT Chennai has incubated several companies, one of which is n-Logue, chartered to provide and operate telecom and internet services in small towns and rural areas of India. The company's business model is based on two success stories of India - STD PCOs (public call offices) and cable TV PCOs - which brought telephony to urban middle and lower income households. Owned by small entrepreneurs who man these kiosks, these PCOs provide services for more than 18 hours a day, 365 days of the year. It's estimated that there are 900,000 such kiosks spread all over the country in rural and urban India. Building on this entrepreneurship model, n-Logue plans to provide a telephone and Internet kiosk in every village. The kiosk would be operated by a local entrepreneur who would make a variety of services available to the villages. The kiosk consists of a corDECT wallset with its accessories, a telephone and telephone meter, a multimedia personal computer, power backup and Indian language software. n-Logue sets up the Access Centre and provides wireless conections in a 25 km radius. The 2000 sq.km Access Centre typically covers 300-400 villages in most areas in the plains of India. n-Logue plans to provide at least 500 connections in this area to individuals, govt. offices, schools, public health centres and at least one kiosk operator in every village. Learning from the cable-TV revolution in India, the n-Logue bsuiness model arranges partnering with a local business for each of the Access Centres. This local business person needs to make an investment of the order of $25000 and becomes a 50% partner in the venture. It is the local business person, or Local SErvice PRovider (LSP) who carries out the operations at the Access Centre, finds subscribers, connects them, maintains each connection and collects the telephone and Internet charges. n-Logue, besides investing and providing the equipment, provides training and drives the business relationship with content providers. The LSP, like a cable TV operator, is a local small entrepreneur who can provide better face to face interaction and service in rural areas. Local languages is the key to the success of such a model. TeNet group has promoted a company, "Chennail Kavigal" which has developed a complete office package consisting of word processing, spread sheet, database, mail client, browser and a drawing package in a few Indian languages. Other Indian languages will be incorporated shortly. It provides the package to n-Logue for deployment in rural areas at a nominal price. TeNeT goup is working to make the PCs in these kiosks work on Linux open source platforms and is driving a number of applications. n-Logue has an ISP licence and it has deployed several access centres and is expanding rapidly. Some of the districts where connections are available include Nellikuppam and Madurai in Tamil Nadu, Dhar in MP, Sangrur in Punjab, Baramati in maharashtra, Bagru in Rajasthan, Agra district in Up and a few districts in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. n-Logue plans to step up its operations to a "taluk a day", so that each taluk (county) could be made operational. The following case study might be of interest to many of you in the group. http://www.digitaldividend.org/pdf/nlogue.pdf Apologies for the long mail! Regards, Adite Chatterjee _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
