tailieunhanh - Community Internet Access in Rural Areas: Solving the Economic Sustainability Puzzle

Applying strategic development assistance via a range of funding mechanisms and programs can stimulate long-term financing for the underserved markets described above. The idea is to employ sustainable lending techniques, train both borrowers and lenders, creatively leverage funding by utilizing guarantee programs like DCA, GDA and/or financing programs like OPIC (for example), and/or target subsector investment so that Georgia’s economic growth is not stalled or even derailed by the neglect of its two primary productive sectors. Interest rate subsidizes, equipment grants, cash grants to borrowers, or other similar support programs that could disrupt the free market of financial. | CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 8 Community Internet Access in Rural Areas Solving the Economic Sustainability Puzzle Michael L. Best Media Lab Asia MIT Media Lab Colin M. Maclay Center for International Development at Harvard University Community Internet Access in Rural Areas Solving the Economic Sustainability Puzzle Introduction Telecommunications companies entrepreneurs and policymakers have regarded rural and poor markets with some combination of too-complex-to-serve and not-interesting-enough politically or economically to be worthy of sustained attention. But times and technologies have changed leaving what have been perceived as backwaters poised to become significant growth areas in the next decades. 76 Stakeholders are beginning to recognize the political and economic significance of the more than half of the world s population that lives in largely untapped rural markets. Governments and nongovernmental organizations are increasingly concerned with addressing economic development goals and stability stubborn deficits in rural health and learning urban migration environmental degradation and other related trends. The private sector craves new consumers producers ideas and synergies in our rapidly globalizing environment. What most have yet to understand however are the tremendous opportunities to address these challenges through new information and information communication technologies ICTs . Increasingly powerful flexible and economical ICTs present staggering new opportunities for social and economic integration. Achieving the promise of ICTs does not require sacrifice on the part of business government or civil society but it does demand their vision cooperation and action to create the environment and mechanisms necessary for ICTs to flourish in the rural areas of the developing world. One force necessary albeit insufficient for the establishment of pervasive and sustainable readiness for the Networked World especially in developing and rural areas is the market.