Mobile phones are the most widely owned asset in India: 93.3% of all households own, 96.7% of urban households and 91.5% of rural households own at least one household. Indians are more eager to connect than to sleep in comfort: the second most widely owned household item, the cot or bed, is owned by only 89.4% of all households, though ownership remains the same in urban and rural areas.
Internet access is more restricted: less than half of households (48.8%) have access to the Internet, access is skewed in urban households, 64.6% of whom can go online, while only 41% of rural households have it ability. A third of women and 51% of men in the 15-49 age group claimed to have access to the Internet.
Most Internet access is via phone: only 9.3% of households have a computer, and that’s only because 19.3% of urban households have at least one, while only 4% of rural households have that luxury . In addition, only 2.3% of households have a landline phone.
A large proportion of all households, 95.7 per cent, have a bank or post office account. The survey states that 79% of women have their own bank account. 53 percent of the women surveyed had a phone of their own, but only a fifth of them used the phone to operate their bank accounts. That’s because 71 percent of women can read the text messages they’ve received.
Exposure to the mass media is surprisingly limited: 41% of women and 32% of men do not have regular access to newspapers, magazines, television, radio or cinema. This shortfall has further increased since NFHS 4 of 2015-16. This trend is in contrast to the finding that 67.8% of all households have a television set.
Not surprisingly, wall posters/writings are almost as great a source of information on family planning for women as television. Still for women under 35, the Internet was also an important source of such information, with over 30% claiming to have accessed information on family planning on the Internet.
Only a third of the women surveyed had ever used the Internet, while for men, the proportion was much higher, double the level for men aged 25-29. Expectedly, internet use among women in urban areas (51.8 percent versus 24.6%) and among women favored by the educated (12 percent for those with schooling (12 years or more, 4.7 percent for those without schooling). heavily skewed. Perhaps, not surprisingly, Internet use was significantly higher among unmarried women than among married women (50.3 and 28.7%).
These findings paint a bleak picture of a disastrous gap between the growing aspirations of the Indian people, which symbolize privileged and almost ubiquitous ownership of phones, and the low internet use and exposure to mass media, especially reported by women. Gone, along with failed ambition and spelled abortion. productive capacity.
The solution to this problem is to make 5G connectivity available to all. This is achieved by reducing the cost of spectrum for telecom operators, opening up satellite broadband to backhaul, especially in remote areas, establishing financing schemes for phones capable of accessing 5G networks, and using funds from the Universal Service Obligation Fund. can be done by doing.
If easier financing schemes, supplemented with subsidies for the poor, make 5G phones affordable for all, spectrum costs could come down. Operators who have leased 2G spectrum can discontinue this spectrum-disabled service and redeploy them to offer 5G services, increasing the availability of spectrum and thus the cost of spectrum. can reduce.
Encouraging large pools of savings, such as pension funds, to participate in spectrum auctions, and leasing out large-scale spectrum from the state for upfront payments, which they can benefit from by sub-leasing spectrum for short periods. could collect together. Telecom operators in as little as one hour or call duration will both meet the target of optimizing government revenue and freeing operators from the burden of huge upfront capital cost on spectrum acquisition.
Spectrum is required to make calls. There is no reason for any operator to have part of the spectrum dedicated to himself. An operator needs spectrum to be available for use whenever he wants for a competitive price. This goal can be met if spectrum trades on spectrum exchanges, many wholesale holders of spectrum, the way electricity is now traded on power exchanges. Technological advances such as software-defined radio permit spectrum-hopping by handsets into larger bandwidths. The larger the phone, the more flexibility in spectrum usage, the lower the cost of telephony offering. The cost of fancy phones can be brought down by mass production. Even the resulting low price can be made more affordable through easy financing schemes, which can be strengthened with subsidies where needed.
The curse of mobile telephony is backhaul. Currently, large capacity optical fiber cables connect towers in towns and cities only. Laying optical fiber cables involves obtaining a right of way from local authorities, state governments and landlords, all with the palms that squeeze the necks of these swans with golden eggs that lay their cabling under the ground in search of their property. come in flocks. In cities, this is viable even after meeting extortion demands for the right of way. But in rural areas, it is far better and cheaper to rely on a broadband connection offered by many providers of low-Earth-orbit satellite connectivity.
Why go to such an extent to let Indians use the internet freely? So that they can further expose themselves to misinformation in the multimedia circulated by WhatsApp forwards?
The Internet is a powerful enabler of new opportunities for social inclusion, healthcare, education and training, and income-generating in rural and remote areas. A key feature of 5G is low latency: The difference between triggering an online effect and feeling the effect is only microseconds long. This is important not only for high-end gaming but also for remote surgery. India is painstakingly building primary health centers in rural areas. But unfortunately there is a shortage of skilled personnel. Surgery by robotic arms that can be performed remotely by a trained surgeon sitting in his office in a town will be entirely possible using 5G connectivity, with very few qualified personnel in attendance at the rural site of surgery.
With the proliferation of online courses and a plentiful supply of how-to videos on YouTube on any topic, the potential for people across the country to educate themselves and become productive is immense – potentially. What could make this potential reality is the big data throughput capability of 5G.
Data throughput on 5G can significantly increase audio-visual media, creating a challenge for television news channels. The population at large may be informed and misinformed to a far greater extent than now. Exposure to mass media will eliminate the problem of ubiquitous data connectivity on mobile devices.
Universal broadband will encourage more people to access digital finance, while also paving the way for financial inclusion.
New opportunities for income generation can be created by stable high-speed data connectivity. Farmers can be trained for better crop rearing. With the help of training videos and real-time instructions, orchids are expected to be in demand in remote mountain villages at next season’s auction in Amsterdam.
The relatively illiterate require more data than the relatively educated. An Einstein only needs to send a short message with E=mc2 to explain the special theory of relativity to a fellow physicist, but people like you and me need 30 minutes to explain it. Might be possible. Videos in high definition.
Give Indians high-speed broadband to unleash their creative potential. They have little to lose, as poor as they are, and a world to win. Affordable 5G is the way to go.
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