Comments on: Web Innovation 2007 Day 1

By: Swaroop

Swaroop — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 23:05:15 +0000

@Pramod: I never knew why YouTube is so popular until you mentioned this and a couple of friends showed how they use YouTube for entertainment.

By: Pramod Biligiri

Pramod Biligiri — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:00:02 +0000

I wonder if YouTube can be a killer app? But for that you need lots more bandwidth

I have high hopes for Internet radio too.

By: Swaroop

Swaroop — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:04:03 +0000

@Gowri: Yes, broadband really is a sad situation today. I’m transitioning between two broadband providers and as of now, I’m having both services, and both have very frequent downtimes! Sify has broadband via cable, and BSNL is using their phone line connections, not sure about others.

I agree, finance is an important category, it is yet to be tapped. Perhaps, better financial planning can help the nouveau riche IT people as well as the common man, but there are lot of advances to be made first, for example, broadband and internet should become commonplace enough for people to trust their financial data to a third-party!

I remember reading about the conference first in my feed aggregator, but can’t seem to find the channel where I read it

By: Gowri

Gowri — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:05:08 +0000

Great post! One thing I have always wondered is the way we have tried broadband adoption. Currently most broadband is from phone/mobile carriers via phone lines. If you think about it in terms of penetration, cable TV probably has the highest penetration than any other technology in the country. Most houses (atleast in the urban and many rural parts) have a TV and a cable connection. Given that, cable modem and internet via cable seems to me the easiest way to get connectivity to the population. The wiring is in place, the channel/distributor (cable operators) is there, payment gateway (cable operators collecting cable TV subscription from households) is in place. But broadband via cable is virtually non-existant. Part of the reason could be a govt and licensing thing - the cable and media operators need to get a broadband license, but I cant believe that being a big hurdle.

For mainstream adoption of the net, agree that applications and content that are built for local needs are a absolute necessity, along with seamless local language support. Along with eduction, entertainment and communication mentioned in your post, I think finance is also a very viable area. Net-Banking is still used only by net-saavy people. Banks need to reach out the masses and make it easy for them to do transactions in the local language without a high technology barrier. Personal finance and small business accounting is also an attractive area, given that every household has difficult managing their finances and the vast number of small businesses (including mom and pop shops) all over the country.

BTW, where do you get information about such conferences? I would have loved to attend this one.