India Internet report: connecting a billion Indians

If we analyse the pivotal question of  "Internet reach in India", a comparative assessment of various models shows that both private and government involvement is required to push the internet penetration in India.

Here are the key highlights from India Internet Day 2016:

• The news cases that excite people living in rural India is crop updates, weather report and e-government services.
• Real need of the hour is to go and build the product for rural India which they find useful.
• The key issue for Internet adoption in rural India is purely economic. Local language content production (Indic languages) is another issue which is not happening. However now it has become mandatory for all mobile phones to support atleast 2 indic languages along with english. 
• PPP for laying the fibre network is important and the government is willing to partner with private firms.
• For last mile connectivity we are planning for smart house model where Wi-Fi will be included in smart meters. Arvind Gupta, BJP IT Cell.
• If one has to look at pure access, then initial capital is required providing internet to the underserved. Killer application like WhatsApp is for 300 million people but for the remaining it might not serve the purpose.

The world of Apps

If you take News Media apps then they are not that popular among the users because people can now easily read news on social media sites like Facebook.

Media follows a structured business model which is traditional. Also, if you give people free data then they have variety of options to browse so if we discuss the hierarchy of data usage, it will follow like this:

• Videos 
• News
• Social media  
• Entertainment

Content-based payment model is driven by entertainment and HotStar is the best example in this regard. The real revolution will come in terms of hardware, VR, AI only when the Billion Indians get connected.

• When you give high-speed free broadband to the people they see videos. Most of the Indians can’t’ afford to buy more than 100 MB data plan.  
• Problem with regional content is lack of fonts and Android has 11 Indian languages. Also, the Indian government has set a standard now under which every smartphone manufacturer has to include Indian languages in the handset.