Sanjiv Ahuja left his role as CEO of Orange, the mobile phone and Internet access subsidiary of France Télécom, last year in order to seek a new challenge. With his new company Augere, he is now focused on rolling out broadband Internet access in parts of the world where penetration today is almost nonexistent -- and sees a need for desktop, not laptop, computers in developing countries.
"Our objective is very simple. I think there is a significant part of the world's population that is still not getting connected to the Internet. More than 90 percent of the world's countries have a broadband penetration of less than 2 percent," said Ahuja, who on Monday visited Cairo to speak at the ITU Telecom Africa 2008 conference.
In Egypt itself, only 1.5 percent of the population have broadband connections, while the figure is less than 2 percent in Russia, and only 0.3 percent in India, all countries that have moved up the development scale, according to Ahuja.
"As we go around world the penetration on a household level is still very, very low, so somebody needs to step up, and solve this on a global scale," said Ahuja.
He still doesn't want to talk in detail about what his new company Augere plans to do to change this, but believes that broadband access is directly linked to improving national prosperity, education, health and stability.
Going from a large operator to a small start-up has its advantages.
"Not having a legacy of the business in your hands give you an extreme sense of freedom, agility, and focus in a small organization," he said.
Wireless is Ahuja's technology of choice for rolling out broadband.
"The advantages are speed and cost of rolling out your service. Rolling out using fixed technology is cost-prohibitive, or it would have already been done, and it hasn't," he said.
Broadband also has to be affordable for the masses.
"Ideally, you should be able to offer a basic desktop for under $300 that connects you to the Internet at a monthly rate of $10," said Ahuja.
That Ahuja favors desktop computers may come as a surprise: talk of computers for the developing world has been dominated by discussion of the One Laptop Per Child Project and its goal of building a $100 laptop. But Ahuja is convinced that users in the developing world aren't as mobile as many think, and don't want to carry an expensive product like a laptop with them all the time.
Reaching the goal needed for mass adoption may not be possible today, but he is confident for the future.
"I am very optimistic individual. The needs are very clear, and there is a latent demand," said Ahuja.
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