The idea of giving is good but it is very hard to substain it over time. Pleople want to give but not in a constant basis and eventually stop. A better model is to join a profit basses organization with a nonprofit and work together to give.
Show HN: 2.5B people can’t afford internet – need your opinion on our solution
51–60 of 124 posts
Re: Show HN: 2.5B people can’t afford internet – need your opinion on our solution
#52Not sure about how it actually works. I couldn't find the information around how you actually 'give' internet to people? Do they use their own device, or do you provide a device as well? What happens when the funding for someone runs out?
We work with the local ISP's and small Wifi operators. After installation families provide their subscriber codes and we set automatic transactions to those codes.
Yes we also provide devices which are funded either by individuals (via online donations) or corporate sponsors
First, we wanted donors to choose a student (according to their profiles) but this led to many challenges including the one you mentioned. So now donors can see profiles of every student waiting but they usually donate to the platform. We don't have one time donations. only monthly donations.
But still, we are at the MVP stage and figuring out what the right models could be.
Re: Show HN: 2.5B people can’t afford internet – need your opinion on our solution
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your reference material has a section titled Critiques of the human right to Internet access. It also says 83% of the population generally agrees that it should be a right - which is why I said it was widely held. I didn't say it was an absolutely held belief. > I believe the issue you bring up is mostly around peoples differing opinion on what a human right is, so I don't exactly disagree with you. I mostly have a…
> be the difference causing someone to lose a house, not get a job, not find legal help, be unaware of a disaster All of these problems can be solved without the internet. Also, access to the internet does not absolutely solve these problems.
But it does help, right?
I can say the same thing about wearing clothes (human right to have clothing) - I can get a job, not lose a house, find legal help, and be aware of a disaster if I was completely butt naked all the time. So you're argument is that because you CAN get through it, it's not necessary to call it a human right? Also owning clothes doesn't absolutely solve those problems either right?
Re: Show HN: 2.5B people can’t afford internet – need your opinion on our solution
#54We probably should analyse the way it's done in India: ultra-cheap mobile Internet (how do they manage to both provide the coverage and sustain such low prices?) and budget-class devices. There has even been a post about the new class of cheap phones which are more like those of the pre-iPhone era. I believe giving everybody access to YouTube, Reddit and Wikipedia is important.
I guess when you talk about India you mainly talk about Jio. They are founded by Reliance Industries which is largest publicly traded company there. Most of the network rollout and phone prices (nobody knows real BOM for their phones) are subsidized and the general business plan seems to be to make money from value added services that can be obtained from Jio in the future.
Also to make rollout cheaper they negotiated some exclusive deals with Samsung; wrote their own operational support systems instead of buying off the shelf ( very expensive for deployment and integration) and probably did a whole bunch of other stuff.
It's not something that can be repeated without having large sums of money to support it
Re: Show HN: 2.5B people can’t afford internet – need your opinion on our solution
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are cheaper mainly because the Chrome OS is Free (and maybe because they have almost no hard inside;) As far as we know OS and antivirus licenses make Windows more expensive.
That explains why they're cheaper than Windows, but what makes them cheaper than equivalent hardware with e.g. Ubuntu?
Right. We have tested Ubuntu as well. Still figuring out what the right solutions are. Do you think Ubuntu might be a better option? Or are there any other solutions that might be relevant for us?
Re: Show HN: 2.5B people can’t afford internet – need your opinion on our solution
#56The idea of giving is good but it is very hard to substain it over time. Pleople want to give but not in a constant basis and eventually stop. A better model is to join a profit basses organization with a nonprofit and work together to give.
I agree with you. As an African there is also another danger to receiving things, you stop working for them. You begin to expect these things as part of your life but in reality they only exist for as long as those giving have enough money or generosity. I am not saying people shouldn't give but it is a good idea to be aware of some of the long term effects of giving and being a receiver.
Re: Show HN: 2.5B people can’t afford internet – need your opinion on our solution
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your reference material has a section titled Critiques of the human right to Internet access. It also says 83% of the population generally agrees that it should be a right - which is why I said it was widely held. I didn't say it was an absolutely held belief. > I believe the issue you bring up is mostly around peoples differing opinion on what a human right is, so I don't exactly disagree with you. I mostly have a…
> be the difference causing someone to lose a house, not get a job, not find legal help, be unaware of a disaster All of these problems can be solved without the internet. Also, access to the internet does not absolutely solve these problems.
@rhacker
I don't think its a human right to have clothes though. I don't think anyone should be able to steal your clothes, but I don't think anyone should have to give you clothes either..
Re: Show HN: 2.5B people can’t afford internet – need your opinion on our solution
#58Gamarjoba,
I think what you are doing is very important thing but it's not scalable to 2.5b people.
The biggest problem for those 2.5b people are:
- Availability of network infrastructure. It starts with whatever network backbone and ends with either mobile internet or wifi network. In most cases there is no business case to build out this kind of infrastructure as there is essentially no way to recover investment unless its subsidized by government or world bank or something.
- Availability of electricity. There is many place that simply has none or it's very unreliable. It has twofold influence - its hard to build infrastructure that will work and people have no place to charge phones/laptops
- The actual price of devices. Even if you are talking about advanced feature phones or low end smart phones (laptops are way out of price range for most of 2.5b people) its still expensive. There is all kind of schemes with operators subsidizing the device over few years but it's bring arpu to very low numbers making it hardly viable business.
Edit. I actually lived in Georgia during the "fun" time, late 80s - early 90s. Good luck.
Re: Show HN: 2.5B people can’t afford internet – need your opinion on our solution
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your reference material has a section titled Critiques of the human right to Internet access. It also says 83% of the population generally agrees that it should be a right - which is why I said it was widely held. I didn't say it was an absolutely held belief. > I believe the issue you bring up is mostly around peoples differing opinion on what a human right is, so I don't exactly disagree with you. I mostly have a…
> be the difference causing someone to lose a house, not get a job, not find legal help, be unaware of a disaster All of these problems can be solved without the internet. Also, access to the internet does not absolutely solve these problems.
[deleted]
Re: Show HN: 2.5B people can’t afford internet – need your opinion on our solution
#60The idea of giving is good but it is very hard to substain it over time. Pleople want to give but not in a constant basis and eventually stop. A better model is to join a profit basses organization with a nonprofit and work together to give.
Btw it turned out that the Millenials and younger are very much willing to donate to this cause and they do it on a monthly basis since they understand that internet is monthly cost. The cause somehow resonates with them. We are trying to build a community of our donors by building the long term experience (Monthly transparency reports with all the cost breakdowns, student success stories, new geographies, bank account transactions, etc.) But the challenge you've mentioned is something we are still thinking about and are ready to experiment to find the right model.