I'll disagree. I worked previously "somewhere" that had yearly budget of tens of millions of dollars in order to tackle this specific issue - bringing internet to people that do not have it. We had extremely good data, most of which not available publicly; dozen(s) of people working solely on identifying scope of problem while other people trying to come up with solutions.

I don't have the data anymore so I can argue with you on exact numbers , but even when you are talking about 3/4g networks, in most of the cases it will be 3g and rolling out 4g is too expensive and backbone wont have enough capacity to serve all the people that are lacking access.

>Electricity might be an issue in some areas but according to our assumptions, more than 160 million secondary students in low and low-middle income countries live in cities and areas where electricity is not an issue.

You cant really just buy enough hardware for everyone. It doesn't work well on scale. See one laptop per child.

I understand and maybe 2.5 Bn might be under question.

But lets just to narrow it down to one country - US. One of the worlds strongest economy. Only in the US more than 3 million families with school-aged children can't afford internet connection (Sprint claims it's 5 Mio families) That's why these programs exist: http://1millionproject.org/, https://www.internetessentials.com/, https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-cons...

Now imagine other countries and cities even developed ones. Not talking about developing countries. Btw 160 million secoindary students which I mentioned exclude rural areas, only those who live in urban areas.

Regarding the devices, I agree that might be challenging but the prices for devices are decreasing dramatically. Plus some models of monthly installments can make it plus 5-10 USD to monthly internet fees, which is pretty acceptable. So we believe in the long run the device problem is also solvable.

I actually live in US now. It's complicated over here. There are numbers that are talking about 20% of so that either cant afford or dont have in general access due to absence of infrastructure.

Will play devils advocate a bit: there is a lot of projects that attempt sponsoring model. Why one should choose yours over, lets say, this one https://www.worldvision.org/sponsor-a-child-in-africa .

Yes, I also stumble upon many different numbers from time to time, but more or less they are in millions (only US). The mobile internet infrastructure in the US is still one of the most developed. Sprint and Comcast claim that infrastructure is not a barrier but of course I agree there will be some areas with lack of coverage, but definitely not areas where 20% of US population live.

Btw thanks for this conversation, everything that brings our brain cells into movement is definitely helpful;)

Regarding why should one choose us. One thing we have discovered is that our cause resonates very much with Millenials and the younger generation of professionals. Mostly those engaged in so-called Gig economy (internet economy) Developers, designer, copywriters, etc. 65% Women btw. Second transparency and sense of community we are trying to build (Monthly transparency reports with all the cost breakdowns, student success stories, new geographies, bank account transactions, etc.) We are building a nonprofit for the next generation of donors and are thinking a lot about the ways to achieve really radical transparency that technology can provide.

You are rather optimistic about mobile internet in US. I live in San Jose, there is areas in it without mobile coverage. I live well within city limits and have femtocell at home in order to be able to talk and sms (at&t). If you go outside of metropolitan areas you are likely to loose signal quick. When I was driving to LA a while ago, the only way that I could have signal 80-90% of time was to have two phones - one from AT&T and one from Verizon.

Anyway, check your linkedin. I pinged (i think) you there. I may have a few practical suggestions that are better discussed offline.

Maybe I am optimistic about the infrastructure, but my point is that according to our research hundreds of millions of families live under the coverage areas and cannot afford an internet connection. Internet affordability is still one of the toughest problems the world is facing.

Sure will check right away. Thanks!