[GKD-DOTCOM] Connectivity Is Not The Right Word

[Simon Woodside]

I was paying attention when the internet was first developing in the
west, here in Canada in particular. I think that the history of the
internet is largely ignored by those who are developing connectivity for
the developing world. But ignored, at the risk of going off in the
completely wrong direction.

The internet is all about "nodes". A node is a knot between strands, a
place where many lines come together. In a computer network, it's a
point of interconnection, where two data lines cross. What happens in
the node, is that the data intermingles and doubles. Data that enters a
node can exit in any direction, or in all directions at once.

Practically speaking, if you are in the West there are internet nodes
all around you. Especially in the early days of the internet,
universities had many nodes. My uncle ran the internet node at a
Canadian university for many years in the 80s. Today, the nodes at
universities remain, but there are many other nodes. Most ISPs have
nodes, where they connect to two types of lines, called peering lines
and transit lines. Peering lines connect to other equally important
nodes, while transit lines connect to larger nodes. There are
super-nodes in most of the biggest cities of the world. They are often
in the form of an Internet Exchange Point.

The power behind the internet is in interconnections. The names give it
away. The World Wide Web is called a web where each page is a node, with
lines of hyperlinks going to other pages, criss-crossing each other.
Look at a picture of the internet like these:
 
  

or this one:


This one is by far the most interesting but it takes work to understand.
It's worthwhile IMO. It plots a large circle around the equator. Inside
the circle, the closer to the center a node is, the more "perfectly"
interconnected it is. You can trace each node out to the edge to see
what continent it is in (written in small letters around the edge).
 
The most central nodes are, by axiom the most important!

Every country has a "local internet". The local internet is the sum of
the nodes that reside inside the country. As long as data moves withiin
the local internet, all of the benefits and any payments are also local.
As the local internet grows, the ability of people locally, to "peer"
instead of "pay" with other parts of the internet grows as well.

The benefits of buliding local nodes are immediate. You don't need to
wait, check out the success stories of the few African IXPs that have
launched so far (Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and others). For
starters the people who are connected through an IXP save a LOT of money
and that means lower prices and/or better service passed on to the
users.

So ... connectivity is not the right goal. The goal should be, what are
you doing to build the LOCAL internet. Not just to connect people but to
interconnect them by creating internet nodes?


simon





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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Bringing Connectivity to Under-Served Communities

[Ahmed Isah]

Hello all, 
  
In my opinion, Cornelio Hopmann got it all wrong. The issue is not to do
with selling a useless product that has no demand. Rather, it has to do
with whether the target market is really aware of the benefits of the
product to them. This then boils down to illiteracy of the benefits of
the Internet to the user. Take my case as an example. We provide a 24 PC
Internet connectivity in an academic environment in Nigeria with about
10,000 students and 400 academic staff. Yet, the connectivity was not
maximally utilised. However, when we embarked on Internet awareness
training to the students, we now have to plan for more PCs as the
students continue to troop in.

Yours, 
  
Chafe 



Cornelio Hopmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Jean-Marie starts off by saying at first that there is insufficient
> infrastructure, continuing then that there is limited income, not enough
> content and applications, no local expertise, no awareness. In any other
> field of market-economy the straight-forward conclusion would be that
> you try to sell a useless product and that therefore there is no demand
> and hence there are neither sales nor much product to sell.




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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Bringing Connectivity to Under-Served Communities

[Venkatesh (Venky) Hariharan]

Dear Gary,

I wonder if the Indian experience may help. The Telecom Mission that was set
up in the mid-80s set up Public Call Offices (PCOs), essentially manned
phone booths where revenues were split between the PCO operator and the
telco. The experiment was so successful that by 2000, 650,000 PCOs were in
operation across the country. Around 117 billion metered calls were made
from these PCOs in 1998. These PCOs also provided self-employment
opportunities and jobs to people across the country, apart from creating a
very efficient and helpful public infrastrcuture for making phone calls.
Many people had never made a phone call and they could depend on the PCO
operator to help them. In Mumbai, I have seen that PCOs were handed over to
handicapped people to operate.

I have taken the data from the book "India's Communications Revolution: From
Bullock Carts to Cyber Marts" by Arvind Singhal and Evrett M Rogers, Sage
Publications, New Delhi and Thousand Oaks, London. ISBN 0-7619-9472-6.

Hope this helps.

Venky


Gary Garriott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Colleagues:
>
> I have great hopes for this discussion as the topic is as relevant today
> as ever and perhaps more so, given the recent backsliding in rural
> infrastructure as a direct result of truncated privatization processes.
>
> Here in Panama we have an interesting situation. I undertook a mission
> on behalf of the UNDP country office to the remote Darién region to
> learn why the public telephones (usually only one per village of 2000 or
> more inhabitants) don´t work. To my surprise, I found that the basic
> infrastructure is not only in pretty good shape but relatively
> sophisticated as well (would support up to 9.6 kbps data). The problem
> is in the last 100 meters between the rural radio tower/antenna and the
> telephone booth where situations with relatively simple solutions cause
> 80-90% of the problems (like people getting their coins and other
> objects jammed in the coin slots, short circuits in the interconnecting
> cable because of attempts to rob service, infrequent visits by
> supervisory personnel to remove full coinboxes). We are now working with
> the multinational corporation that operates the system and various
> development programs in the region to come up with a win-win project
> design that would include community education in system care, basic
> technical training, and local management.
>
> Meanwhile, the government has levied a stiff fine on this multinational
> for similar problems throughout the country. The company maintains that
> rural telephones are unprofitable and cannot be easily maintained, even
> though they constitute a lifeline for thousands of people. This is, of
> course, only a specific example of a more generic situation, but it was
> the inspiration behind the attached draft policy position. I would
> invite comments on it as well as ideas from the community on which
> organizations/donors might be interested in developing a regional or
> even a global program to comprehensively address rural connectivity and
> access issues.
>
> (More information on PFNet mentioned in the position note is available
> at http://www.peoplefirst.net.sb/General/PFnet.htm).







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[GKD-DOTCOM] Closing the Divide by a Self Propagating Wireless Network

[Imran Rasheed]

Closing the divide by a self propagating Wireless Network 


Rationale

Wireless technologies will drive the pace of human transformation in the
third world communities numbering 4 billion people, nearly half of them
below the age of twenty.

It will provide enormous opportunities for educational institutions for
implementing creative platforms and partnerships in the field of
distance education in the underdeveloped world as well as for
corporations pushing fast moving consumer good in these vast zero
banking and zero telecom space.

Education and connectivity are universal demands, even for people
earning less than £1 a day. It is difficult to imagine how to persuade a
10 year old boy (earning $1 a day), driving a rickshaw to support his
family, to leave his job and go to school. The family needs the $1 and
someone has to pay. Governments and donor assisted cash (or food for
education) programs provide a meagre 1£ incentive per month in
Bangladesh. It is probably not much different in the rest of the
underdeveloped world.

Even if this money is found, it would still require an additional $8 per
month for 2 years to properly educate the child to a point where he is
able to pay for higher education and start earning $50 per month and not
drive a rickshaw. For 1 billion of the poorest children in the world
that is $8 billion a month just for decent education! Is there a way how
funding can be raised internally by the people themselves? The answer is
ëyesí.

Wireless network can pay for both! Connecting third world ecosystems
with wireless broadband networks through  multilateral partnerships
involving universities, overseas volunteers, MNCs, NGOs, business and
the target communities would stimulate education, commerce and
development at the bottom of the economic pyramid and radically improve
the lives of billions of people and help create more stable, less
dangerous world. At the same time it would also provide significant
strategic inroads into vast untapped markets for all.

The technology is now available to build this network in a ground up
viral manner, cheaply and quickly so that the network is paid for and
driven by the information (and communication) needs of the third world
communities. What is more important, it can be owned, managed, afforded
and run profitably by  these communities. The technology is Wireless LAN
and it uses the unlicensed spectrum. It is packed switched, Internet
protocol compliant, state of the art, massively broadband, supporting
not just voice but data and video, and it is extremely cheap and plug
and play!

It is based on the computer, not on legacy telecommunication technology,
and it is fun and easily learnt by high school students! The cost of use
is almost free -- like air! Its viral unlicensed nature becomes a major
force of human development, transforming everything from education to
entertainment, hospitals to e-governance, trade, shopping, farming-
everything!

Achieving this goal does not require anyone to spearhead new global
social-development initiatives for charitable purposes. They need only
act in their own self-interest. How?

A recent study shows that $1000 is all that is needed as capital cost
per village to connect rural India  and that it takes only a year to
reach 10% user adoption and from thereon the ROI (rate of return on
investment) is 100% annual both for the kiosk operators and network
owners.  However, it is no good to just wire up one village. Who will
they interact with? We would need to connect a minimum critical mass of
villages to jump start the network.

The figures are even better for Bangladesh because of dense population
and proximity of the villages.

It would require only $100,000 for providing wireless broadband access (
including a SCPC VSAT gateway) to 600 villages (approx £ 103 per
village) by 'seeding' direct connectivity to only 60 of these villages
in year 1. Then on the network is set free to grow organically, funding
itself, like a virus connecting all 600 villages in 5 years! The process
is then repeated in the next ecosystem of villages and you get a viral
propagation of universal connectivity.

The service would provide wireless broadband connectivity over rural
shops, schools, homesteads, market clusters delivering  applications
ranging from voice mail, money transfer, IP phone, email, browsing, IRC,
rural transportation links, e-purchase orders between retailers and
wholesale merchants, e-auctions, affordable Wi-Fi video exchange between
subscribers, market prices, e-education and e-health services and more-
all in local language.

The network can fund education to produce future subscribers for the
network; provide real time access to companies to their existing rural
retail and distribution chains; and bring millions of students closer to
universities which cannot reach them now.

Fully, 65% of the world's population earns less than £1200 per
year--that's 4 billion people. But despite the vastness of this market,
it re

[GKD-DOTCOM] How Much Bandwidth is Necessary?

[Global Knowledge Dev. Moderator]

Dear GKD Members,

Last week GKD members provided a number of cases that described how
connectivity is being established and used in countries such as Nigeria,
Ghana, Mauritania, Uganda, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Tanzania,
Kenya, Panama, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq, Philippines, Pakistan,
Ethiopia, and aboriginal communities in Canada. A wide range of
challenges have been encountered and several creative solutions have
been proposed or are being tested.

A crucial -- yet often unaddressed -- part of the access issue involves
bandwidth, namely: How much bandwidth is necessary to deliver the kinds
of information that is most needed to rural/remote areas. Some
development experts have argued that broadband is essential to have a
real impact on development, especially because we need not only delivery
of information, but the capacity for interaction. Others contend that,
although broadband is preferable, cost considerations preclude the use
of broadband in low resource environments. In an era of limited
development resources, very low-cost, slow speed, limited through-put
communications are more sustainable and provide value to underserved
communities.

This week we put the issue to GKD members. Given the costs inherent in
supplying high-bandwidth solutions to areas lacking in basic
infrastructure, what do your experience and analysis suggest regarding
the questions below?

KEY QUESTIONS:

1. Are high-bandwidth connections necessary, or even important, to
making a real impact on development? Or are the costs and problems
inherent in establishing such connectivity too high -- and unsustainable
-- for underserved areas?

2. Are there cases that demonstrate the value of low-bandwidth (e.g.,
store-and-forward email, packet radio) solutions to provide critical
information access to under-served communities? How successful have they
been?

3. Can information distribution centers (e.g., public access
telecenters) offer a viable economic solution to a community's
information needs, by, in effect, sharing a single high-bandwidth
connection among many users, and thus spreading the cost?

4. Are there new protocols that make more efficient use of the bandwidth
that is available? For example, what role can the newer wireless
technologies (e.g. Wi-Fi, MESH networks) play in bringing sufficient
connectivity to underserved communities? Are the costs and maintenance
demands of these technologies sustainable?

We look forward to hearing about some cases that have addressed these
issues, and the insights learned regarding their success/failure.





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