In a recent article in Macleans, Jesse Brown was talking about the new Aakash tablet which is being made in India.  It’s not here yet, but it’s likely coming soon.

The first thing to know about it, is that it’s a bottom end tablet.  The processor is slow.  The networking is substandard and there’s no multi-touch.  But they sell for about $50 so who cares.  Those are the facts.  From there, it’s off to imagination land.

According to Mr. Brown, an influx of cheap tablets will get a billion more people on the internet.  I’m just curious who’s going to pay those billion monthly bills.  The fact is, hardware is the cheapest part of the online experience.  Access fees are the biggest financial disincentive to more widespread embrace of the net.

I doubt that cheap tablets are going to be the great democratizing force foreseen in this article.  Hardware is a one shot expenditure.  You buy your device and it’s yours.  Access fees recur every month.  Depending on what level of access you want, a couple of months fees will run you more than the cost of these new tablets.  Until we find a way to bring down ISP charges, widespread access remains a pipedream.

The true value of these types of products lies with people like me.  It’s not going to be my primary device, but if it was that cheap, I’d consider one for certain applications.  It would piggyback on my existing internet plan, and that’s the key here.  It would be an auxillary device.  If they’d been around when my daughter was younger, she would’ve had one.  Instead of a netbook which cost several times as much.

Of course, it ignores the larger issue.  We complain about the lack of manufacturing jobs but then get excited about how cheaply they build tablets in India.  We want $50 tablets, but we want $20 an hour to build them.  That’s the bigger issue.  The government needs to find a way to create incentives for that type of manufacturing in Canada.  We need to create entry level industries that can employ less skilled workers.  The resulting products may not be the bleeding edge, but they will be more affordable.

That’s what will lead more Canadians online.  Not affordable hardware, but real jobs that allow them to pay those monthly fees.  Without those jobs, and others like them, there will be less people online, not more.  That’s the real secret to the democratization of the internet.

Cheers, Winston