Election Promises: Broadband for all at Rs 200

We all have grown up hearing promises of “Rs 2 per Kg of rice” type goodies. Not sure how much of it gets implemented as you often see TV reports which show tons of wheat rotting with the govt 🙁

BJP is the first national party to have announced some “new goodies” in their IT vision document,

• National Digital Highway Development Project to create India’s Internet backbone, and Pradhan Mantri Digital Gram Sadak Yojana for last-mile access even in the remotest of villages.
• Broadband Internet (2 Mbps) in every town and village, at cable TV prices (less than Rs 200/month).
• All schools and colleges to have an Internet-enabled education.
• Every BPL (below poverty line) family to be given a free smart mobile phone, which can be used by even illiterate users for accessing their bank accounts.
• The number of mobile subscribers to be increased from 40 crore at present to 100 crore in five years. Internet users to equal mobile subscribers. India to equal China in every IT parameter in five years.
• Unlimited VoIP access to all (I wonder how the telcos in India would react?)

BJP seems to be following Obama campaign very closely. Now that BJP has promised to provide 2MB to every broadband user (instead of 256K) will the UPA upgrade it to 4MB in their IT ‘vision’ document? If so, what will the too-many-cooks-third-front offer?

If the broadband push does really happen (I believe it will) then all related hardware companies will do very well in view of the capex spendings.

I would think it would be good to see is the increase in internet penetration and the consumption of Indian languages on the internet will grow exponentially. But then remember these are ‘election PROMISES’.