Are n't Internet cafes becoming a threat to telecentres?

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Permalink Reply by Shehzaad Shams on March 19, 2009 at 8:56pm

Hello Sandra,
I agree to a great extent to Atmaram's point of view. Telecenters are supposed to run with a profit motive but with a social entrepreneurial drive and business model. Whereas, a cyber cafe need not keep the social development motive in its business model. If it does, well and good.

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Permalink Reply by Yovesh Suri on March 18, 2009 at 11:58am

Dear Sandra,

It is certainly an very candid opinion on the status of Telecentres accross the world.What I personally strongly belive that let us involve the corporates as there CSR initiative and support the telecentres in terms of resources and providing state of art hardware.They can think of addopting the centres in a particular geography.

Thanks
Yovesh Suri
INDIA

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Permalink Reply by Ananya S Guha on March 18, 2009 at 12:16pm

I think as yet since most of the internet cafes are in urban areas, the threat is not there. Moreover the target groups, if I may call them so for both are different so I do not think there is any such imminent threat. It is like saying a social worker is threatened by a business man. That can exist but happens rarely.

Ananya S Guha.

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Permalink Reply by Balaba Peter on March 18, 2009 at 1:30pm

Dear all
I completely disagree with Sandra's feelings about having cafes out competing Telecentres. In the first place competition is health in any business and without competition their is no development.
But it all depends on how Telecentres market their services and the way we serve our communities. our services should be quality, reliable and a bit cheaper as compared to the commercial cafes.

I will share with you one example here in Nakaseke one business man opened up a cafe just nearby about 1 kilometer he was also providing some computer training but just within a period of three months he was out of the business. the causes were quit many;
one he was renting and the income generated was not sufficient to meet all his operation cost and for him to get enough client was also a problem.
After knowing our competitor we had to employ one tactic, we med sure that we provide quality and reliable services because we operate on Solar and for him was entirely depending on Hydro Power and a generator so the his business was not profitable as he thought!
Secondly we used our community Radio to make attractive Adverts about ICT services including Internet computer training Library Secretarial etc. so this was another opportunity to kick him off.


Therefore, no one should scare you that cafes will out compete us in the Telecentre because the way we relate with the community is also very vital to keep us in business. Our Community members do appreciate our services and they feel that they are part of the project.

Therefore, We only need to develop confidence and be innovative in the way we manage our Telecentres and no body should challenge our services and then we shall remain the ICT giant.

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Permalink Reply by Siti Huraizah Binti Abdul Rahman on March 18, 2009 at 4:46pm

For me, yes... Internet cafe are a threat for us... why??? i discuss later... quit bz here...hihihi!!

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Permalink Reply by Predescu Sorin Vlad on March 18, 2009 at 4:53pm

Threat? A telecentre is just a seed. It is a good sign for the community if some internet-café appears in the same location with a telecenter. Two changes are possible:
1. The telecentre could transform from a communication instrument into a development tool (eg. by adding educational, social, economical activities).
2. The telecentre could move to another location, where the informatics’ technologies are needed.

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Permalink Reply by Glenn Strachan on March 18, 2009 at 6:42pm

Any Internet connected facility, be it a school, a telecentre or Internet Cafe must have a sustainable business model. In Macedonia, connectivity to schools could not have occurred unless the marketplace was opened up for competition which resulted in the lowering of prices for Internet access making it so that schools could, eventually afford their own connectivity without a third party stepping in to provide support - USAID. A telecentre while a great idea, and one that I have worked on, must also be sustainable. Setting up a Telecentre in Senegal will not bring about the reduction in pricing because Sonatel has no competition in the marketplace and once the subsidy runs out for the Telecentre they will close. Internet Cafe's on the other hand are driven by a motivation for profit making it so that even if Sonatel does not reduce its pricing levels the Cafe will receive fractional profits, enough to keep it going. I have seen lots of Internet Cafe's throughout the world, but eventually Telecentres seem to run their course. I, like everyone else who works in broadband wireless in developing countries, would love to see Telecentres survive, but in my experience, they are unsustainable.

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Permalink Reply by Cuchie Echeverria on March 18, 2009 at 9:26pm

Hi Sandra!

Interesting topic here. Just would like to put in my two cents' worth.

In the Philippines, I think the situation is quite the opposite. Telecentres are normally set up in rural or remote unserved or underserved areas. But it can also happen that Internet cafes may exist in the same place, in which case it is usually the cafe that is threatened because the telecentre offers more or less the same ICT services but at a more affordable rate. So in some cases, the telecentre and Internet cafe operators just come to an agreement for instance that the telecentre will not allow network games and this service will be left to the cafe. So the two can actually co-exist without one being threatened by the other.

There is also one case in a remote municipality in the southern part of the country - for so long, there was no Internet access whatsoever in the area, so a telecentre was established using satellite connection. Just a few months after, one of the biggest telephone companies in the Philippines decided to extend their services to the municipality. So here is a case where setting up a telecentre in some way ushered in development to the community. It prompted a service provider to set up shop, so to speak, in what was once a remote and unserved area, and this was all to the benefit of the community - a win-win situation for the local residents.

But back to the issue of Internet cafes being a threat to telecentres, I believe the most important thing to reflect on is what differentiates telecentres from Internet cafes. Aside from the fact that cafes are profit-oriented, what sets a telecentre apart from a regular Internet cafe is social responsibility.

Telecentres have a social responsibility to bridge the digital divide by making ICT services available to those in unserved and underserved areas and to help propel the development of local communities. On top of that, they also serve as a conduit for the efficient delivery of government and other services and a potent tool for the empowerment and participation of unserved and underserved communities in development.

In that sense, each has its own domain and there is no reason for them to not co-exist harmoniously. ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Sandra Nassali on March 19, 2009 at 2:19am

Thank you Cuchie and the others for your responses. In Peter Balaba's response, he shows how Nakaseke telecentre out beat a cafe in business in and it's because good business skills were applied.

However one thing Peter is forgetting is that not all telecentres have the acumen to employ such skills so as to make telecentres out shine cafes in areas where they co- exist.

Sandra

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Permalink Reply by Kiringai Kamau on March 19, 2009 at 3:46am

Sandra,
In order to achieve sustainability in telecentres there is need to think beyond what is described here.

We had a rather heated debated sometimes back that addressed telecentre sustainability. I remember giving many examples of what we are doing popularizing telecentres in farmer owned institutions so that the telecenter offers other value added services above the traditional. the challenge is that our telecentres do not increase very fast in numbers but when they are set up, they are better than any cafe can ever pretend to get.

A value chain focus in the activities that telecentres undertake so that they touch on the lives of the beneficiaries in more ways than one could answer your dilemma and in my view, its a no contest because development supports trade and trade supports development, making both complementary or independent depending on what glasses you wear.

Kiringai Kamau

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Permalink Reply by Sandra Nassali on March 19, 2009 at 4:01am

Hi Kiringai, i totally agree with what you are trying to say. The problem is that how we have very few telecentres that offer value added services.

While in Barcelona, CFs especially we from Africa were mesmerized at what telecentres offer to the communities, a lot of services apart from ICT facilities.

This keeps them going and with such, cafes can not out compete them.''How many telecentres take up such initiatives'' is the issue that most are facing.

In Africa for instance, many are closing because they do n't have value added services, they want to depend on donor funding. And where does this live them, out of business of course.

Sandra

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Permalink Reply by Nalwoga Sarah Mpagi on March 19, 2009 at 5:52am

Thanks to all those who have taken part in this discussion. Kiringai and Cuchie brings up issues of value chain and social responsibility respectively. But how can this be achieved?? Telecentres should strive to be innovative to withstand the challenges posed by cafes and to always link their services to the community.

Lack of proper accountability leads to failure of service delivery to the communities, who are the reason as to why telecentres exist. Accountability may not only be in finances but everything including the services; were the services delivered as they were supposed to be?

Cafes where they co exist with telecentres will stand a better chance since they strive to deliver quality services to their clients. Although telecentres provide slightly cheaper price services, they should prove to the communities why they exist... They should be innovative.

Many telecentres in Africa are struggling with sustainability issues beyond the donors. Once a donor pulls out they fail to meet many expenses that help them run the telecentres.

Many telecentres still have a few computers connected on internet, they have very few ICT tools that are operational. For instance, the projector, TV, Deck and e.t.c that were provided by the donor when the telecentre opened are no longer functional and they even have no capacity to buy new ones or repair the damaged ones.

We should realistically face the problems as they are on ground so that we come up with proper solutions to over come them. Some telecentres because they are connected to one or two computers on the internet, they make intending users wait for long ours for them to access the services. This is partly the reasons given by our respondents in Buwama, that they usually spend long ours at the centre before they are given space to access computers. Some of them even said that it becomes difficult to tell some one to quit the machine if that someone paid for an hour or more to access internet, so they end up going to the nearby cafe where they are given space anytime one wants to use the service.

Sarah

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