TimeToThink - 2

A nice evening, a beautiful sunset; I am sitting at my favorite bar surrounded by this tropical landscape, a fresh breeze and a glass of my favorite rosé, my only preoccupation lies with …choosing among those fresh fish plates on the menu.

A few fun conversations later, touching every and all subjects, going from advanced analytics, the state of the local economy, through to fixing the world’s hunger and  regressing the climate change, having met some fine people and received the best service, it is now time to go!

Then, the POS terminal cannot process the transaction! Lack of Internet service; the time-out parameter to validate and authorize my Canadian issued credit card forces me to pay in cash! Luckily, I am aware of the state of the internet in this very touristic area of Martinique; I always have some cash, unlike many other clients’ that are lining up trying to figure out how to pay! “This is frequent here” I am told by the manager, “the local internet is as stable as the weather forecast!”.

I have chosen to live half of my life in the half of the world that is covered half of the year with snow! …to help and assist many of the largest corporations in being more efficient, more profitable and more intelligent; to help them retain more employees, create better products faster and to create more value to their shareholder’s. I truly appreciate the beginning of the ...last half of my life, tropical sunsets and relaxed lifestyle, with more time... to think!

Why is it that this highly touristic area... that half of the local and global businesses, food producers, population, students, restaurants and players in the local and global economy lack so much broadband internet?

This lines up very well in my current TimeToThink process.

WE NEED A GLOBAL RURAL BROADBAND PLAN!

The World’s Governments have given substantial amounts of money to the Telecommunications giants without much result and even less accountability. With over $20 billion of worldwide subsidized last year alone for rural internet, the OTHER HALF has seen its coverage improve by a single digit during the last decade. While all this subsidized investment can resemble as a good excuse to show that “we are working on it and doing something”, it is clearly not working out!

Some countries like Canada, Denmark, Sweden, the Benelux countries, Japan and Australia lead the pack with some 75% + broadband coverage in their rural areas. Other countries in - both - the developed and underdeveloped world, trail badly with ...the USA being a big part of the lower rural and remote broadband coverage index. 

In a recent article from the New York Times, we can read: “Since the 1930s, policymakers have known that rural communications is a “market failure” — something that happens when private companies cannot or will not provide a socially desirable good because of a lack of return on investment. At that time, electricity and telephone companies were simply unwilling to enter rural America: The population was too sparse and the geography too vast. As a result, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration in 1936 to provide loans and grants to rural electric and telephone companies. It was a tremendous success: Within 20 years, 65 percent of farmers had a telephone and 96 percent of them had electricity.”

Is this what is needed? A GLOBAL Rural Broadband internet communication Plan… to help solve this digital divide? Global unified rural broadband policing…?

Or, what if the Top 10 technology companies harvesting much of the benefit of the connected world, would each invest 1% of their wealth to create a 100% market expansion? Wouldn’t those Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and all others likely have a fairly larger market to service, to sell to, to make profit from?

I have much TimeToThink now and this one is on the very top of my list! 

There is an internet fiber backbone circumventing the globe 7 times, all of the metropolis, large and medium-sized cities are well connected; What is missing? The motivation of the large telecommunication companies that show a collective revenue of 1,5 trillion in 2019 – compared to 600 billion a decade ago! Or is it a question of technology? Is the existing and known means to deliver the internet service in the rural market so different from such in the urban market? Why a $500 billion natural market expansion is left unattended!

I will now take the other half of my life and TimeToThink some more, to research and try to figure out this one! 

I welcome any and all suggestions, comments and ideas!