Taking BoP Strategies To Scale Pt. 2: Connecting Rural Communities
“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.” Keep reading…
