Google calls for global connectivity

By Sundar Pichai

Growing up in India, we didn’t get our first phone until I was 12 years old. It was a rotary phone. I remember the thrill, the idea that there was this device that could connect us to anyone in the world.

All you had to do was remember a phone number, slowly dial it, and hope the person you wanted to talk to was home when you called. How exciting.

Fast-forward to today, just a couple of decades later.

Plenty of children in developed countries now have smartphones by age 12 ― or even earlier.

These youngsters no longer have to worry about memorizing phone numbers ― in fact they have a world of information in their pockets.

Dialing is a little easier than with a rotary phone, but so is pretty much everything else when you have the power of a smartphone, and with it, the power of the internet, with you wherever you go.

But while there are 12-year-olds with smartphones in certain parts of the world, there are still plenty of others who have no access to any sort of phone.

Just a few years ago, this divide between the digital haves and have-nots looked like it might be an intractable problem.

More than 4 billion people, more than half the world, seemed stuck on the wrong side of the chasm, unreachable in any real or affordable way by existing technology, be it devices or an actual Internet connection.

But things are starting to look brighter.

Think of how far we have already come.

The decreasing cost of a smartphone coupled with the constant growth in its computing power has made technology much more accessible to many more people.

Right now, you probably have in your pocket a computer more powerful than anything owned by even the most rich and powerful a decade ago.

Smartphones today are the cheapest, easiest way to bring the web to people who until now could only dream of it.

Google launched Android One in India last year.

For about $100, a person has a high-quality smartphone, and access to everything the rest of us do.

He or she has the ability to start a business and have it go global in an instant.

These people have the power to create a video and share it with everyone in the world. They also have the opportunity to question their leaders, connect with loved ones, and educate themselves, and their children.

Of course, a device is only as good as the network to which it is connected.

I have seen images of a Brazilian village that at first glance seems to be filled with fireflies dancing in the trees at night.

In reality, those fireflies are people who have climbed high into the branches trying to get a mobile signal. They have smartphones, but they cannot do anything with them.

Access is a multifaceted problem that requires a multifaceted approach.

We are tackling this at Google on multiple fronts, with carrier partners around the globe, ranging from increasing bandwidth and speed in places like the U.S., to tackling underserved parts of the world.

That is a larger population than you might think ― nearly 3 billion people do not have reliable access to the Internet.

We are tackling this through projects like Loon, in which stratospheric balloons beam Internet signals to the ground below, in regions such as mountainous areas that cannot be reached by regular infrastructure.

Recently we announced that our balloons had traveled across more than 15 million kilometers of sky. Some have stayed up nearly 200 days ― that is more than six months, well over the three months we had hoped for.

In a similar vein, a project in the early stages, called Titan, would use a new type of super lightweight solar-powered plane capable of hovering in one area of the stratosphere.

Titan may be able to supplement existing services with extra bandwidth, or provide access in an area that is suddenly offline, such as after an earthquake or other disaster.

Some people say that access is not a problem for private companies to solve, that it should be the job of our governments to give their citizens what they need to get online. Obviously, I disagree.

This is the job of everyone ― tech companies, yes, but also governments, NGOs, telcos, pretty much everyone who cares about bringing more opportunity to more people in more places.

If you care about boosting local economies, or improving education in poor countries, or helping citizens of nations where governments control the flow of information, then access is your issue, too.

None of us can do it on our own. It has to be a complete effort ― one that helps bring the whole Internet to the whole world, whether you are a 12-year-old in India or an 80-year-old in Indiana.

The writer is Google's senior vice president of products. He is one of the key figures who created Google's Android platform.