Rural India: Mobile phone is the Great Equalizer

Communication is the key to empowerment and mobile phone is the great equalizer. In just about a decade, Indians have made the country, the fastest growing market for mobile phones — in size, second only to China. In mid 2015, cell phone subscriptions crossed a billion and TRAI and AIMAI had forecasted in November 2015 itself that by December 31, 2015, India will overtake US in the number of Internet connections. Here is a quick look on the rural development impact.

TV White Spaces: Admittedly less than 40% of Internet connections in India are mobile Internet connections, but that is a gap that will close fast, as new technologies like TV White Spaces – the spare and unlicensed bandwidth left over as TV moves from analogue to digital transmission – are used by the Indian government working with companies like Microsoft to bring Internet to some 50,000 villages.

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