The Education Problem: Raj Reddy (Part 12)

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 | 3 comments

After having dealt so much with education, we also examine some of the other issues which are of interest and importance to Raj.

SM: We have spent a good amount of time addressing education. What other issues are on the top of your mind at this point? RR: The big picture where education comes in, for me, is again thinking broadly about how information technology can help with the people in developing countries. Especially rural people in developing countries, and those who are illiterate; those at the bottom of the pyramid earning a dollar a day.

If you start with that, you think, first of all they have to have a computer. Then, they need to have access to some data network, and if they only have a dollar a day they cannot afford either. My proposal to the government of India to solve this problem was this: I told them they are all starting with the wrong assumptions. If they were to put fiber to every village they would create unlimited bandwidth.

The cost of putting fiber to every village is only 1% of the cost of putting a road to every village. Many of them are trying to put roads to the villages. If only they spent 1% first, they would have profound impact on the economy of the village. They answered that they wanted that all to be done in private sector.

My point is that private sector will charge and arm and a leg. If you give them free bandwidth then value added services can be provided much cheaper. Just like with a car, government builds the roads, and the cars and the gas stations and the mechanics all happen in the private sector. You don’t ask the private sector to build the roads. I did that analogy, and it is finally setting in. The Minister of IT is buying in. The President of India made a speech a few weeks ago saying that bandwidth should be free. Everyone is now realizing that this is a common sense idea.

You could wire every country in Africa in a way that every population center is connected by fiber or wireless connection for a cost of $1 billion. The reason the cost is so low is, if you tried to do the same thing in the United States, the cost would be $20 billion. It is $100K per mile in the US, and only $5K per mile in Africa, due to the labor cost differential.

I made this presentation to the World Bank. They said it was a great idea, but there was a problem; they only deal with countries, not continents. Second, the countries would have to come and ask for the money, since they only give loans. They do not run projects, they just fund them. So, I am now on a different mission, and that is to get the heads of state to come to the World Bank and apply for the loan. This seems to be a simple idea, even G7 countries can give you a billion dollars, but they have to agree to common standards of interoperability.

The reality is that they have just invested huge amounts of money in telecom infrastructures, and they do not want to loose the money.

This segment is part 12 in a 15 part series Segment 13 →
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