India bets on broadband to boost rural opportunities

DUNGE, India－The day started well for Sayi Gharat. The 9-year-old schoolgirl managed to connect to her online science class easily, as she sat on a daybed in her grandmother's home in western India.

But Sayi knew she would not be able to stay in the same spot for long due to the shaky mobile internet connection. She has relied on this unstable connection since classes in Dunge village and across India moved online when COVID-19 struck in March 2020.

"Sometimes, the network is good. Sometimes, it's not good. She has to move from one room to another, from one corner to another, and even go outside," Sayi's grandmother, Chandrakamalkar Gharat, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Two years on, Sayi is back in school. But staying online all day remains a challenge for her and tens of millions of others with poor connectivity in rural India, where the digital divide hampers education, livelihoods and healthcare access.

"It's very hard for her, we sometimes wonder if it's worth the trouble," Gharat said.

There are currently more than 800 million internet subscribers in the nation of 1.3 billion people, according to the telecom regulatory authority. Yet, in rural India, only about 38 percent of the population is connected to the internet.

The government has made universal broadband a priority under its Digital India program to improve governance through technology, with projects such as the Bharat Net rural broadband project aimed at connecting about 650,000 villages nationwide.

But digital inclusion "continues to remain a distant reality for most parts of rural India", marred by delays in implementation and a lack of access and digital literacy, according to a report from policy think tank Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, or ICRIER.

That might now change due to recent policy moves, including easier approvals for satellite broadband network rollouts and the imminent launch of satellite broadband from India's Bharti Airtel and Jio Platforms, Elon Musk's Starlink and others.

Keen interest

"With the saturation of urban markets, there is keen interest among service providers to increase rural subscribership," said Mansi Kedia, a fellow at the ICRIER.

"But rural connectivity should look beyond the dominant technology, optical fiber and mobile communications. The use case for satellite broadband is the strongest in rural areas, it can help achieve connectivity at much lower costs."

The United Nations stated in 2016 that internet access is a human right, adding a clause to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the "promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the internet", including for women, girls and those impacted by the digital divide.

India was among several countries that opposed the amendment at the time, and the country has one of the most internet shutdowns in the world.

It also has one of the lowest charges for mobile data globally, helping mobile wireless to account for the bulk of the country's 834 million internet subscribers. Only about 24 million subscribers have fixed internet connections.

Agencies via Xinhua