Google Invests In Broadband For Poorer Countries 161
Chris Wilson writes "According to the Financial Times, Google has announced their support for a new initiative called O3B to 'bring internet access to 3bn people in Africa and other emerging markets by launching at least 16 satellites to bring its services to the unconnected' by 2010. Coverage is available from Yahoo and the Wall Street Journal as well. 'The $750m project to connect mobile masts in a swath of countries within 45 degrees of the equator to fast broadband networks ... could bring the cost of bandwidth in such markets down by 95 per cent.' This will probably be the largest single investment in network infrastructure for developing countries in history. Google clearly wishes to use this project to enable broadband Internet access in developing regions, but many other things must be in place before that can happen, including fixed power infrastructure, PCs or OLPCs, technical support and skills, and useful content and services for areas with lower literacy."
Because There's Profit To Be Had (Score:5, Insightful)
This will probably be the largest single investment in network infrastructure for developing countries in history. Google clearly wishes to use this project to enable broadband Internet access in developing regions...
Ok. Let's get a few things straight here. Phrases like "will probably" and "clearly wishes" are indicative of slant because they don't tell me anything. Let me tell you what's clear here: Google is making an upfront investment to reach 3 billion new customers. Yes, it's great news for those people but I will spell out the only motive Google has--they do not want another homegrown Baidu [slashdot.org] popping up in Swahili or any other language. They will reach these people first and hand them Google in their native language.
Google's going to bring these people broadband at 95% of their current price and Google's going to make massive profit. In 2007, Google netted $4.2 billion. They are supporting O3B because it is a smart business move and their stock will go up because of it.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's great for the people but Google's only motive is "How do we reach the other 1/2 of the world's population with our services?"
Re:Because There's Profit To Be Had (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is making an upfront investment to reach 3 billion new customers.
Not 3bn new customers - 6bn new products. Google will sell these eyeballs to advertisers.
*shrug* not too bad a deal methinks.
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Google will sell these eyeballs to advertisers.
6 billion eyeballs... I'm pretty sure there's a Nigerian guy who'll sell them to you for a lot cheaper than the cost of launching a single satellite.
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Yes, but he'll want you to send him 5,000 eyeballs and your adsense account info first.
Eh.... (Score:2)
Wow that is some creative number crunching, you turn 3 billion people into six billion eyes to be sold to advertisers. Are africans related to cameleons and can focus their eyes on two different ads at the same time?
You took me literally, but not literally enough. (Score:2)
Wow that is some creative number crunching, you turn 3 billion people into six billion eyes to be sold to advertisers. Are africans related to cameleons and can focus their eyes on two different ads at the same time?
You see, the thing is, when I said Google will sell these eyeballs to advertisers. I meant that google will literally buy these people's eyeballs and sell them to advertising agencies to fry & eat, or whatever it is ad agencies do with their eyeballs.
So you see, my maths does make sense aft
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>I would have to question the assertion that there is a lot of money to be made off of advertising to people who can barely afford to feed themselves.
They'll be able to google on how to feed themselves.
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Pretty much. I find it so amusing that so many people think that Google users are their customers. We have the same relationship with Google has cattle do with a rancher.
They feed us and then sell us.
I am sure that Google will hope to reach some customers in Africa as well. They will hope to sell ads there as well.
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Oh I have no problem with it. I just don't delude myself that I am Google's customer. Hey if you want to have a different analogy then here.
We are no more Google's customers than an Orange tree is a grove owner's customer.
You could also use sheep and Shepard if you want.
The thing is that we are not Google's customer we are their product it is as simple as that.
Re:Because There's Profit To Be Had (Score:5, Insightful)
If google make profit by helping African economies develop and taking a slice of the subsequent pie then I say good luck to 'em.
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Oil money comes into economies through very focused routes. Basically it ends up in the lap of government officials who then have to resist corruption. If widespread internet access helped develop the economy it would (hopefully) be a more broad development, the cash would be more evenly distributed.
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Yea, just look at how the public at large shares the control of and profit from the telco carriers in the western world!
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My warning to the poor:
Beware geeks bearing gifts.
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You sir, need to be modded up. There is nothing wrong when capitalistic gains coincide with the greater good. It is really sad that most businesses do not take this approach. Sure, if you wanted Google to make them selves out to be fscktards and say "We are going to expand our market by increasing broadband penetration in 3rd world countries, so that we may better exploit the advertising dollar."(I never can figure out if you need an extra period, or if you should just omit the period inside the quotes). Bu
Re:Because There's Profit To Be Had (Score:4, Interesting)
... guns
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Re:Because There's Profit To Be Had (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's going to bring these people broadband at 95% of their current price
Ehmm... TFA talks about "bring the cost of bandwidth in such markets down by 95 per cent". Doesn't that mean: take 95% off, leave 5% (1/20 th) of previous cost?
Cost to provide vs cost to purchase (Score:2)
If you can produce a product at 5% the cost of anyone else, and you maximize profit by providing it to the customer at 95% of the cost to buy from anyone else...
Of course, usually if you really can provide it at 5% of the cost, # of customers x $$$ profit per customer is higher for lower $$$ per customer. I'm just trying to point out that % discount to produce a product != % discount for a customer to buy the product.
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Even most of the small elite that COULD use the internet right now, will not have enough disposable income to make them a good target for advertisement. If this is an investment, it sure is a very longterm one. Kudos to google for doing it anyhow.
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Re:Because There's Profit To Be Had (Score:5, Insightful)
Illiteracy rate is high, many countries don't have stable and enough electricity let alone the number of PCs to use the inet effectively.
I live in a third world country, well within the area this will cover. Most people are literate, most households have electricity, you can buy a second hand PC in any town for a few tens of dollars (and about a quarter of the population have bought mobile phones, which start at similar prices). Even as it is, broadband is available in cities and is perfectly commercially viable.
Yes there are a lot of people who cannot benefit from this, but there are also a lot who can.
Take a look at the number of cars on the road in the third world. Anyone who can afford a car, can easily afford a cheap computer and internet connection. Anyone who can afford a motorbike can probably afford it!
You seem to think that people either live at first world standards, or on the edge of starvation. Most of the world's population is somewhere in between.
Re:Because There's Profit To Be Had (Score:4, Interesting)
Why plop down a warehouse or plant in a nation with no dependable way of communicating with it? Access to the Internet will attract business, which will create jobs and bring an influx of money.
Further, PCs aren't the only things that can benefit humanity with access to the Internet. You're thinking inside the box. Developing nations have solved many problems without our confined 1st World ideas. I don't believe you need to sit an Tanzanian in front of Wikipedia to call the Inet an African success story. Creative uses will come from uncommon and unexpected corners, just as they always have. This is just one more tool, and one from which Google
PS - Once you're in the position to call $3 billion dollar shots like these, I don't call you an accountant anymore. You're management.
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Re:Because There's Profit To Be Had (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's great for the people but Google's only motive is "How do we reach the other 1/2 of the world's population with our services?"
Only motive ? How about saying they found a way to do humanitarian actions while improving their profits ? I really admire such actions. They take risks, they bet on the fact that helping the world can be a profitable thing when done right. I wish we see more of these.
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There has been a lot of suggestions from African country that they prefer to get a servic
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so what? Of course it's for profit, it's just too bad most people are too small minded to realize money and profit aren't the same. Real progress is when people profit from both sides of a transaction, otherwise it's just the usual explotation and theft. This story stands out because, for a change, these poor people may also profit, rather than being ripped off by the already overly affluent.
Personally, I've come to realize that greed cannot result in true happiness, just shallow gratification and a undeser
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Re:Because There's Profit To Be Had (Score:4, Insightful)
Making a profit is NOT evil. This will probably be news to you even though you clearly wish not to hear it. The fact that they also clearly wish to make a profit will probably be obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together, in no way does that change the meaning of the quote even though you clearly wish it did.
Your own anti-corporate slant is breathtaking, god forbid anyone make a profit from doing something that just might, in it's own small way, assist in dragging 1/2 the planet out of the stone age.
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I am all for making money and helping the world at the same time.
It's way better than the other options:
Making money and fucking over the poor
Not making money and becoming poor (or relying on government handouts)
My company worked with poor kids here in San Diego for a long time, while we were designing an educational software game. We turned around the lives of a lot of kids (most of whom were already burnt-out on learning), learned which pedagogical techniques worked with kids like that in an afterschool s
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Little to no GDP now. Providing communications infrastructure increases the likely rate of economic growth in those countries, and the returns for investment there. As a move for profit, it only works if it actually does help spur economic growth in those countries, but it certainly isn't unreasonable to think that it will. Whether or no
technical support and skills ?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's where all tech support departments are these days.
Triple Play (Score:2, Funny)
Food, water and broadband.
For only $99/month*, you could provide a child with Facebook and MySpace.
(*) For the first year of service. Offer void where prohibited by law. Not really. Please see a doctor if broadband persists for more than four hours.
LEO means intermittent (Score:1)
So...16 satellites in LEO, meaning intermittent coverage, plus they will need spares and steerable ground antennas. I'd like to see an article with all the technical details, but it doesn't sound practical for providing continuous high bandwidth links...and it seems pretty expensive for covering only a belt around the equator.
Re:LEO means intermittent (Score:4, Insightful)
45 degrees either side of the equator is a pretty wide 'belt'.
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>45 degrees either side of the equator is a pretty wide 'belt'.
Yep, it's exactly where the US is located. ...and China, North-Korea,....
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Re:LEO means intermittent (Score:4, Interesting)
Useful for streaming and downloading large files perhaps, but probably a bit of a PITA if you want to do something like online gaming or some quick web browsing, because satellites=high latency. Not saying it's a bad thing though, it's a good start :)
Someone above made a comment about this just being about advertising and google's business - well sure it will benefit them in the long run, but in the short term they're not going to make much advertising money from countries who can't even afford the infrastructure in the first place. I think this is most definitely a Good thing to do, whatever the motives. People who are always trying to make out like Google are actually evil need to get a grip. Businesses exist to make a profit, but Google also is conducting business in such a way as to benefit computer users in general. Think of the large limits on GMail inboxes forcing Hotmail to provide a similar service (my inbox space jumped from 200MB to 2GB), and Google Docs creating competition for Office, etc. I still think Google is a very 'good' company as companies go.
Re:LEO means intermittent (Score:4, Informative)
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I know that online gaming is the least of Africa's concerns at the moment, but an extra 100ms latency on top of normal internet latency levels would be pretty bad for gaming. It takes you down to 56k modem latency levels, and that's pretty bad I can assure you :p On a LAN you could expect 15-30ms latency, for an online game in the same country as you you would probably have about 50-150ms latency, but back when I was using dial-up I'd be lucky to get a 250ms ping in Counter-Strike. If the gamers were just p
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If your LAN has more than 2ms latency, you may want to think about replacing the tin cans and string with actual, you know, wires.
Anyway, where I am, ping times to the USA are about 300ms, and it's fine for most normal uses (web, email, VoIP, ssh sessions, etc.). I'm not a gamer, but as you say that's probably not Google's major concern at the moment.
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I was basing it on Counter-Strike pings rather than actual latency I've measured myself, I thought they'd be basically the same but apparently not (unless our current main switch is a lot faster than the one we were using a few years ago). Perhaps CS pings are measured in ten-thousandths of a second rather than thousandths..
Just checked with a command line ping to one of our servers and am actually getting 0.2ms latency (that will be through 2 switches).
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BTW you mean 'RTFA[rticle]', the summary doesn't mention LEO :p
I just read some of the other comments around here and someone mentions that as well as the satellites the last mile will be 3G connection, which isn't particularly good for latency either.. so these will most definitely only be useful for browsing and downloading rather than stuff like gaming and Skype.
Re:LEO means intermittent (Score:5, Informative)
16 satellites in LEO, meaning intermittent coverage, plus they will need spares and steerable ground antennas.
They're going to use the satellites for long haul & 3g masts for last mile.
and it seems pretty expensive for covering only a belt around the equator.
45 degrees is half way to the north/south poles.
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So...16 satellites in LEO, meaning intermittent coverage, plus they will need spares and steerable ground antennas. I'd like to see an article with all the technical details, but it doesn't sound practical for providing continuous high bandwidth links...and it seems pretty expensive for covering only a belt around the equator.
There's been a fair amount of progress in planning the positions of constellations of LEO satellites to provide continuous coverage, or at least very close to continuous, see the following paper:
Williams, Edwin, William Crossley and Thomas Lang, "Average and maximum revisit time trade studies for satellite constellations using a multiobjective genetic algorithm", Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, 49, 3, 385-400, 2001
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Can't happen fast enough! (Score:2)
Thank you, Google!
I wonder what affect this will have on people... (Score:3, Funny)
Will being able to communicate easily give people more ambition or will they hit 4chan first and decide that the rest of the world is a pit of evil that has to be avoided at all cost...
Re:I wonder what affect this will have on people.. (Score:2, Funny)
-Send the first goatse link
-Be the first to solicit cybersex
-and ask "a/s/l?"
-Degenerate various African languages into their equivalents of "AOLspeak."
-Accuse them of being teenage boys unless they "show pics"
-ATTN: Dear Sir/M, I am Mr. Johnathan Ashcroft. an Auditor of a BANK OF THE WASHINGTON, DC. (FCT). I have the courage to Crave indulgence for this important business believing that you will never let me down either now or in
How about this country? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still waiting for broadband here in the US. That last mile is a killer...
I'm at 26.4 kbps in the USA. Where's Google? (Score:2, Insightful)
But, hey, why not spend a few billion to get an African peasant farmer a 1 Meg connection?
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My 26.4 kbps (that's right, not quite 28.8 modem speeds) connection is right here in the good old USA.
Then why not protest and try to have this improved? If all you do is pay your bill and mutter on slashdot, they'll keep you on your current rate.
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> Stop whining and get a satellite connection.
You obviously have not actually used a satellite connection. The quality of service is abysmal and you'll be lucky if you can get speeds faster than dialup. Oh, and latency totally sucks. And it costs an enormous amount of money for what you get. Satellite companies have every incentive to cram as many users as possible onto their satellite(s), and so they do, with the result being speeds just fast enough to prevent their offices being razed by angry customer
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This low earth orbit satellite offers speeds up to 10 Gb/sec and latency of 100ms at a cost of only 5% of existing connections.
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Politics (Score:2)
See the problem Google would face here is political.
If they invest in building better broadband in the United States they would have to go where told after awhile, if not upfront. Otherwise they would get vilified if here was offended or wanted to be offended.
It was like when high speed cable was being rolled out in my area, it HAD to go into certain neighborhoods, less than 10% uptake, before coming to mine because otherwise it would not have been "fair".
I am all for them going into countries like they p
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clarifying (Score:3, Insightful)
"but many other things must be in place before that can happen"
Sure. But satellites would be probably the most costly and the most steep step.
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Somehow I think it would be cheaper than laying cable, protecting it, and repairing it for 45 degrees off the equator.
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Cable work could be done incrementally, village by village. As for the satellite, you need to pay big sum upfront.
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I doubt launching a few satellites is more costly than building power plants and laying copper all over the same area the satellites will cover.
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I guess the satellite dish connects to a small town and relay through wireless means such as http://www.usbwifi.orconhosting.net.nz/ [orconhosting.net.nz]
In that case, there might be fund raising campaigns for a few containers of Chinese parabolic cookware and wifi dongles.
THHGTTG (Score:5, Informative)
"They cannot afford our product, so lets artificially accelerate their development until such point that they can, and then sell them out product"
Not that I, paying ZAR70 per gig for internet access, mind at all. Hell, bring it on - those monopolistic providers here in Africa, please, by all means, hand their asses to them.
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I was thinking that too. And if at some point the whole world becomes too poor to afford google at all, the googleplex will be put into suspended animation until the world can afford it again...
wouldnt (Score:1, Troll)
that money be better spend feeding the poor or even building up basic infrastructure like schools and wells
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that money be better spend feeding the poor or even building up basic infrastructure like schools and wells
Most places that will be using this sort of commercial service have adequate food/water/power/education infrastructures.
Most that don't have such infrastructure have a problem that google can't solve. War - of one kind or another.
Re:wouldnt (Score:4, Insightful)
There are already people doing that. Educating people to boost their skill levels and economies would enable them to buy their own food and learn to dig their own wells.. I know I'd rather be self sufficient than live on hand-outs all the time (though I admit it's pretty easy to say that when I'm nowhere near starving or destitute)
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Have a look at this Eleni Gabre-Madhin: Building a commodities market in Ethiopia [ted.com]
Broadband internet access would probably count as very useful part of the infrastructure needed for an African commodities market.
Pass the parcel (Score:2)
.. so now the Indian tech support companies that everyone have outsourced to can themselves outsource to some new African companies.
Broadband is not what they need (Score:3, Insightful)
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*sigh* How much food and HIV care/prevention can you get for $750m? Priorities people! But then again there's no money to be made in that I suppose :(
im not sure that you don't vastly improve the HIV problem with internet access... the big problem in the 3rd world is a lack of access to information about consequences... when a population thinks you cure HIV by having sex with a virgin... its not going to do so well...
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Now you'll get thousand of myspace-sites spreading that "cure".
just hope that someone will herd those people to the real information sites.
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Meh. With all the misinformation on the net, I doubt it will make much of a dent in it.
The only way I see it really making any sort of measurable difference is because people will be too busy dicking around on the net that they won't be banging as often for the sake of something to do.
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the big problem in the 3rd world is a lack of access to information about consequences... when a population thinks you cure HIV by having sex with a virgin...
Suddenly I am reminded of the slogan of an awful website reading "The internet makes you stupid".
Case in point: I have a few family members who recently have begun using the internet. With all of this wealth of information at their fingertips, they have chosen to disregard it and use it as a medium to forward each other jokes usually involving half naked women that somehow ended up in powerpoint presentations.
What surprises me is that I'll often be asked simple technical questions like "The clock on my lapt
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Hopefully it will bring some education, which is good for the long term. We can't really expect an advertising company to give away food and drugs.
Google.org [google.org] does the charity stuff.
Re:Broadband is not what they need (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad observation. Hackneyed observation. Disease and violence are symptoms. They are not the cause. The underlying cause is an underdevloped, impoverished economy and the lack of human-resource. Treat the causes by developing the economy and educating the people. Treating the symptoms never help. Although broadband access is not the silver bullet, but it is the the variety of change that would be desired.
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Infrastructure is far, far more valuable to these people than a disposable handout. People have a remarkable ability to better their own situation, given an honest chance and some education.
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Some of the handouts make the problem worse in some ways.
By US law, food aid given by the USA must be bought from US producers. Even once shipped to the country being helped, the aid food often undercuts local supplies of food. This results in collapses in local markets, making the situation worse (or at least making it persist).
Food and vaccines handouts don't create jobs (Score:2)
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It can easily be argued that (general) education and economic development can lead to a decrease in HIV in the long term. Helping people live mildly better lives in the short term won't improve long term opportunity.
I lived on an island for several years. While its source of revenue was mainly tourism, businesses could not operate reliably when you had to try and go up the mountain to use one of the old analog brick telephones to contact the mainland. When land lines came to the island, a whole new range
Umbrella Corp (Score:1)
Add this to the satellite they launched recently (Score:3, Interesting)
and they could actuarially revolutionize life in the developing world.
Take all the data from the satellite, crunch it through Precision Agriculture systems to generate recommendations for crop care (and even crop selection), and then distribute the results over the broadband network, along with things like video tutorials for farming techniques.
Boing Boing has a post on the basics of precision agriculture here: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/09/agroveillance-using.html [boingboing.net]
http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/hexayurt/supercomputer-applications-for-the-developing-world-375 [howtolivewiki.com]
Was an approach to doing this based on repurposing military imagery.
Really could change the world in a big way, food security for all.
Content (Score:2)
suitable for people with low literacy?
Rule #34.. there's already porn of it .-)
419 boom in 2010! (Score:1)
oblig (Score:2)
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MS hands out free copies of Windows to schools, get the kids use to Windows at an early age so when they grow up they buy legit copies.
Google puts a satelite in orbit to give broadband access to a new market, who do you think gets the ad revenue when hundres of millions of people gain access to the internet courtesy of Google?
My litmus test is this, if you replace Google with Microsoft in the story, how does it sound?
I agree, they don't need more broadband (Score:3, Interesting)
They could use it, sure.
However, countries in Africa could really use a 4 billion dollar investment into Concentrated solar power.
4 billion is all that it would take to make the necessary power for the entire continent out of sun power, mirrors, and liquid salt and some high power lines.
Once you get past the corruption anyways.
Poorer Countries?! (Score:2)
How about we invest in broadband throughout America first? There are still plenty of smaller towns and rural areas that don't get to complain about how slow their 20mb cable connection is. All we have as options are terribly managed telephone lines which yield 24.6kbs at best, or if you're feeling lucky, you can hook up a laggy (and expensive) satellite.
Reality Check (Score:2, Interesting)
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From TFA, the cost of bandwidth could come down 95%, so that means new price can be $100 / month. I just wonder where they can find 3bn customers who can afford this amount.
Now, (Score:2)
if only they could do something about the sorry state of broadband in the US. Mainly the lack of any real competition.
Forced bundling with a phone line, for a combined fee of $80/mo, with a two-year contract and a $300 early termination fee? No thank you.
Forced bundling of TV services? Maybe with a contract too? For a combined fee of $80/mo? No thank you.
Anywhere except in high-density cities, the monopoly incumbent telcos and cablecos have a virtual stranglehold on you, if you want anything other than dial
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So go around the monopolies. Google can leaflet villages with plans of how to build an earth station using a wok and parts cannibalized from old car stereos.