High range Idukki gets high speed internet, startups in Kerala rejoice

Idukku means a ‘narrow gorge’ in Malayalam. Hence the name ‘Idukki’ for the hilliest district of Kerala, at the southern tip of the Western Ghats range, full of forests where leopards and wild elephants roam. The place is known for top-quality marijuana, nick-named ‘Idukki Gold’ for its potency. But now, it has another claim to fame: this ‘high range’, as people in Kerala refer to the inaccessible Idukki, is on the information superhighway.

Today Idukki became the first rural district in the country to get hooked up to an optical fiber broadband network being rolled out as part of an ambitious Digital India program.

All eight blocks in Idukki’s district as well as 52 gram panchayats (village-level civic bodies) now have 100 Mbps broadband connectivity, which makes it faster than the average internet speed in Singapore.

Idukki is just the first milestone in the US$4 billion National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN) project, which aims to connect 250,000 gram panchayats, covering a rural population of 600 million, by the end of 2016.

Unlike most fiber optic broadband connections, which are point-to-point, the NOFN uses a point-to-multipoint system. That is, multiple users can access its 100 Mbps bandwidth from the gram panchayat. The access is also ‘non-discriminatory’, which means any telecom or cable operator or ISP can use it to deliver services which can cover the gamut from digital health and education to ecommerce and electronic banking. This is on top of its primary purpose to provide e-governance.

What it means to citizens and entrepreneurs

Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of IT bellwether Infosys and now an investor and mentor for startups, explains to Tech in Asia the significance of broadband going rural:

Access is important to empower people and access is even more important for people in rural areas. It is the government which has to build the infrastructure for access, since returns are over the long term. The NOFN is an important project for the country and sooner we complete this, sooner we can provide uniform services to all citizens.

MIT innovator turned serial entrepreneur Deepak Ravindran, whose latest startup Lookup is a messaging app for local shopping in India, is enthused by the new possibilities: “Rural India will be the most important area for digital innovation from now,” he tells Tech in Asia.

Gopalakrishnan expects new healthtech and edtech startups with a rural focus to emerge, riding on the back of NOFN and creating new jobs and revenue opportunities. He also expects entrepreneurs to play a part in creating service centers in rural areas to provide government services with NOFN.

‘Thanks for the broadband. Now, can we have electricity please?’

A lot will depend on how quickly the NOFN is rolled out across the country. Kerala is the most literate state in India and is ahead on several other development parameters as well. In some other states, the NOFN is reported to be running into intransigent gram panchayats, who see nothing in it for them and are reluctant to facilitate laying out the optical fiber cables and housing the telecom equipment. In some gram panchayats, the telecom utility was ready with the broadband, but there was no electricity connection.