/ CC BY / Dollar Gill
Global modernization plans
Until 2014, only 50 Indian villages had high-speed Internet access . Over the next six years, the situation in the country remained practically unchanged - the number of connections increased by only 7%. However, in August of this year, the Prime Minister of India promised to rectify the situation and in a thousand days lay fiber-optic cables to every village (both on the mainland and on the islands) - this is almost 650 thousand settlements.
The project has already begun to be implemented - in mid-August, India's largest telecommunications company put into operation the first underwater optical cable connecting the city of Chennai with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In the near future, a fiber-optic channel will be laid to the Lakshadweep island group.
But there are difficulties
Experts are concerned about the cost of implementing such a project on a tight schedule. In India, it is not cheap to deploy fiber optic networks - installation prices can range from $ 13,600 to $ 180,000 per kilometer, and the permitting process takes a long time.
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Also, Internet providers regularly face the problem of monkeys - they gnaw and tear fiber optic cables. Several years ago, engineers laid new lines along the banks of the Ganges. They had to be replaced after just two months , so quickly the animals made them unusable.
In some cases, the problem can be avoided if the wires are buried underground, but according to experts, in densely populated regions this cannot be done - there they are forced to run cables over the surface. At the same time, you cannot drive away monkeys or catch them, since they are sacred animals.
/ CC BY / Syed Ahmad
Additional difficulties in the implementation of the plan for the global modernization of the network infrastructure can create regular breaks in power lines on the peninsula. In some regions, only 38% of all energy produced reaches end-users . At the same time, daily blackouts can last for several hours in a large number of Indian cities.
What's in other countries
In the near future, it is also planned to modernize the network infrastructure in Japan. There are now about 660,000 homes in the country without Internet access - most of them are located in remote regions or on islands. By 2024, the government plans to reduce this figure to 180 thousand - for these purposes, 496 million dollars have already been allocated, which will be directed to support and finance projects of local providers.
The UK is planning to provide the entire population with broadband Internet access until 2033 . According to the regulators' estimates, the project will take ( page 8) about 33 billion pounds. Officials hope the new strategy will spark competition among providers who will fight for the right to bring broadband internet to cities and villages in the country. In sparsely populated areas where it is expensive and unprofitable to pull the cable, the state will provide subsidies.
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