It takes an hour to clear the Yangon traffic, and another two to reach Bogale, a small town at the edge of the Irrawaddy Delta. From there, depending on which village you are planning to visit, the captain requires up to 3 hours of skilful boatmanship to navigate the monsoon swollen tributaries before reaching landfall.
I’ve been tracking life at the edge of the grid for more than a decade and although the challenges of connecting people sound the same, every trip offers up a new angle on what connectivity means to the locals. Here in the delta some villages have a slither of cellular connectivity, but many do not. Ask any of the farmers which person in the village has a mobile phone, and they’ll reel off the exact names: the novelty of ownership and shared use of devices is prevalent so it makes sense to maintain a spatial awareness of who has what.
In Bogale 2,500 Kyats ($2.5) will buy you a rechargeable battery that can power a home for two short nights. 40,000 Kyats ($40) will buy a new car battery, that can last for a month. In places with no or unstable electricity the spread mobile phones creates informal markets for power but it’s not cheap. “I won’t use my smartphone to watch videos if I know there is no electricity – it costs too much.” $10 a month spent on power is out of the price range for a farmer earning $1.5 a day. Here the cost of watching a movie on a smartphone, a use case that is prevalent elsewhere, is not measured by the cost of obtaining content but by the cost of replacing the power required to view that content.
Connectivity is not binary. The network is never neutral.
Two short flights from Yangon and you’re in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State. The town sits at a cross-roads between India and China and lies well off the tourist trail. I’d originally planned to hire a driver and explore the road that runs between both countries but only a few places can be visited without a permit and many are off-limits. Extending the trip by a few days provides a chance to learn about a region our studio needs to better understand and to get back into the rhythm of writing.
Conversations with local students echo what we’ve seen elsewhere in the country, high smartphone adoption and significant peer to peer content sharing through Zapya ( http://www.izapya.com ) file sharing app. When you buy a new phone here it comes preloaded with whatever content you ask for, the only limit being the amount of memory you can afford. But there is still friction in the process. Most new, and therefore desirable content comes from VCD and DVDs (and tape cassettes!) and as one student put it “We don’t have internet at the university. We don’t even have computers”. Rip, burn, mix starts with a device that can play the media you want to rip from.
The cellular network was omnipresent in the town, but I didn’t managed to get a slither of data connectivity until the small hours. “The government restricts internet access here, it is a stronghold of the opposition.”
Connectivity is not binary. The network is never neutral.
Been reflecting on the goals of Internet.org after being on a panel with Javier Olivan.
On the surface it’s aims are laudable Every one of us. Everywhere. Connected, it is set up to serve people such as the farmers and students I’ve met on this trip, those who will significantly benefit from basic connectivity. The sentiment of my peers, including conversations with some Facebook employees is that Internet.org’s intent is closer to Every one of us. Everywhere. Connected to Facebook. Feeding the Beast, a solution to a growth strategy that was hitting natural limits, and a flag in the distant sands for stock-vested troops to charge towards.
I’ve been here before. At Nokia the commercial success of entry products was turned into a “connecting people” story, and my team’s research providing a human angle to that arc. I’ve seen what gets exaggerated and by whom, and where the real and underreported impact lies.
What will be the impact of Internet.org?
It’s early days, but Facebook’s new app provides “free” internet access to a range of services, and will have significant appeal in the countries where it can cut a deal with operators. “Free” is a compelling proposition in any country. “Free” is utterly compelling proposition in highly resource constrained communities. But that’s only part of the story.
At Studio D we talk about “next billion clients”, organisations that are targeting lower middle class to the base of the pyramid consumers in so-called emerging markets. Many clients are significantly over optimistic of the value of their products, a few are downright naive to the design choices they should make. As a creative consultancy we can add value in the usual ways: research, design and strategy. However, the place where the most work is needed is how our clients frame their relationship to these consumers.