Boil down the value proposition for TV white spaces and it might be as simple as “access cheaper than 3G.”
Basically, that same argument--Internet access lots cheaper than in the past--is a development goal and a potential business opportunity for many participants (or potential participants) in the ecosystem.
Consider that International Telecommunications Union broadband targets include costs 40 percent lower, in 2020, than they are today, according to Christian Gomez, ITU spectrum regulation and policy officer, radiocommunication bureau.
Granted, those are goals set by an agency, not necessarily business objectives for access providers.
Still, the conclusions are unavoidable: one way or the other, the end user cost of Internet access, in regions where most people do not use the Internet, has to decline 40 percent in five years.
For TV white spaces entrepreneurs, that means starting out with those goals in mind. Other service providers, such as mobile operators, will have to make actual cuts. Regulators, in some cases, can force such changes. India has done so by mandating roaming cost cuts up to 75 percent.
But most of the affordability challenge, for a mobile operator, for example, is to take even more cost out of the business.
Mobile operators successfully innovated and brought voice to most people where fixed network providers could not. It is possible they could do so again.
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