Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] How Much Bandwidth is Necessary?
Wire Lunghabo James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However I would also like to add that many times when we talk of connectivity, we mean having probably a connection to either the internet directly or to the telcos etc. Has some one ever thought of creating a network of villages linked together probably through wireless technologies, enabling these rural folk to communicate with each other and exchange information without having to ride a bicycle for 20 kms. Eventually, this creates a mesh of villages interconnected and one high speed connection probably links to the ISP or Telco. I believe this kind of aggregation would prove cheaper and more meaningful for our societies. Why in the first case should you try and force a villager to communicate with someone in Europe when he still has problems communicating with his in-laws 10 kms away ? Wire you have said it all. Even with these wireless solutions it can turn out to be costly and prone to many problems taking the terrain and climate of Africa into account. We have been trying to connect our offices with HF radios on which we could transmit simple text messages. This is in Ghana. The equipment cost us about $4000 per site and there were about 5 sites. For the first year we could use the equipment effectively for voice communication and once a awhile with text messages. Due to poor after sales services in the 4th year we started encountering problems with servicing of the equipment which was draining our resources. So we virtually abandoned it and tried using the email through the national telcom channels. This is only available at the regional capitals and it was impossible for us to link with our remote field offices where most of our partners work. To provide better access to information to these remote locations we are considering using FM radio with a VSAT connection to the internet and lobbying with the governments to provide at least a few lines to this radio station to their major exchanges so we could share this link. Because of the high illiteracy rate of the population in question their direct interaction with the internet is going to be minimal but this can be done through the radio presenters who will take on the requests from the villagers, reasearch the issues over the internet and other sources and then broadcast the findings over the air with some resource persons to add some clarifications and make the local connections to the issues under discussion. I do believe WIFI and the other technologies need more research to adapt them to the conditions and income levels of the vast majority of the African population. This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Bringing Connectivity to Under-Served Communities
On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 17:14, Robert Miller wrote: And, what if all the content on this server were remotely refreshed nightly via satellite broadcast with any updates so that those content resources were always current as of 2:00 AM that day and were available to students, faculty, and administration at high-speed using a simple, reliable wireless campus network? Yes, this is possible and it is being done today! And, it operated on a financially self-sustaining basis by the University or a local community business person who is charged with providing this reliable service. This is very interesting to me but raises some questions related to practical use and implementation. It basically seems that 'offline' content is being maintained in a somewhat current state by periodically syncing with upstream information. You mention satellite broadcasts, which imply that the information stream is one way. This makes sense to me, because if it was two way, why does one need to mirror content locally, except to save bandwidth (still worth doing!) Another question is how well this fits in with the current state of information out there. It appears that more and more, information is tied towards its source, in the sense that information is not being served raw but through an application, and interacting with an application means bi-directional information flow. Packaging it properly will avoid the problem and enable it to be used offline. IMHO, more efficient use of offline capability is needed to help information penetrate into places where this solution may be used. How much does satellite unidirectional broadcast cost versus bidirectional communication (factor in hardware cost as well as operational cost) ? Practically, I think this sort of approach needs to be combined with a hard look at equipping people with PCs on a large enough scale to really reap benefits. Community telecentres (basically shared access) is useful as a means of alleviating this problem but too much effort seems to be focused on community telecentres instead of on how to put more PCs or lower cost computing/communication devices into the hands of people. And that brings yet another problem, that of what sort of software or interfaces are going to enable these people to take advantage of information, bringing yet another problem into being, of whether the sort of information that they need is really out there. This is somewhat assumed for granted ... This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
[GKD-DOTCOM] How Much Bandwidth is Necessary?
Dear All, I am Meddie Mayanja, working for the World Bank Institute. I wanted to contribute to the debate in the context of my experience in the ICTs for Development and my current position. 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? The question seems to put the horse infront of the cart. In development work we do not need to put technology before the services/development objectives we aim to serve. Its not fair to discuss whether high-bandwidth connections are necessary if we have no specific service under review. Take a case of a basic telecenter in a rural community, high bandwidth will be a waste if they want to use e-mail, internet. However if we are considering telemedicine, with high-quality image transfer between a hospital and a health center in the community, then high bandwidth is a necessity. I would add that the cost is secondary to the function and appropriateness. If we need high bandwidth for a health service as described above, that's it---we can find the money. 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? We are working with a School-Based Telecenter Model for access to ICTs in underserved rural communities. In the program that has 15 centers around the country - Uganda. We had until recently one C-band VSAT terminal that was shared by 4 School-Based Telecenters (SBTs) via wireless bridge and access point--spread spectrum technology. The model helped to share bandwidth that terminated at one VSAT as well as costs for its maintanance. The SBTs have now switched on to KU-band. Visit www.schooltelecenters.org for more information about the School-Based Telecenters. Meddie Meddie Mayanja ICT Community Development Specialist ICT for Education Program World Bank Institute Tel: 256 77 502 288 [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR [EMAIL PROTECTED] This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] How Much Bandwidth is Necessary?
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? 1. High bandwidth: I think enough to do Yahoo! mail or Hotmail is needed for a public service. Even slow web is really essential I think. I am speaking as someone who helped to run a large FIDOnet e-mail only node in Ethiopia in the early nineties and I regret that a lot of really clever and efficient stuff (Zmodem compression, least-cost routing etc) has been thrown out as we standardise on TCP/IP. But that's how it is these days. 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? 2. I work in southern Sudan and there are many low bandwidth solutions in place, but they are not for public use. These include data (e-mail) over Mini-M phone, PTC-II HF radio, Codan HF modems, data over Thuraya, even BGAN or M4 satellite toys and others. All are painful either in cost or speed. But if you need it bad enough, and you have the money, you can do e-mail anywhere. None of these are used in a telecentre context. 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? 3. Telecentres: yes, of course they are all about sharing a connection. Breaking even on the $400-500 per month for a 64K VSAT bill is the challenge. The other major challenge we face in two remote telecentres UNICEF supports in southern Sudan (at least two days from the nearest telephone) is the generators. These need lots of fuel and oil and are prone to breakdown. Regular desktops are much too greedy for solar power as far as I understand, but I would be interested if anyone can share experiences on solar-powered VSAT? 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? 4. Wireless: yes, it's potentially a good revenue stream for the telecentres. In theory, they can offer a business class service to fixed locations beyond the telecentre and charge a healthy monthly subscription without using up seats in the centre. If the client will pay enough, they can up their VSAT bandwidth. This is what we are looking into but high street Wi-Fi kit does not go far enough and expertise in souped-up Wi-Fi is limited. Ben Parker This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
