[Telecentres] Basic Telecentre Items/ICT Definition

[Taran Rampersad]

ashish Saboo wrote:

>  Don , Taran , 
> 
>  The Pandora box needs to be addressed. Wherever the Telecentre (Cyber cafe) business model was based on shared usage or pay per use model to bring in the services within the consumer's reach have faced similar obsolescence.
>   Our estimates put even in the up market locales in Metro cities of India, cyber cafes have reduced to a third from its peak in 2000 (Dot Com boom). 
>The telecentres have been the business martyrs but look at their contribution: 
>  
>
But where did the people go? Did they stop using the internet, or did
they get it at home?

>   Much of the success of South Korea in bringing over 70% broadband penetration is attributed to the PC Bangs, The Bangs have offered as a " Technology Introduction center “ further have played an important stop gap role in bringing IT to Koreans. 
>  To get the requisite ubiquity in Internet access needs good indigenous & relevant content. While content development industry needs numbers to justify the investment. In this chicken and egg situation, The PC Bangs offered the numbers in this gestation period.    Some reports estimate, the Korean local content industry took over 4 years to develop after the infrastructure was in place. (Imagine your investment in computers would have been redundant before you could figure out the purpose to use it!). 
>  
>
I'm in Content Development (with a twist, mind you) - and you're
absolutely right about the market needing to be there. But on the flip
side, does one need a company to create content? And in some cases, we
have to consider whether a company should be responsible for content...
Thus Open Content. The content which is Open permits anyone to use it
and adapt it - which includes translation and the more important
cultural translation. A company could do this, but without lots of money
and resources, it will not happen fast. But if people start using and
creating more Open Content, then there will be a rapid increase -
perhaps rapid enough. The question then becomes... how does one make
money creating content? That's a problem that needs to be addressed, and
it's more a problem because of the way the publishing system has worked
in the past instead of what will happen in the future.

It's odd that in discussing Telecentres, we have removed a lot of
geographic barriers. Perhaps our business models and governments need to
catch up.

>    In developing countries where investment in basic infrastructure competes with investment in ICT, The government bodies have limitation in committing investments to Telecentres. The private initiatives are best bet & hopefully our exchange of view may offer insights to make investment in such ICT centers lucrative. 
>  
>
I agree 100% with this... to deny it would mean that I'm not paying
attention where I am. :)

-- 
Taran Rampersad

cnd at knowprose.com

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