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Bridging the Connectivity Divide: Insights and Opportunities from User-Centric Applications

This presentation explores the challenges and opportunities in bridging the connectivity divide through various applications. Highlighting experiences from Microsoft Research India and MIT contributors, the discussion centers on tools like email-to-web browsing and interactive voice portals, which enabled web access and citizen journalism in rural areas. The lessons learned emphasize the importance of locally relevant content and the impact of technology shifts. It examines the potential of mobile video sharing and other innovative solutions to generate revenue and promote community engagement.

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Bridging the Connectivity Divide: Insights and Opportunities from User-Centric Applications

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  1. Bridging the Connectivity Dividefrom an Applications PerspectiveExperiences, Challenges, OpportunitiesBill ThiesMicrosoft Research India COMSNETS 2011

  2. TEK: Browsing the Web via Email with Saman Amarasinghe, Libby Levison, and many contributors from MIT • Widely deployed with moderate impact • 10,000 searches from 500 users in 40 countries • Enabled first Web access for Solomon Islands • Lessons learned • Beware of technology inflection points (email  webmail) • Web is missing locally-relevant content World Wide Web ISP TEK Server Email user

  3. Enabling User-Generated Content in Rural Areas • Approach: Interactive Voice Portals Recent milestones: • 15,000 calls and 450 published reports since Feb 2010 • Anecdotal impact on the political process Potential to create rich, scalable audio communities First instantiation: CGNet Swara: A portal for citizen news journalism • “Press 1 to record, or 2 to playback” • Posts available via Web and phone Citizen Journalist in Chhattisgarh

  4. Opportunities and Challenges • Opportunities • Leverage entertainment • Leverage peer-to-peer • Leverage humans Mobile video sharing network Courtesy Thomas Smyth • Challenges • Manage metered bandwidth • Find killer apps

  5. Can Streaming Video EnableCash Flow into Rural Areas? • Revenue-generating opportunities • Virtual tourism • Remote shopping • Evidence-based philanthropy with Kapil Vaswani, Sriram Rajamani, B. Ashok Second Life “Third World”

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