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2.5 Bn people can’t afford Internet access. Need your opinion on our solution

2 points by jibla ↗ HN
GiveInternet.org allows anyone to sponsor monthly Internet fees and laptops for underprivileged high school students from refugee settlements and rural areas.

Through monthly recurring donations from up to 700 individuals, we have equipped 350+ students with Chromebooks, Internet access, educational resources and our constant online mentorship. Our donors receive monthly transparency reports with details on every cost, student success stories, and our progress. Now we are working to incorporate a 501(c)3 nonprofit in the US and expand operations to the Middle East and Africa by collaborating with partners on the ground.

As we expand and refine our product, we need your honest feedback on our platform! Let us know what you think about the website, our business model, etc.

How?

Comment here; Fill out this 3-5 minute survey - http://bit.ly/2P3wDj6 Schedule a call with us for an interview-https://calendly.com/gjibladze/giveInternet

5 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 23.9 ms ] thread
kjs3
I suspect you're trying to solve the wrong problem: figure out how to deliver content at connection speeds these underserved areas can sustain. Not DSL, 4G, 3G...but GPRS/CDPD bandwidths (circa 56K-384Kbps). Dictionaries & textbooks can be delivered as text (or slightly more overhead, Unicode/UTF-x for multilingual), encyclopedias/wikis slimmed down, images downsized, many instructional videos can be delivered as something much less than 420p, etc, etc. More...you shouldn't need 2MB of JS to read the internet equivalent of the newspaper. Proxies/Gateways can translate. Make it efficient for people to access information at speeds that are accessible and affordable to their circumstance without the glitz/useless eyecandy and you could change the world.

Oh...you'll have to deal with all the folks claiming life-as-we-know-it-will-end if they can't deliver a dozen or two multiMB ads and gobs of clickbait to those 2.5B people, whether the users can afford to receive them or not. That's probably what'll kill the idea.

jibla
Thanks for your feedback. Shrinking content is really what can solve the affordability issue at some point. But still, internet fees are pretty high (according to average income) in many developing countries and also people aren't able to buy devices. But we'll definitely discuss your point!
kjs3
Happy to discuss further if you care to. Helped build out cellular networks in less developed countries (LA) in my younger days and we looked at these issues. I haven't been deep into it in a while, but issues of high cost in these markets was as often as not a function of monopoly or other protectionism (i.e. there was often a government backed incumbent carrier or other government fees/tariffs/taxes that inflated end-user costs). So maximizing the content/bandwidth ratio was always a priority. The WAP protocol was one thing we thought would help, but it never really took off. Good times.
jibla
Hey, thanks for your insight. The challenge we have at the moment is that we are not as technical as needed for this. And this might be a totally different direction for us, which is out of our expertise field. But I've heard you and will keep that in mind. Here is my Linkedin account (https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-jibladze-23923b17/)

I would be glad connecting with you and if you allow applying with some questions if we have any.

dang
You'd be better off posting this as a Show HN. See https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html for an overview and look at https://news.ycombinator.com/show for examples of how people do this. Make the submission link to your site, and add your text as a first comment to the new thread. (Don't make it a text post; those are penalized compared to posts with URLs.) If you have questions, email hn@ycombinator.com. Good luck!