During this visit to Chennai, I will be interviewing BPO vendors to understand how they conceptualize, manage and deliver distributed knowledge work using platforms. What is ironic is that, while Chennai is home to some of the most sophisticated vendors, gaining access to the Internet is still a chore. During earlier visits, I would use the Internet cafes. This time, due to convenience and security issues with cafes and service quality and scheduling issues with wired access, I decided to do something
different this time. I just came upon a service offered by an entrepreneur – Golden Airnet – this is very unique. They have a base station in Annanagar that can provide wireless connectivity for a radius covering several miles. They rent out the access point and wire the computer (via an Ethernet card) to that access point. Agents from this franchise were able to install the connection in a matter of hours! If they are able to scale this service to a broader (and larger) customer base, this could the most popular option. Now that I have access, I will post observations about my distributed knowledge work from time to time.