Taking BoP Strategies To Scale Pt. 2: Connecting Rural Communities

Al Hammond — Wed, 07 May 2008 08:31:17 -0500

This post is the second in a five part series on a radical new approach to scaling BoP business models, what we call a transformative sector strategy. In this segment, I tell the story of a rural connectivity pilot project; an example of this new model for development in action.

A Last Mile Model for Rural Connectivity

Son Tay commune, Quang Ngai Province. I was sitting across a table in a remote rural outpost of Vietnam, negotiating (via a translator) with the manager of a local radio station about access to his tower. He asked a series of technical questions and seemed satisfied with the answers, but then he wondered aloud: "Can we get Internet access here?" He didn't just want it for the radio station, it emerged, but for the surrounding small community - even though nobody there yet owned a computer. The manager understood that internet access could help transform their opportunities. And when we agreed to mount a small antenna to serve the community, the tower was ours.

The negotiation was part of a two year long process to pilot a novel approach to rural connectivity. It involved building an advanced, broadband network in three communes (groups of villages) in a very poor province in central Vietnam to provide Internet-based phone service and Internet access. Quang Ngai Province has no Internet access for its million-plus population outside of the provincial capital, and phone ownership is about 3 percent.

But the province does have an AUSAID-funded rural development project (RUDEP) that had built trust by doubling farmer's incomes in many communes, and optical fiber to every district capital (owned by the national electric utility, EVN, which also owns a mobile phone company, EVN Telecom). Ultimately all of these became partners in the effort, as did USAID's Last Mile Initiative, Intel and other equipment providers.

(This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)

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Taking BoP Strategies To Scale Pt. 2: Connecting Rural Communities