Can Telecom and IT be for the Disadvantaged?



Ashok Jhunjhunwala
ashok@tenet.res.in

Dept. of Electrical Engineering
IIT Madras
Chennai 600 036
India




1 Introduction

Today, in most parts of the world, including India, urban areas have become synonymous with development, advancement and opportunity. With superior infrastructure (compared to that in rural areas), including Educational Institutions, Universities, Industry and Science and Technology, it is taken for granted that all knowledge, wealth and power is concentrated in urban areas. Comparatively, the rural areas are just carrying on with agriculture and small scale cottage industries, waiting for the fruits of modernisation to trickle down. Modern infrastructure is largely missing. Though schools and colleges are there, they fail to generate aspirations, let alone confidence, amongst rural youngsters. The only dream of these youngsters is that some day they can migrate to the cities, get some menial jobs, and save and send home part of their income, essentially contributing significantly to their homes.

More than the levels of infrastructure and the industry, it is the degree of self-confidence that today divides the urban and semi-urban/rural areas. Urban youngsters* have the confidence of becoming part of the world and to make good careers for themselves. Of course they have to pursue knowledge and have to be fortunate, and grab the very first opening that come their way. In contrast, youngsters in small towns and rural areas rarely exhibit this confidence. Knowledge and learning is to be pursued for its own sake, not because it helps them to reach a goal.

1.1 Urban - centric Science and Technology

With the concentration of Universities and schools of higher learning in urban areas over the last couple of centuries**, most Science and Technology (S&T) innovations have also taken place in urban areas. Further, with some rare exceptions, these S&T innovations have primarily benefited the urban areas and increased the urban-rural divide. The recent innovations in Telecommunications and Information Technology are no exception. These developments are fast changing urban lifestyles. While Computers and Telecommunications are changing ways of doing things and increasing the overall efficiency of human activity, the Internet is enabling one to have access to almost any kind of information on one’s finger-tips. Even within urban areas, those with Internet Access are in an advantageous position visa-vis those who do not have such access. In this competitive world, access to Internet gives just that required edge. It widens the difference between the haves and have-nots.

While many in urban areas have to struggle to move into the category of haves, the small towns and rural areas clearly are the domain of the have-nots. With barely 15 million telephones in India for its 1000 million people [1], the telecom infrastructure in small towns and rural areas hardly exists. Even in urban areas, a telephone costs a lot to install — more than Rs.30,000 per line. With 15% finance cost and 15% operation, maintenance and obsolescence cost, a telephone requires 30% of Rs.30,000, or Rs. 9,000 revenue per year, for the telecom operator to breakeven. Such expenditure on a telephone is not affordable to more than three or four percent of our urban population. Since Internet Access is via the telephone network, Telecom and Internet Access even in urban areas is a difficult prospect for large sections of the population, unless the costs of the telecom infrastructure are drastically reduced.

In rural areas, the problem gets further complicated as the telephone infrastructure itself is far more expensive. The numbers vary, but the cost is often quoted at Rs. 70,000 to Rs. 80,000 per line. A far larger revenue (of the order of Rs. 20,000 per phone per year) would then be required for the operator to break even. This is far too high, not affordable to virtually anyone who lives in rural areas. Therefore, it has been assumed that rural phones need heavy subsidy*** and is a burden for the operator. Political compulsion often compels installation of at least some rural phones ¾ but for political compulsions, an operator would just ignore this for the time being [2]. Quality and maintenance however is often very poor. Using such telephones for Internet Access would be quite difficult. Further, whereas in urban areas, one has to make a local call to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) for Internet Access, in rural areas a long distance call will be required, as the ISP will be located in some city. Even the urban Internet Access (with about Rs.1.40 charged for three minutes local call) would cost about Rs.25 per hour for access alone (the charges paid to the Internet Service provider is extra). For rural area the cost can be astronomical. For example, for one hour of Internet Access from a village or a small town in Trichy district in Tamilnadu using an Internet service provider in Chennai, the access charges alone will work out to be Rs.1200 per hour in the day time (assuming 4 sec charging pulses). Even when the service provider is located in Trichy town, the charges for access from a distant village could be Rs.150 per hour (assuming 32 sec pulses for charging).

Thus the immediate potential impact of Telecom and IT in India, like most other modern technologies, would be to widen the gulf between urban metros and small towns/villages.

1.2 Harnessing Telecom and IT for Small Towns/Rural Areas

Even though the die appears to have been cast against small towns/rural areas once again, this new technology is somewhat different. Once the telecom infrastructure is set-up and tariffs are rationalised, or in other words once a workstation with Internet Access is provided, a person becomes operational and creative irrespective of whether he/she is in urban or rural areas. The person can be developing system software or application software, can be carrying out the mechanical design of a turbine or the structural design of a tower, can be creating advertisement material, finding information about a certain type of seed, creating a website about places to visit during holidays, carrying out a market survey for some goods, or taking a lesson on virtually any subject ¾ it would matter but little that the person is sitting in New York, or Chennai, or Trichy, or Lalgudi, or Bhikshandar Kovil. A workstation with access to Internet is an enabler and it enables a performance rated to be the highest in the today’s world.

Thus, if Telecommunications and Information Technology is properly harnessed, it has the potential of enabling people in rural areas and in small towns. It can potentially create the self-confidence and the opening a rural youngsters is looking for. It can make youngsters in these areas feel that their destiny can be in their own hands ¾ the sense of purpose can return.

However, harnessing Telecom and IT towards this is not a simple task. It requires tremendous determination and will. Fortunately, the techniques needed for all this are available in the world. These techniques [3] have been developed at various places for various other purposes — mostly to provide high bandwidth access and additional features and services to those in the developed world. These techniques now need to be harnessed for a different purpose — a purpose which multinationals of the developed countries cannot understand and adopt, a purpose of our own. The trickle-down theory (let us provide the best facilities in metros and it would eventually reach rural areas) will not work here. We have to make a determined effort to provide this infrastructure in small towns and rural areas.

Such infrastructure development may initially need support, but cannot be based on subsidy. It will have to be cost-effective and pay for itself. Fortunately, the example of the mushrooming of cable TV (without commenting on the nature of the TV programs today) in small towns and rural areas is before us. Another example is the wide spread of computer training institutes even in small towns. If something enables people, people find the money to pay for it. Of course, significant cost reduction to make it affordable will immensely help.

1.3 Organisation

This paper describes the harnessing of Telecom and IT technologies to enable persons living in small towns and rural areas. The corDECT Wireless Local Loop system [4] and Remote Access Switch [5] developed at IIT Madras, are used to illustrate a broad outline of the Telecom Infrastructure needed for achieving this. It should be pointed out, however, that the two technologies described here are mere examples of what is possible. Other technologies can be used and need to be harnessed if the goals are to be achieved.

Section 2 begins with the requirements of the Telecom and IT infrastructure in small towns and rural areas and describes the Internet network as it is today. Further, it discusses some of the potential problems that will arise when Internet is deployed widely. Section 3 briefly describes the corDECT Wireless Local Loop and Remote Access Switch products to provide telephony and Internet Access in small towns and rural areas. Next, in section 4, some deployment scenarios are presented. Finally, in section 5, some issues regarding policy support needed to get such an infrastructure in place are discussed. The cost issue, which would make or mar the widescale deployment of Telecom and IT in small towns and rural areas is highlighted throughout.

2 Telecom and Infrastructure Requirements in Small Towns/
Rural Areas

India has a population density close to 300 persons per sq. km. In most parts of the country, if one takes a circle of 10 kms radius covering a cluster of villages, the total population in the circle of 300 sq. km. will be rarely less than 15,000. Assuming that at least five connections would be required for every hundred population, one must plan for a minimum teledensity of 2.5 telephones per sq. km. To begin with one may install one telephone every two sq. km, but in most areas this would be inadequate.

There are many towns whose radius barely exceeds 3 to 4 kms. The population could be easily 25,000. One needs to plan for at least 1000 phones for each such town. In other words, the teledensity required in Indian rural areas could be as low as 0.5 per sq. km. in sparse rural areas to as high as 30 per sq. km as one comes to small towns.

What kind of telecom service is required in such areas? It must be remembered that a telephone installed today must provide service for at least 15 years. Today’s telephone should therefore not compromise on quality. While excellent voice telephony must be provided with direct long distance dialling capability, the telephone should also be able to support data communications at a reasonable bit-rate. For any serious work on Internet, 28.8 kbps data access is a must, whereas 64 kbps will help. Further the trunk network, while supporting upwards of 0.07 Erlang voice traffic per subscriber (implying that telephone will be busy for 7% of the time on average), must support data communication sessions of long durations. For at least 25% of subscribers Internet access amounting to 0.3 Erlang traffic per subscriber during peak hours needs to be supported [6]. This works out to an average of 0.15 Erlang of voice / data traffic averaged on all subscribers.

2.1 The Internet Tangle

Before one proceeds further, it would be helpful to briefly discuss some of the problems encountered in providing large scale Internet Access on the existing telecom network. The difficulties increases as the percentage of users accessing the Internet rises. For a network being planned today and to be installed for at least, next 15 years, such pitfalls must be avoided.

Internet access requires a data link between the Internet subscriber’s computer and the router of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) as shown in Fig.1. In turn, the router of the ISP is connected to the routers of other ISPs. Today both these connections depend heavily on the telephone network (PSTN). The routers of different ISPs are often connected using lines leased from telephone companies. In contrast, most Internet subscribers are connected to the ISP using data modems on switched telephone lines. In other words, having a telephone line is a precondition for getting access to the Internet, as this is the only existing means for communication from homes and offices.

While this is the fastest means to deploy Internet, there are problems. The PSTN in India has been designed to serve a peak-hour traffic of 0.1 Erlang per subscriber, implying that a telephone is presumed to be used on the average for 10% of the time during the busy part of the day. While this is largely sufficient for voice telephony, Internet access complicates the matter. While a voice call last mostly for a few minutes, an Internet call usually lasts much longer [6]. Most studies have shown that an Internet user offers a load of as much as 0.3 Erlang during peak hour. As the ratio of Internet users to the total users grows, the PSTN will just not be able to handle the load. The network will get congested and fail to complete a large number of calls.

The second problem in using Internet in the manner shown in Fig.1 has to do with the analog modem connection between the subscriber and the ISP. This analog link in India is just not reliable as it often passes through some weak (old non-digitised trunk) links. This is even more so when the subscriber is located in a small town. The quality of this dial-up link varies, and while it does provide 28.8 kbps connection occasionally, it provides only 9.6 kbps or 4.8 kbps at other times. Sometimes the modem link also drops, requiring redialling and a new connection. Besides if a ISP is located in a distant town/city, the subscriber has to pay long distance charges.

The third bottleneck occurs at the ISP end. If the ISP has 100 telephone lines with 100 modems, the 101st connection to ISP cannot be provided. In other words, the investment increases rapidly and linearly with the number of customers a ISP serves.

These problems would become serious bottlenecks when large scale Internet Access is attempted in rural areas and in small towns. Solutions for this must be planned right from the beginning.

2.2 The Affordability Issue

How much can people in small towns and rural areas afford to pay for a telephone and/or Internet Access?. It is a difficult question to answer. All that one can say that today’s cost of Rs.75,000 to provide a rural telephone is too high. Let us artificially put an average target cost of Rs.20,000 per line — to set up the telecom infrastructure and to provide upto 64 kbps Internet Access. An attempt should be made to further reduce this cost to about Rs.15,000 per line in future. This would imply that an annual revenue of Rs.5000 to 7000 per line would be required to break-even. With certain government incentives (not subsidies) discussed in section 5 and with a reasonable amount of sharing of each telephone line, it should be possible to generate such a revenue. Initially it may be possible to install telephones and Internet Access only at Gram-Panchayat offices, schools and at homes of some affluent farmers. Public kiosk (along the lines of STD/PCO operators today) would be another option to start with.

3 Technologies Required

One of the main reasons for the high cost of rural Telephony has been the cost of access in relatively sparse areas. Conventionally, copper has been used to carry signals from a local exchange to the subscriber premises. When multiple subscribers are located in a small geographical area, a bunch of cables could be taken to the area and then the connection distributed for each subscriber. The cable-bunch costs only a little more than an individual cable pairs and the cost of laying a cable-bunch is shared by all the subscribers. However, when subscribers are located far apart, the access cables (called local loop) are all separate, and need to be separately laid from the exchange for each subscriber, increasing the cost per subscriber.

Fortunately, Wireless Access overcomes this problem [7] as no wires now needed to be taken to the subscriber’s premises. With digital wireless access becoming cost-effective, for the first time, the disadvantage associated with far-flung sparse rural connections appear to have been overcome. However, in choosing wireless local loop technology for Indian rural areas as discussed in Section 1, it must be kept in mind that the rural population in India does not have a very low density and rural India requires a teledensity of several phones per sq. km. Also, such phones must become the basis for providing Internet Access at a reasonable data rate. The corDECT Wireless in Local Loop system and Remote Access Switch of IIT Madras have been designed with this in mind.

3.1 corDECT Wireless in Local Loop

The TeNeT Group at IIT Madras has taken the initiative, in collaboration with Midas Communications Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd., Madras and Analog Devices, USA to develop the corDECT Wireless in Local Loop system, based on an international standard called DECT [8]. The system promises cost-effective provision of telephones in both urban and rural areas [9]. The system consists of a DECT Interface Unit (DIU), which acts as a switch or a Remote Switching Unit (RSU), connected to the telecom network on E1 lines using either R2-MF or V5.2 protocols as shown in Fig. 2. Twenty base stations [BS] are connected to the DIU either using three twisted-pair copper wires per base station, or using an E1 radio or fibre link from the DIU to a Base Station Distributor (BSD). The subscriber is served using a Wallset (WS) which is connected to a base station using digital wireless links as per the DECT standard. Each isolated base station can serve about 50 subscribers at 0.1 Erlang per subscriber providing a grade of service of 1%. The range supported is 150-400 metres when the base station is mounted at a few metres height in urban streets and 10 kms in the line-of-sight situations when base stations are mounted on roof-tops or towers.

A Relay Base Station (RBS) for the corDECT system is under development. This would enable service to subscribers located as far as 25 kms from the exchange [10]. Both the BS, as well as the RBS looking towards the BS, use highly directional high- gain antennas. Further as both these units are mounted on towers, line-of-sight is available. Thus, even with the low transmit power used in DECT, a 25 km link can be established. As shown in Fig. 3, the RBS picks up the signals from a BS as far as 25 km away and re-broadcasts it to wallsets within a 10 km range.

The wallset is the subscriber-end equipment. It has an RJ-11 interface to connect a telephone, fax or modem. The corDECT Wireless in Local Loop system provides high quality voice telephony using of 32 kbps digital data transmission to the subscriber. The wallset can be used with any data modem at a bit-rate of 9.6 kbps. Further, a new version of wallset available in the later part of this year will support 28.8 kbps and 64 kbps data connectivity without use of a modem. The wallset is locally powered using 230V, but has a built-in battery to provide 24 hours standby time when used for voice communication.

The corDECT system can be deployed in different scenarios ranging from dense urban areas to sparse rural areas [10]. At a total cost ranging from Rs.12,000 per line to Rs.18,000 per line, subscriber densities from 10,000 subscribers per sq. km to 0.5 subscriber per sq. km can be achieved. This cost includes the cost of the DIU acting as a Remote Switching Unit and the Base Station, Relay Base Stations, Wallsets as well as the copper / fibre / wireless links required. The system therefore promises a very cost-effective solution for both urban and rural areas and can help expand the telephone network in India rapidly. The costs are likely to drop by about 20-25% over the next two years. Use of multiple-subscriber terminals (multi-wallset) can further bring down the cost.

3.2 Internet Access Using corDECT WLL

The DECT standard allows for two 32 kbps channels to be used simultaneously to provide reliable 64 kbps data communication. With this enhancement, it is possible to provide a 64 kbps dial-up connection between the subscriber and the Internet Service Provider (ISP). This data communication can also be used to interconnect the local networks at different locations in a private network.

In order to support 64 kbps data connectivity, the corDECT wallset is being modified. The new wallset has an RS232 / V.35 port to which a computer can be connected. Using either a 28.8 kbps asynchronous connection, or a 64 kbps synchronous connection, a link can be established between the subscriber and the ISP. As shown in Fig. 4, it is best to use a Remote Access Switch (RAS) at the DIU, which would concentrate the traffic from different subscribers and pass it on to the ISP router. Relying on the "bursty" nature of Internet traffic, only a few 64 kbps dial-up / leased connections through the PSTN would suffice for tens of subscribers. All the problems discussed in section 2.1 can thus be overcome. Since the call from the subscriber to the RAS is purely local and does not use the trunk network, it should now be possible for the operator to significantly reduce this Internet access charge. The call from the RAS to ISP carries traffic for a number of subscribers and the cost can be shared.

Such a Remote Access Switch for the corDECT system are being developed by IIT Madras and Banyan Networks (Pvt.) Ltd., Madras and will be available in the later part of this year. IITM and Banyan Networks are also developing RAS with integrated Modems (RASM) which could be connected on E1 line on any exchange and similarly concentrate the Internet traffic from subscribers connected to the exchange before carrying it to ISP.

The additional cost of providing this data communication facility is negligible. Thus, the corDECT Wireless Local Loop and the RAS make widespread deployment of telephones as well as Internet connectivity possible.

 

4 Deployment Scenarios

After having described systems which can enable large-scale deployment of telephones and Internet in small towns and rural areas, let us look at the way these systems could be cost-effectively deployed. We will look at two scenarios; one, a small town or a large village, and the second in a relatively sparse rural area.

4.1 Telecom Deployment in Small Town

A small Indian town or a large (relatively rich) village rarely has more than two- storeyed buildings. The radius is barely a few kms. It is best to use a 35m tower in the town/village centre as shown in Fig.5. corDECT DIU could be located at the base of the tower and connected to the national network upto 30 kms away using 8 Mbps microwave link. Either the DIU could be connected as an independent switch using R2-MF signalling protocol, or as an RLU to a nearby city switch using V5.2 access protocol. Further, a RAS is connected to the DIU using E1 links to concentrate Internet data traffic and carry it to the ISP.

Apart from the antenna for 8 Mbps microwave link, 12-16 corDECT Base Stations are mounted on the tower. These base stations serve wireless subscribers in about 10 km radius covering the town as well as its neighbourhood using line-of-sight DECT radio links. The subscribers are served using wallsets to which, apart from telephones or fax machines, PCs can be directly connected using RS232 or V.35 interface. Since the small town would not have tall buildings, line-of-sight connection anywhere in the town from a 35 m tower is possible, especially when external wallset antenna is used.

About 1000 subscribers can be served by a single DIU with Base Stations deployed on the tower as shown in Fig. 5. As subscribers are served in 10 km radius (300 sq. km area), the minimum subscriber density served in this manner is about 3 per sq. km. Thus, this deployment can be used for subscriber densities between 3 to 20 per sq. km (when only about 4 km radius is served). For larger subscriber density, multiple DIUs need to be deployed in a town. The cost of such a deployment would amount to approximately Rs.14,000 per line including the cost of DIU, Base Stations, subscriber wallset with data interface, tower and point-to-point microwave link to the PSTN. If a multi-subscriber unit serving four subscribers in the close proximity is used, the cost would reduce to about Rs.8,000 per line.

4.2 Deployment in Sparse Rural Areas

To serve a subscriber density of less than 3 subscribers per sq. km to as low as 0.5 subscribers per sq. km, Relay Base Stations are used. A tower (say 40 m) is located in the centre of a cluster of villages at an approximate radius of 25 kms. One to two DIUs are located at the tower base and Base Stations with directional antennas are deployed on the tower serving six sectors. In each sector, 3-4 Base-stations are deployed. The DIU is connected to the national telecom network again using point-to-point 8 Mbps microwave link similar to that used in the previous deployment. Once again, a RAS is connected to the DIU to concentrate the Internet traffic on a few 64 kbps channels towards the national network.

In each of the six sectors, two to three towers (say 25 m) are used to deploy RBS. These RBS towers could be as far as 20-25 kms from the central tower, as the Base Station, as well as RBS looking towards Base Station, deploy high-gain antennas as discussed in section 3.1. Normally two RBS are mounted on each of these RBS towers. These RBS now serve wallsets in a radius of 10 kms as shown in Fig. 6. Thus a two- hop DECT link is established, one between the wallset and RBS, and the other between the RBS and the BS. The deployment can provide both voice telephony as well as Internet connectivity at 28.8 kbps/64 kbps.

When two RBS are used on a RBS tower, they serve about 100 subscribers in a 10 km radius. This amounts to a subscriber density as low as 0.33 subscribers per sq. km. The total cost of this deployment including the cost of the BS tower and RBS towers, corDECT system and RAS, as well as microwave link to PSTN, and solar power at RBS and Wallsets works out to about Rs.18,000 per subscriber. Though multiwallset would reduce cost, its usage will be limited in such sparse areas.

5 The Possibilities and Impediments

Having discussed some techniques for providing cost-effective telecom and IT solution for small towns/rural areas, let us look at the possibilities and impediments. Before proceeding however, it should be pointed out that as discussed earlier the solutions proposed here are mere examples of technological possibilities. Other solutions need to be evolved to continuously bring down the cost.

Hitherto, the Department of Telecommunications was the monopoly telephone service provider in India. A few years back, a decision was taken to allow one private operator to provide telecom service in every state. After overcoming some initial hurdles, the private basic services operators are expected to start service in some states in late 1998. Both DoT as well as the basic services operator will have their own backbone network and large switches. However, their rate of expansion will be limited by the financial resources that they can muster. It should be remembered that if we wish to add 100 million telephone lines in India over the next 7-8 years, the investment required would be Rs.2,000 billion (or Rs.200,000 crores), even if we take a per-line cost to be as low as Rs.20,000. Further, the organizational effort needed to put these many lines would be too large for the two operators in each state. Obviously, the ones to suffer would be small towns and rural areas.

What is the alternative? A possible solution emerges if we closely look at some of the more successful business ventures in India over the last few years. One is reminded of cable TV operation, which emerged only a few years back. The initiative did not come from the government or large private industry, or for that matter from multinational corporations. No large R&D institute was involved and the World Bank or Asian Development Bank did not contribute any significant money. Yet tens of thousands of young entrepreneurs emerged. With a few lakhs of rupees each, they started serving their local communities and made successful business ventures.

A similar approach can be taken here. The DoT and the basic services provider could own the backbone network and even the remote switching units (e.g. the DIU in corDECT). However they could invite franchise operators to install Base Stations and Relay Base Stations and provide services to their communities.

A simple calculation shows that with an initial investment of about Rs. 6 lakhs by a franchise operator (taking into account a minimum advance deposit provided by the subscriber), about 100 subscribers can be provided service. With sharing of revenues in proportion to their investment, the franchise operator could aim to earn a revenue of about Rs.3 lakhs per year. On the average, one person may be able to operate and service about 100 subscribers. This franchise operator could also operate a kiosk providing STD / ISD telephone service as well as Internet access service. The service would make business sense in towns as well as rural areas. What is needed is to remove all obstacles to such franchise operation.

There are other interesting possibilities. One can encourage 4 to 5 youngsters, having completed their B.Sc. and some training course on computers, to set up small software companies in small towns. Initially these companies could be tied with a larger company in a metro. The 64 kbps dial-up link between the two companies could be used for further education as well as to enable management of the software projects of the town-company by a project manager in the metro-company. With a little effort and guidance, there is no reason why small companies in small towns/rural areas cannot get involved in all kinds of design work and software development. Once a few of these entrepreneurs are successful, money would be found in small towns to pay for the Telecom and the IT infrastructure. This may seem altruistic at first glance. However, with the cost of software development in metros skyrocketing, this may , infact, end up as beneficial to the large company in the metro as to the rural startup.

All these need a bit of government encouragement and support. Firstly, there is no reason why such infrastructure development in small towns and rural areas cannot be given full duty exemption, especially excise duty exemption and custom duty exemption on components used. Further, the Government of India is collecting a large Telecom license fee from Basic Services operators. This amount should be offered back to the operators as incentive to set up excellent Telecom infrastructure in small towns and rural areas. Further, what is urgently needed is a single government body to provide blanket clearance for such efforts towards strengthening rural areas. Further, the Government of India needs to remove all charges for use of frequency spectrum for Telecom infrastructure providing 28.8 kbps or higher rate Internet Access in small towns and rural areas.

6 Conclusions

Today, India has a unique opportunity to reduce the gulf between the haves and have-nots. This is provided by innovative technologies such as the corDECT Wireless Local Loop system and Remote Access Switches that promise to substantially decrease the cost of both telephone and Internet access in small towns and rural areas. Organisational changes in the provision of such communication infrastructure are required.

Even if the telephone as well as data access is provided to home and offices, a bottle-neck will remain in the form of obtaining a computer especially at homes. Initiatives are needed to find cheaper solutions. There is no reason why an existing TV set cannot be used as a monitor. With the addition of a small keyboard, the corDECT wallset itself could be modified to act as a computer for the purpose of basic Internet access. One has to aim to provide a telephone-cum-television-cum-Internet service-cum-simple computer at a total cost of Rs.25,000. Only such efforts can bring in the Real Information Revolution in India.

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