Shantanu Archives — LIRNEasia


At the invitation of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), LIRNEasia’s teleuse@BOP research of relevance to the question of increasing services provided to users in rural areas was presented at a session chaired by Mr Shantanu Consul, Administrator of India’s USO Fund.   In response to audience questions Executive Director Samarajiva stated that the higher-than-other-countries percentage of non-owner teleusers at the Bottom of the Pyramid in India showed that there was a real problem these people faced in getting connected.   They could afford USD 5 per month for the services (and in some cases paid even more), but the difficulty was with the cost of getting connected (and coverage, of course). The presentation can be downloaded here.