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

[S Woodside]

On Monday, December 1, 2003, Robert Miller wrote:

> Simon Woodside wrote:
>
>> WorldSpace is a broadcast system. With a WorldSpace system you are 
>> only capable of receiving data, not sending it.
>
> I wish to disagree in that we are currently using WorldSpace very
> effectively as a global multicast solution to refresh all of the Axxess
> servers that Advanced Interactive currently has installed across Africa.
> With a dialup line as a "back channel" the server maintains contact with
> the global Network Operations Center that remotely manages this entire
> network.

..[snip statements I agree with]...

> let us not discount this technology where a differentiated "last mile"
> solution can manage its shortcomings and turn 1-way downlink with a
> server managed dialup back channel into a viable way of a sustainable
> affordable connected community.

Robert, your post has raised more questions than it answered. Thus far,
WorldSpace has been billed as a beachhead information system that can be
deployed in areas that have no communications infrastructure. I think
I'm convinced at this point that's a valid development, though not one I
would ever pursue.

It's been assumed so far that once an internet connection is available,
the internet is superior. And yes -- since on the internet, my rural
users can talk back, hold conversations, email their relatives, use VoIP
-- all impossible with WorldSpace.

Now you have described a situation which adds a dialup to the regular
WorldSpace receiver unit. But why would anyone bother with WorldSpace at
all if they have dialup internet access?

We run the risk of applying a technology (WorldSpace) "just because we
can" in that situation.

simon

--
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homepage http://www.simonwoodside.com
for the developing world http://www.openict.net
member of http://www.mozilla.org/projects/camino




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

[Daniel Stern]

After lurking on the list for more than a week, allow me to introduce
myself. I am director for the Uconnect Schools Project. Our NGO is
providing computers to mostly rural primary and secondary schools in
Uganda. Schools pay something less than $200 for each computer, which is
enough for us to continue to purchase and ship additional recycled
equipment needed for the expansion of the project. The overriding aim
is that the project should be sustainable, scalable and reproducible:
schools provide their own transport for taking delivery of equipment;
students and teachers are trained at Uconnect workshops at education
ministry headquarters for installing their own LANs; and computer labs
are opened to the parents and community after school hours on a
fee-paying basis as schools-based telecentres. Our NGO's
train-the-trainer programme has demonstrated that training the
indigenous youth is a key component in the successful expansion of any
such project, and that their supervision and training can be done
remotely through Internet technologies.

Bob Miller has already made interventions to the list about Advanced
Interactive's SchoolWeb solution. I would only add that we have been
quite impressed with their solution, so much so that we have begun a
pilot project involving the installation of SchoolWeb servers at forty
mostly rural schools.

WorldSpace seemed to offer the low cost connectivity solution we were
looking for. Certainly the one-time equipment costs were low, at around
$200 per radio, with satellite data receiver and antenna (for bulk
purchase of forty or more units). But I was not happy with the
recurrent fees proposed by WorldSpace for our schools project: $180
monthly (for between 40 and 100 schools) per school for 500 Mb of
download. Added to other recurring costs, monthly server maintenance,
monthly dialup subscription at $30, and airtime fees averaging $1.05 per
minute (for GSM data - for most rural schools the only means for
Internet uplink), the WorldSpace recurring fees I was quoted were not
even competitive with two-way satellite services offered locally, such
as the Hughes Network Solutions DirectWay (Afsat's I-Way) which provides
1 Gb monthly for around $250.

We are again in the hunt for a more cost-effective connectivity solution
for the rural schools.

Kind regards, 
Daniel Stern



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

[Robert Miller]

Simon Woodside wrote:

> WorldSpace is a broadcast system. With a WorldSpace system you are only
> capable of receiving data, not sending it.

I wish to disagree in that we are currently using WorldSpace very
effectively as a global multicast solution to refresh all of the Axxess
servers that Advanced Interactive currently has installed across Africa.
With a dialup line as a "back channel" the server maintains contact with
the global Network Operations Center that remotely manages this entire
network.

In addition to providing high speed local access to Internet content
that is refreshed nightly, the WorldSpace downlink also enables
distributed Distance Learning content to be reliably delivered to every
server through very low cost multicast. Through partnerships with a
number of North American universities projects are being finalized to
deliver curriculum to these distributed servers that sit on the campus
of Universities in China, India, and Africa. This Intellectual Property
is encrypted and totally secure, yet remotely accessible by the content
developer.

While WorldSpace in its native state has been a one way channel, this
innovation leverages their low cost delivery medium in exciting new ways
that extends the reach of distributed and e-learning to edges of
habitation, regardless of existing infrastructure. And, as a number of
other satellite providers also provide affordable multicast services,
let us not discount this technology where a differentiated "last mile"
solution can manage its shortcomings and turn 1-way downlink with a
server managed dialup back channel into a viable way of a sustainable
affordable connected community.

Having been in India for the past 2 weeks, I have been able to validate
that this model can be effectively deployed here, as well. This very low
cost turnkey solution utilizes locally sourced, off the shelf technology
that is integrated with the connectivity, content, and remote management
of the user experience. Several major universities and colleges in North
America have licensed their degree and diploma programs to be globally
delivered through this innovative Distributed Distance Education model.
This solution will be demonstrated at the World Summit on Information
Societies in Geneva Switzerland during the week of Dec 8th. For any
participants of this forum who may be attending, please plan to visit
the HP booth which will be powered with this solution, including
satellite partners such as WorldSpace and others.

Regards,
Robert Miller

Direct:   (416) 423-9100
Mobile:  (416) 464-7525
Fax:  (416) 696-9734

History teaches us that people and nations behave wisely, once they have
exhausted all other alternatives   Abba Eban




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

[S Woodside]

My main concern about WorldSpace is that it is billed as a
"communication" system. Most electronic communication systems are
two-way, they allow conversations. But WorldSpace is one-way. It is, in
fact, a broadcasting system, not a communications system. Just as you
would call TV a broadcast system. WorldSpace users are passive
observers.

I think it is a good broadcast system. It supports data broadcasting,
which is new and has many uses. But if we are talking about ICT,
information and communications technologies, this is an IT, not a CT.
While communications systems involve connections and interaction,
broadcasting involves transmitters and receivers.

Although WorldSpace's own websites are very careful to speak only of
transmission and reception, others make mistakes.

" The WorldSpace satellite network is an innovative communication
technology that enables people to access information even in the
remotest villages where there are no telephone lines or electricity."
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1608394.stm

"The unique, patented technology allows inexpensive connectivity to the
computer directly from the satellite."
   


The internet is very poor at broadcasting. But it's excellent as a
communication medium. As another person recently wrote:

"Because the WorldSpace product is a satellite receiver, there's no
back-channel for data upload. As a result, you can't send email, request
additional cached webpages or give feedback on whether a particular
piece of content is useful."
 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/xdev/22.html

So, in conclusion. WorldSpace is an innovative and obviously useful
information dissemination tool. But, on the other hand, a basic, slow
email system (even with intermediaries) is better at communication.

simon


On Friday, November 28, 2003, David J.A. Sawe wrote:

> Arguably, the initial step towards joining the information society is to
> receive information, and not to transmit blindly. In the same way, a
> newborn's first breath is always to inhale and not to exhale. Especially
> in terms of educating, informing and entertaining, there is much that
> can be achieved through being able to merely receive broadcasts. If this
> were not the case, then the traditional forms of media dissemination
> (ie. radio/TV/print) could never have become as pervasive as they are
> now in our more privileged urban areas.
>
> So WorldSpace satellite radio "receivers" bring about inclusivity by
> merely offering a new option for reliably receiving high quality audio
> and data content in locations hitherto excluded from any of the
> traditional media forms. Of course, as with traditional broadcast
> media, other options would need to be looked into on a case-by-case
> basis to contribute anything in return; but at the outset, this
> requirement is not a sine qua non.


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

[David J.A. Sawe]

Indeed, WorldSpace is not a total solution in itself, but only part of a
solution in an imperfect situation. I don't see that anybody has yet
promoted it as 'a substitute for the "real thing"'. Thus the risk of
that misperception should not cause us to ignore its existence and its
potential uses.

Arguably, the initial step towards joining the information society is to
receive information, and not to transmit blindly. In the same way, a
newborn's first breath is always to inhale and not to exhale. 
Especially in terms of educating, informing and entertaining, there is
much that can be achieved through being able to merely receive
broadcasts. If this were not the case, then the traditional forms of
media dissemination (ie. radio/TV/print) could never have become as
pervasive as they are now in our more privileged urban areas.

So WorldSpace satellite radio "receivers" bring about inclusivity by
merely offering a new option for reliably receiving high quality audio
and data content in locations hitherto excluded from any of the
traditional media forms. Of course, as with traditional broadcast
media, other options would need to be looked into on a case-by-case
basis to contribute anything in return; but at the outset, this
requirement is not a sine qua non.

So in discussing the use of WorldSpace, I'd suggest it would be more
worthwhile to focus on the following two issues:

(a) The content delivered by WorldSpace needs to be better adapted for
local relevance, but the cost of doing so is too high for local content
developers unless they can secure major subsidies.

(b) The presence of a WorldSpace receiver in a remote rural setting
should be optimised to deliver more than just data connectivity for
websites, as its transmissions reach places where traditional media does
not exist. Its multimodal (audio and video) capabilities ought to be
exploited holistically.

I am a user of WorldSpace radio myself, especially whenever I travel by
car around East Africa. Its little satellite-dish sits perfectly on the
dashboard and is very reliable so long as there are no overhanging
obstructions (trees, bridges, etc.) as the satellite is nearly directly
overhead. You just can't imagine the excitement it generates whenever
people in remote areas get to experience it!

Sadly, the only broadcasts I've heard in Kiswahili -- a language spoken
by an estimated minimum of 60 million people in East Africa -- are on
Voice of Kenya plus the occasional BBC World Service programmes. I am
not aware of any other African languages being available on it in this
sector.

I once enquired from local broadcasters as to why they did not seize
this medium to expand their audience. They consistently replied that
the cost of up-loading content was unjustifiably high, especially
compared to the cost of streaming directly onto the Internet. A few
asked me about downloading the audio content for their local broadcasts,
which was quite the opposite of my intentions...

Now, if that is the reality of the situation for the audio side (where
local content is abundant), then the situation for the data side (where
local content is relatively more scarce), is necessarily worse. 
Clearly, WorldSpace have a business model that they must adhere to for
sustainability, so it would be unfair to request them to lower their
rates. But perhaps this suggests that there is room for some sort of
arrangement to sponsor the sharing of channels dedicated to local
content among several small-scale broadcasters and/or web-content
developers?

Cordially
David


On Wednesday 26 November 2003 23:41, Simon Woodside wrote:

> WorldSpace is a broadcast system. With a WorldSpace system you are only
> capable of receiving data, not sending it. While I think WorldSpace is a
> great and wonderful thing, it's very dangerous if people thinking it's a
> substitute for the "real thing" which is an internet connection that
> allows two-way communication, email, web access, VoIP, web email,
> content creation, content sharing ... none of those are possible with
> WorldSpace.
> 
> So, if you want to be merely an information consumer ... WorldSpace is
> fine. If you want to join the information society, you need something
> more.




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

[S Woodside]

WorldSpace is a broadcast system. With a WorldSpace system you are only
capable of receiving data, not sending it. While I think WorldSpace is a
great and wonderful thing, it's very dangerous if people thinking it's a
substitute for the "real thing" which is an internet connection that
allows two-way communication, email, web access, VoIP, web email,
content creation, content sharing ... none of those are possible with
WorldSpace.

So, if you want to be merely an information consumer ... WorldSpace is
fine. If you want to join the information society, you need something
more.

simon


On Wednesday, November 19, 2003, Robert Miller wrote:

> The WorldSpace connection together with this CampusAxxess "last mile"
> solution for any school, campus, or village truly narrows the digital
> divide in an affordable and sustainable way. For more info, contact Dr.
> S. Rangarajan, Sr. Vice President of WorldSpace at
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or me.

--
www.simonwoodside.com :: www.openict.net :: www.semacode.org
  99% Devil, 1% Angel


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

[Gary Garriott]

Aaron Sundsmo's call for low-cost, low-bandwidth email technology is
exactly what VITA pushed for many years through the low orbiting
satellite store-and-forward email system designed for remote areas. We
had wonderful demos using this technology, but, sadly, the technology
could not be commercialized on a for-profit basis. Efforts continue,
however, on a "humanitarian" basis. For probably $100K or less,
replicable ground segment (ground-based terminals) could be tweaked and
field tested (major development has already occurred). For the space
segment (satellites) we would either have to go "piggy-back" on someone
else's satellites (using the UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd
proven platform) or, if an underwriter could be found for about $3
million, launch a dedicated satellite.

If anybody would like more info on this or would like to offer
suggestions, please write me offline (and I will be happy to
collate/share responses with the network).

Gary

Gary Garriott
ICT for Development Advisor
Panama SURF - UNDP
PO Box 6314, Zone 5
Panama City, Panama 
Tel. 507 265 8168/8153
Fax  507 265 8445



Aaron Sundsmo wrote:

> I completely agree that there always needs to be a feedback loop built
> into any project. What we are currently doing is using a hub and spokes
> model where one site has a connection to the Internet (usually dial-up)
> and can email feedback, but this has generally been very expensive and
> unreliable. Where this is not available, First Voice is also using
> telephone, snail mail or face-to-face communications as appropriate.
> However, we are always looking for a low-cost low-bandwidth connection
> primarily for email use that can be used in remote areas throughout
> Africa and Asia and will not require excessive government licensing. If
> anyone has any suggestions of these technologies I would greatly
> appreciate it.





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

[Robert Miller]

On November 14th, Thaths (Sudhakar Chandra) wrote:

> This brings to mind something that the satellite radio outfit WorldSpace
> is doing. The idea is brilliant, in my opinion. You basically buy this
> satellite radio (approx. $70-100 depending on model). You also buy a
> computer card to interface with the radio. For a fee (that includes the
> card free) of approx. $40, you get unmetered limited internet access.
> The access is limited in the sense that you are restricted to a few
> WorldSpace "approved" websites. This would work great if WorldSpace
> expanded the list of approved sites to include those like Yahoo mail and
> Hotmail. Unfortunately, they don't. For most people, getting cheap
> access to a web-based email system like Yahoo mail is a good start.

The great news is that WorldSpace is a strategic partner of the
CampusAxxess solution that I have spoken about in previous messages.
There is now a WorldSpace receiver with a USB connection that plugs
directly into the CampusAxxess content server that hosts the school
network. In addition to caching educational content requested by
teachers and the Ministry of Education in each country, it is also
preloaded with a broad range of curriculum from North American
universities and colleges, K-12 curriculum content in multi-modal
versions (video, text, multimedia) formats. And, it should be noted,
that this content is refreshed nightly with any updates to ensure it
provides the optimal student or user experience.

The WorldSpace connection together with this CampusAxxess "last mile"
solution for any school, campus, or village truly narrows the digital
divide in an affordable and sustainable way. For more info, contact Dr.
S. Rangarajan, Sr. Vice President of WorldSpace at
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or me.

Regards
Bob


History teaches us that people and nations behave wisely, once they have
exhausted all other alternatives   Abba Eban





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

[Aaron Sundsmo]

Sudhakar Chandra wrote:

> This brings to mind something that the satellite radio outfit WorldSpace
> is doing. The idea is brilliant, in my opinion. You basically buy this
> satellite radio (approx. $70-100 depending on model). You also buy a
> computer card to interface with the radio. For a fee (that includes the
> card free) of approx. $40, you get unmetered limited internet access.
> The access is limited in the sense that you are restricted to a few
> WorldSpace "approved" websites. This would work great if WorldSpace
> expanded the list of approved sites to include those like Yahoo mail and
> Hotmail. Unfortunately, they don't. For most people, getting cheap
> access to a web-based email system like Yahoo mail is a good start.


I have greatly appreciated this thread of the conversation and the
insight that so many of you have given me. I would like to respond to
the mention of WorldSpace technology and to the benefits of being able
to provide some level of information to those who are not soon to
receive the benefits of WiFi, VSAT or new emerging technologies because
of either high cost or government regulation. I work at an organization
called First Voice International , a small NGO
based in Washington, DC, which was given 5% of the WorldSpace satellite
network that covers the entire continent of Africa and much of Asia and
the Pacific. This satellite network is able to broadcast digital radio
and data to small hand held receivers that cost between $70-$150. At
First Voice International, we have used this 5% capacity to develop a
24-hour audio service called the Africa Learning Channel, which deals
with pan-African issues such as HIV/AIDS, poverty alleviation, youth
leadership, gender issues, food security and others. First Voice also
has a data service that allows one to connect their digital radio to a
PC or laptop using a $90 adapter anywhere under the footprint to
download content at 64kbps. First Voice then partners with NGOs, CBOs,
government agencies and community radio stations who can use this
equipment and content to impact the maximum number of people through
organized listening groups, informing intermediary service providers or
through rebroadcast on one of the 194 partner community radio stations
in Africa.

This is not a two-way system and one cannot send emails, but what First
Voice has done is to partner with organizations that have relevant
web-based content that they currently cannot get to remote users because
of lack of or the high cost of connectivity. One example of how this
system has had actual impact on the ground throughout Africa is the
RANET Project. This project, honored at the WSSD last year, is an
international collaboration funded by USAID-OFDA and is partnering with
US NOAA and African Meteorological Agencies continent wide and is now
expanding into Asia and the Pacific. The RANET Project was designed to
make weather, climate, and related environmental information more
accessible to remote and resource poor populations. Initially, this was
attempted through the Internet, but it soon became clear that sending
digital images, animation and other memory intensive files simply was
not possible even to capital city offices, not to mention more remote
extension workers. Now through a partnership with First Voice
International the RANET Project is now sending all of its content on a
reliable, low-cost dedicated line to partners in 35 African countries in
the capital cities, secondary towns and rural areas. Additionally, every
site that has the equipment also receives the content from all of First
Voice's other projects including medical journals articles, agricultural
best practice information, news, community radio support materials and
much more.

I completely agree that there always needs to be a feedback loop built
into any project. What we are currently doing is using a hub and spokes
model where one site has a connection to the Internet (usually dial-up)
and can email feedback, but this has generally been very expensive and
unreliable. Where this is not available, First Voice is also using
telephone, snail mail or face-to-face communications as appropriate. 
However, we are always looking for a low-cost low-bandwidth connection
primarily for email use that can be used in remote areas throughout
Africa and Asia and will not require excessive government licensing. If
anyone has any suggestions of these technologies I would greatly
appreciate it.


Aaron Sundsmo 


-- 
Aaron Sundsmo 
Director 
International Programs 
First Voice International 
(formerly WorldSpace Foundation) 

Tel: 202-861-2261 
Fax: 202-861-6407





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

[Sudhakar Chandra]

On 11/10/03 18:43, Guido Sohne wrote:
> 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!)

This brings to mind something that the satellite radio outfit WorldSpace 
is doing. The idea is brilliant, in my opinion. You basically buy this 
satellite radio (approx. $70-100 depending on model). You also buy a 
computer card to interface with the radio. For a fee (that includes the 
card free) of approx. $40, you get unmetered limited internet access. 
The access is limited in the sense that you are restricted to a few 
WorldSpace "approved" websites. This would work great if WorldSpace 
expanded the list of approved sites to include those like Yahoo mail and 
Hotmail. Unfortunately, they don't. For most people, getting cheap 
access to a web-based email system like Yahoo mail is a good start.

Thaths
-- 
Slacker At Largehttp://openscroll.org/
Key fingerprint = 8A 84 2E 67 10 9A 64 03  24 38 B6 AB 1B 6E 8C E4






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

[Jim Forster]

>> * Week 2: How much bandwidth is necessary to have a real impact on
>>development... and why?

First of all, I admit to having no first-hand, real-life, in the field
experience in non-US environments, but perhaps I can extrapolate from
experiences with our local school district.  Originally we networked it
with 64kbps ISDN circuits for each school.  That easily supported
schools with 50-100 PCs.  Of course, the PC's weren't in constant use
and when they were used sometimes they weren't accessing the Internet.


Dipak Basu wrote:
  
> For our target locations we have "standardized" on VSAT links with 64
> kbps uplink/512 kbps downlink. This serves LANs of 10 PCs or less.  For
> smaller 2 to 3 person project sites we are using RBGANs with
> 32kbps/128kbps. These are desired VSAT/RBGAN rates. Our usual
> experience has been 50% to 75% of these numbers based on contention
> ratios.

This looks really good. I don't know the costs of the VSAT service, but
512k/64k seems like pretty good bandwidth -- maybe even more than enough
bandwidth for a village to have great email, pretty good web access, and
even a little bit of VoIP.  The email & web access would benefit quite a
bit by the use a $500-$1000 linux server acting as a local email server
and web cache.

The interesting question to me is: what is the minimum monthly service
fee that a VSAT and ISP provider could charge?  In the US and some other
locations there is a certain amount of satellite-based residential
Internet Access for about $100/month. Could a village economy,
including any central government based services, afford this $100/month?

   -- Jim





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

[Guido Sohne]

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 ...






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

[Guido Sohne]

On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 17:26, Ahmed Isah wrote:

> 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.


On the contrary. He is making some points that people tend to miss a lot
of the time. Internet as Magic Solution to the World's Problems tends to
cloud otherwise good vision.

You essentially describe a case where you are generating demand which
ties in with his point that there is little demand to start with. He is
in effect saying the the real demand is at a more basic level (pumping
more mundane knowledge into people's brains) to which I might venture to
add the possibility that this is what will drive up demand to make the
impact of increased connectivity worth the direct cost (and indirect
cost from non-executed alternatives given a fixed potential amount of
funds).

It's sort of the same as the local content issue. No one seems to know
what to do with technology in certain areas such as so-called 'sub'
Saharan Africa and this results in incomplete ideas, such as just supply
bandwidth and some fuzzy benefit and it will all work out fine.

I guess people are trying to understand how the action will connect to
real benefits especially after having seen decades of failure for
development in general.






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

[Robert Miller]

Hello Thaths and Others:

Thaths wrote regarding the issue of viruses becoming bandwidth consumers
and ultimately undermining the user experience for students, faculty,
and others. While I had discussed the technology behind the solution I
wrote about, it provides a remotely managed server that is monitored
every 15 minutes to ensure it is healthy and all processes are running
properly. It backs itself up each night to protect all of the
information stored on it (email, student and faculty web pages, and a
personal folder for each user to securely save their work). So this is a
more robust solution that just a proxy server - as a matter of fact, its
built-in internal and external firewalls have even withstood the rigours
of student hackers, often the most creative and dangerous!

So, the bottom line is that such solutions are available, affordable,
and secure to ensure that resources continue to be available to all
authorized users, and the user experience continues to be reliable. In
addition, a local Google-like search engine is also built into each
CampusAxxess server and can provide users with the ability to search
this local repository at network speeds and access Internet web sites
that are refreshed nightly to reflect any changes made to the live
Internet version. Reliable access to rich content and applications at
local area network speeds - sounds easy and it is, but is also the
result of a 3 year R&D project that was initially co-funded by the
Canadian Government Internet R&D agency (Canarie) and subsequently
launched by the developer, Advanced Interactive, for the international
marketplace.

If you would like more information, please contact me.

Regards
Bob

Robert Miller
EVP Global Inc.
Direct:   (416) 423-9100
Mobile:  (416) 464-7525
Fax:  (416) 696-9734
Email:   [EMAIL PROTECTED] 


History teaches us that people and nations behave wisely, once they have
exhausted all other alternatives   Abba Eban






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

[Sudhakar Chandra]

Hello Robert and others,

On 11/05/03 09:14, Robert Miller wrote:
> With regard to Ahmed's note and the great work he is doing by bringing
> Internet literacy to the students in his university in Nigeria, what if
> you could connect one Campus Content server to that Internet connection
> and locally store many times the content in the US Library of Congress?
> What if this provided simultaneous access for several hundred users on
> campus?

That is a great idea. When I connected a small college in Kenya to the
internet via a 64K VSAT connection, I installed a cacheing transparent
proxy server. The first time someone downloaded something, the content
would be fetched from the server and stored in the proxy server. For
all subsequent downloads, the content would be sent to the local
requestor's browser from the cache and not from the server. This vastly
improved performance and download speeds. Another advantage of using
proxy servers is that the administrator can set up access lists and
access times. So, for example, an administrator can configure the proxy
such that when a class is in progress, the students would only be able
to access the prescribed materials and nothing else.

A week after I connected my college, I discovered that the network usage
was inordinately high. Looking at the logs I saw too many connections
going to Brazil! It was a worm that had infected the lab computers. The
network usage was taking up precious bandwidth from legitimate packets.
I wrote a two line rule in the proxy server to drop all requests going
to the Brazilian site and the network utilization dropped dramatically.

Thaths
-- 
Slacker At Largehttp://openscroll.org/
Key fingerprint = 8A 84 2E 67 10 9A 64 03  24 38 B6 AB 1B 6E 8C E4






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

[Jim Forster]

Sorry for the late post...hope it's not too late for this subject.

I'm Jim Forster, an engineer with cisco Systems.  I thought I'd describe
a small effort in Nepal that I'm helping.

-- Jim

 
> 1. What activities are endeavoring to bring connectivity to under-served
> communities?

Dave Hughes, a long-time advocate of unlicensed wireless for rural
connectivity, as been in Nepal helping Tsering Sherpa set up 802.11 for
the main Sherpa village of Namche.  Namche apparently gets a fair amount
of tourist and Mt. Everest climber money, but their telephony service
was cut off when the Maoists blew up the government-owned telephone
relay tower. Last year Tsering set up a small PBX and supplied voice
service to some lodges, and Internet service to some Internet café's in
Namche.  Last week Tsering and Dave Hughes setup 3 802.11 radios to
provide 802.11 service to all of Namche, and via relay to the SPCC
National Park HQ.  They had planned to provide relay service to a nearby
school but will need another radio for that service.  When that happens
the students will receive English lessons from a Sherpa in Colorado,
using VoIP over Internet the whole way -- no PSTN whatsoever.  See
 for the original idea,
and  for
pictures of the project underway.


> 2. What are the goals of these efforts? To what extent are the goals
> attained?

Enable English language lessons and increased educational opportunities
through Internet and VoIP.  Preserve Sherpa culture by enabling those
that must leave to find work to remain in contact with their families
and village.  Enable the whole village to economically share one VSAT
connection. Demonstrate to to the world, through the visiblity that
Sherpas have due to Everest, that Internet connectivity is feasible
anywhere and economical in many places.


> 3. Who is being served by these connectivity efforts? Are the benefits
> widely distributed? Do some groups "win" and some "lose" in these
> connectivity efforts?
 
> 4. How do connectivity efforts seek to ensure that all groups benefit?

802.11 coverage of the entire village lowers the barriers.







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

[Robert Miller]

Hello All,

With regard to Ahmed's note and the great work he is doing by bringing
Internet literacy to the students in his university in Nigeria, what if
you could connect one Campus Content server to that Internet connection
and locally store many times the content in the US Library of Congress?
What if this provided simultaneous access for several hundred users on
campus?

And what if simple low-tech Pentium II that supported Netscape or
Internet Explorer were all that was required to access this Internet
content, as well as, a myriad of rich content including e-Books,
e-Learning courses, video and multimedia resources? etc. were also
available to any student on campus, wirelessly could be refurbished
Pentium II-class PC's that support either Netscape or Internet Explorer?

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.

And, when the contagious enthusiasm of turned-on Internet- savvy
students demonstrate the power of technology-assisted teaching and
learning to the faculty and those in the university's administration, it
empowers a paradigm shift in thinking for this University. In addition,
this reliable, remotely-managed Campus- wide approach can also include
partnerships with international universities (from Canada and US) that
currently offer world- class virtual degree and diploma programs to
students on their local campus.

This is an exciting time as affordable, sustainable, repeatable
capabilities such as those described above can bring together
world-class computing, global connectivity, content, training, teacher
professional development, and virtual support in under- served and
developing regions. And, as a result, the digital divide is narrowing
with increasing opportunities for literate and articulate people from
anywhere in the world to compete for a new breed of "virtual jobs" in
the emerging global information society workforce.

Regards
Bob

Robert Miller
EVP Global Inc.
Direct:   (416) 423-9100
Mobile:  (416) 464-7525
Fax:  (416) 696-9734
Email:   [EMAIL PROTECTED] 


History teaches us that people and nations behave wisely, once they have
exhausted all other alternatives   Abba Eban



Ahmed Isah wrote:

> ...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.





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

[Cornelio Hopmann]

Dear GKD Colleagues,

Jean-Marie Blanchard wrote:

> Main barriers to Internet penetration are identified as: lack of Telecom
> infrastructure, limitation of population income, not adequate enough
> content and applications, lack of local expertise and population
> awarenessAlcatel is participating in a lot of field experiments, all
> demonstrating that most of these limiting issues could be fixed,
> provided a relevant approach is followed. For example, funding of
> network infrastructure construction is quite solved when project
> profitability is proven thanks to offering useful end-user services with
> high local added value; so, it becomes possible to attract potential
> investors; moreover, Internet illiterates and lowest income people could
> afford connectivity thanks to community centers. So, universal access to
> Internet can be no more a dream!

My apologies but this is a circular argumentation.

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. (Unless
there is some strange conviction close to secular religion as if
Internet penetration as such constitutes something desirable - despite
that it's apparently of no valuable use).

Please don't misunderstand me: I was an Internet-pioneer already en
1988, long before the Internet-hype started and I'm still almost
fulltime engaged in promoting appropriate use of Internet in a
not-so-developed country, Nicaragua. Yet I would insist that -- as in
any market -- the starting point should be real needs (i.e. things that
can be better solved or addressed using among other
Internet-technologies). "Better" includes more efficiency - economically
- but by no means is limited to more efficiency. 


> In Saint-Louis (Senegal), one pediatrician serves more than ten thousand
> children. Here, the experimental project uses the Internet as a bridge
> between the patients (a group of one thousand infants) and the doctor.
> 
> The weight of a child can be considered a key health indicator. It is
> measured twice a week by "weight collectors", local women equipped with
> scales to weigh babies and a laptop computer to collect data. The
> measurements are then uploaded to the pediatrician's database via the
> Internet. Within five minutes, the doctor is able to detect which
> children have odd weight curves and require further attention. When that
> happens, he sends an e-mail to the weight collector, who in turn informs
> the family that the baby needs medical attention.


Just counter-productive examples: your Tele-doctor is counter-productive
for Public Health Education because instead of providing the local
weighers with pen and each parent with a chart where they jointly put
the weight-measure and compare it against standard-curves - and by doing
this increase Health Awareness not only for the parents - you just
electronify the very old fashioned "wise man", who - only God knows how
- is capable to predict which child is going to fall ill and which not.
And as the poor and illiterate paid the "wise man" a couple of thousand
years ago when he "predicted" seasons and eclipses, they now pay for
health-predictions ... where in both cases if they were not kept
ignorant they wouldn't pay a cent.


Yours,

Cornelio




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

[Sudhakar Chandra]

Dear GKD Members,

I got back from Kenya after serving there as a VSO [1] volunteer for a
year. I was teaching IT in a womens college in a rural place called
Tala. I also trained the staff on the more advanced subjects of the
curriculum.

First, let me talk about the state of connectivity in the country.

Connectivity in Kenya is pretty decent in the cities (Nairobi, Mombasa,
Kisumu and Nakuru). Literacy in the country is pretty high.  Many of
the younger people in the 15-35 age group are becoming increasingly
netsavvy in the cities. They browse the web in one of the numerous
internet browsing centres and have a hotmail or yahoo mail account.
Prices are competitive and range in the cities betwen 1 Kenyan Shilling
to 5 Kenyan Shillings per minute (1 US$ =~ 70 KSh).

ISPs charge somewhere in the range of 8000 KSh / year for unlimited
activity.  On top of this, dial-up users must pay applicable per-minute
telcom charges.

Even though there are many ISPs in the country and competition between
them is fierce, there are two problems:

1. All traffic has to flow in and out of the country through the Kenya
Telecom monopoly owned JamboNet [2].  This creates a single point of
failure and a bottleneck.

2. Only the bigger cities have local access / dial-up numbers.  If
someone is in not in one of these cities, they have to make a long
distance / trunk call.  The telcome per-minute charges on these vary
depending on how far from a POP the user is.

WAP is available on one (KenCell) of the two mobile phone providers.
But, I have not seen it being used in the circles I moved in.

There is a US AID funded effort to connect colleges and universities
[3].

Now, let me answer the specific questions

> 1. What activities are endeavoring to bring connectivity to
> under-served communities?

I am not sure what other organized activities are being carried out in
the country.  I am aware of two - One that I worked on and another of
similar scope [4].  In my case, we got a subsidized 64k VSAT connection
through UUNet.  In addition to this connection being used by the
students of the college, we also created a internet browsing center on
campus for people from the community to use at a nominal fee.  This
enables the college to raise at least part of the cost of the internet
connection.  We also have a plan to set up a local wireless network to
share the bandwidth with the surrounding community.  There are many
formal and vocational schools in the surrounding community that have
expressed interest in this service.

> 2. What are the goals of these efforts? To what extent are the goals 
> attained?

The goal of this effort was to provide access to the relatively
marginalized community of Tala.  There is no connectivity in a
50-kilometer radius around this community.  Part of the goal is income
generation for the college as well as people using the wireless network.

The lack of wireless networking equipment in Kenya hindered the
achievement of the wireless network.  At the moment I am working with
another volunteer who is going to be going to Kenya in 2004.  I intend
to procude the equipment in the US and send it through the volunteer.

> 3. Who is being served by these connectivity efforts? Are the benefits
> widely distributed? Do some groups "win" and some "lose" in these
> connectivity efforts?

I believe that the effort benefits the community widely.  The students
get connectivity, the community piggy backs on the connection at a
nominal fee.  It, in fact, spurs business because a privately run
cybercafe business can make quite a bit of money by using the wireless
network bandwidth to provide internet access at a fee.

> 4. How do connectivity efforts seek to ensure that all groups benefit?

We involved the local town council, schools, parish and businesses early
in our efforts.

> 5. What are the costs and constraints these connectivity efforts face?

A VSAT connection is prohibively expensive.  Such projects can't work
till it reaches a critical mass of people willing to work together and
share costs in getting connected.

Thaths

[1] http://www.vso.org.uk/
[2] http://www.telkom.co.ke/jambonetcontent1.htm
[3] http://www.kenet.org/
[4] Chinni Tu
-- 
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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Bringing Connectivity to Under-Served Communities

[Gary Garriott]

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).

Gary Garriott
ICT for Development Advisor
Panama SURF - UNDP
PO Box 6314, Zone 5
Panama City, Panama
Tel. 507 265 8168/8153
Fax  507 265 8445 

+ 

Rural ICT Infrastructure is the Forgotten Frontier 


The Position 

In the rush to jump on the ICT bandwagon, the attention of all donors
and implementing agencies tends toward increasingly sophisticated and
networked health, education and governance applications in urban areas
where the latest hardware, reliable connectivity and available bandwidth
are taken for granted. Forgotten are the hundreds of millions of people
living in poverty and extreme poverty in rural and isolated regions
where fundamental physical infrastructure including the provision of
electrical energy is nonexistent. Except for one-off pilot projects that
tend to be special cases of donor interest and resources (and recognized
for their obvious public relations value), rural-based infrastructure is
seen as passé and uninteresting. UNDP and other agencies that invest in
poverty-reduction strategies should look more closely at implementing
strategic rural access and connectivity programmes.


The Context 

Most bilateral and multilateral aid agencies have limited their
activities on behalf of rural ICT infrastructure to assisting host
governments in writing universal service and access policies to be
implemented by the private sector winners of telecommunications
privatization processes. And yet the common experience worldwide is that
once a private franchise or concession has been awarded, the promises
made to extend service to rural areas are gradually forgotten as the
difficulties of installing and maintaining unprofitable rural
infrastructure mount.  A significant back-sliding in rural ICT
infrastructure is thus occurring as privatization proceeds.


The Need 

Reliable access to information may be just as critical in isolated rural
areas as in urban centers. The basic need to communicate with family,
friends and associates is fundamental, but so is the acquisition of
crucial health, agricultural and market information, not to mention
ready access to education and training resources. However, rural needs
are more easily satisfied with basic infrastructure supporting email and
file transfer rather than more sophisticated web-based technology and
applications. Very few policy-makers are aware that a range of
relatively inexpensive intermediate or appropriate technology solutions
exist to support lower end uses, such as email. Legitimate information
needs can be immediately met with simpler technologies while demand and
an information culture are built up to justify the same infrastructure
being enjoyed by urban areas with greater population density and
disposable income.


The Evidence 

The proliferation of UNDP-supported PFNet email stations using packet
radio technology in the Solomon Islands as a way to enhance the
effect

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

[Jean-Marie Blanchard]

Universal Access to Internet: Dream or Reality?

Connectivity is a key challenge for developing countries. Until
recently, the only question was how to provide quality phone services at
affordable costs throughout the entire country. In the coming years, we
will have to address in addition, the question of how to offer fully
relevant Internet services, to support development of local activities.


How to remove the main barriers to Internet diffusion?

Main barriers to Internet penetration are identified as: lack of Telecom
infrastructure, limitation of population income, not adequate enough
content and applications, lack of local expertise and population
awarenessAlcatel is participating in a lot of field experiments, all
demonstrating that most of these limiting issues could be fixed,
provided a relevant approach is followed. For example, funding of
network infrastructure construction is quite solved when project
profitability is proven thanks to offering useful end-user services with
high local added value; so, it becomes possible to attract potential
investors; moreover, Internet illiterates and lowest income people could
afford connectivity thanks to community centers. So, universal access to
Internet can be no more a dream!


Usage is the key enabler!

Real Internet diffusion on a large scale will only happen in developing
world, if "usage" is not a mere duplication of those existing in
industrialized countries; if not, Internet will only address a small
part of the population corresponding to large business corporations and
people with the highest standard of life and education skill. As soon as
relevant Internet services and applications are offered to address
specific local needs and daily concerns of potential end-users through
an innovative way of using Internet, then revenue will be locally
generated securing return on investment and making the project fully
sustainable:

More usage --> more traffic & revenue --> more investment capability.

So, Internet usage has to be reinvented to comply with specific needs of
developing countries!


Internet, as a public utility?

Internet represents for developing countries an efficient way to
contribute to offset their endemic deficiency in basic infrastructures
of health, education, agriculture, transport, industry, logistics or
services. A development model is so proposed showing how ICTs could
initiate and sustain "virtuous circles" of economic, social and
political development, and consequently fight poverty.
  

Pending Pilot Projects

* A virtual market place in Dakar, Senegal - Internet payback for
information supply

As in many areas in developing countries, market places are not
transparent enough in Dakar region: high price fluctuation in very short
time, artificial shortages and speculation

An enriching experience is that of Manobi  in Senegal
proposing a professional tool to all actors of the value chain in order
to manage food prices in real time. Thanks to its Internet platform,
Manobi offers marketing and supply assistance services for small
producers, fishermen, wholesalers and carriers; for example, a "virtual"
market place has been set up for the fruit and vegetable sector.

Collectors note the prices of various products on the town markets and
supply the information to a data base that the sector's professionals
consult, from wherever they are, using WAP mobile phones. All the people
involved can then refer to this information to negotiate sales in a far
more open fashion, which leads to a better distribution of the profit
margin between middlemen and producers.

This experiment clearly shows the wide set of benefits for local economy
and food security management; not only small producers are benefitting:
the cost of the service is quickly paid back by the increase of
operational margins and there is no more waste of foods.


* The cyber-pediatrician in Saint-Louis, Senegal - health care using
Internet

In Saint-Louis, one pediatrician serves more than ten thousand children.
Here, the experimental project uses the Internet as a bridge between the
patients (a group of one thousand infants) and the doctor.

The weight of a child can be considered a key health indicator. It is
measured twice a week by "weight collectors", local women equipped with
scales to weigh babies and a laptop computer to collect data. The
measurements are then uploaded to the pediatrician's database via the
Internet. Within five minutes, the doctor is able to detect which
children have odd weight curves and require further attention. When that
happens, he sends an e-mail to the weight collector, who in turn informs
the family that the baby needs medical attention.

This pilot project, led by Afrique Initiatives
, shows how the Internet can help leverage
very scarce healthcare resources to benefit the general population. In
this example, families pay a small fee to access the service, and today
the waiting list is already very long. It is proof that people a

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

[Don Osborn]

Dear GKD Members,

Pertinent to our current discussion is the following article, forwarded
from the Togo-L list, which delineates the problems as seen from an
African perspective.

Don Osborn

**

Africa Takes On the Digital Divide

Africa Recovery (New York)
ANALYSIS
October 23, 2003

By Gumisai Mutume
New York

New information technologies change the lives of those in reach

Across Africa, new information technologies are rapidly changing the
lives of a small but growing number of people. In rural Togo a farmer
gets real-time information on market prices in the capital, Lomé,
through a cellular phone. In Accra, Ghana, entrepreneurs who in the past
were not able to get a dial tone on their land-line telephones can now
connect immediately using Internet telephony, technology that allows
phone calls to be made through the Internet. And in Niger, the Bankilare
Community Information Centre downloads audio programmes from the African
Learning Channel and rebroadcasts them on local radio.

So far, these are some of the few, fortunate Africans. For most people
even making a telephone call is still a remote possibility in an era
when most of the world is now communicating almost instantly across
cities, regions and the globe using wireless and satellite technologies
to send high-speed electronic messages.

Africa has the fewest telephone lines, radios, television sets,
computers and Internet users of any part of the world. These tools, used
to package and transmit information and knowledge, are broadly referred
to as information and communications technologies (ICTs). The gap
between those with access to ICTs and those without is generally
referred to as the "digital divide." It is most extreme in Africa, where
in 2001, out of 800 million people, only 1 in 4 had a radio, 1 in 13 a
television set, 1 in 40 a telephone and 1 out of 130 a computer. The
divide widens in Africa's countryside, where a lack of roads, telephone
lines and electricity separates the rural majority from their urban
counterparts.

Bridging the digital divide

"The digital gap brings with it a danger of isolating certain peoples,
those in Africa in particular," says Senegalese President Abdoulaye
Wade.

"It is paradoxical and ironic that the continent which invented writing
 . . [is] excluded from universal knowledge." In December, President
Wade will be popularizing his "digital solidarity" programme at the
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to be held in Geneva,
Switzerland. Under the programme, technologically advanced nations would
commit to assisting poorer ones. A country can express solidarity, for
example, by signing onto a digital charter committing itself to "a
specified, quantified action for the benefit of countries where the rate
[of Internet access] is lower than a given level," explains President
Wade. A digital solidarity fund should be set up to pay for ICT projects
in poor countries, he says, financed by "raising large amounts of money
collected painlessly because the contributions are so small." Levies of
one US cent could be charged on every international call or one dollar
on the purchase of each personal computer or software package.

African leaders looking for ways to bridge the digital divide between
their region and the rest of the world see the WSIS as an opportunity to
obtain international commitments to extend information and
communications technologies to the majority of their people. The summit
is expected to adopt a plan of action to close the gap between the
"haves" and "have nots" of information technology. At its summit in
July, the African Union passed a resolution stressing the "importance of
the information society on economic, socio-political and cultural
development and the strategic objectives of developing countries." The
second part of WSIS will be held from 16-18 November 2005, in Tunisia,
which first proposed holding the meeting to promote the use of ICTs to
overcome poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals agreed to
by world leaders in 2000.

Extending the arm of technology

Low bandwidth (the amount of data transmitted through a communications
line) and expensive call charges characterize most of Africa's
telecommunications facilities. An analysis of Internet use can give a
representative picture of the ICT situation in Africa, says Mr. Mike
Jensen, an independent ICT consultant based in South Africa, since
connecting to the Internet involves different individual ICT components
such as computers, telephones and satellites.

By mid 2002, 1.7 million Africans had dial-up Internet services, 1.2
million of them in South Africa and North Africa alone. Assuming that
three-to-five people use each Internet-connected computer, notes Mr.
Jensen, it is possible that 5-8 million Africans have access to the
Internet. In sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa), there are some
1.5-2.5 million users - one in every 250-400 people, compared to 1 in 15
peopl

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

[Leo D. Waters]

My name is Leo Waters, from Nigeria. I recently included myself in the
GKD subscription list. I would just like to say 'welcome' to all, and
that I am very humbled by the level of information I have just began to
read about your involvement in overall IT use-growth in under-served
communities of the globe. I appreciate your knowledge and committment. I
am looking forward to what I will also contribute to this high-value
global development, starting with my own local community in Nigeria.

Since a couple of years ago, I have been providing several-hours-a-day
of non-profit computer training to lecturers and students of
universitites and secondary schools in Benin City. I have been juggling
this responsibility with my professional activities (ICT Consultant).

Please, how may I be of direct help?


Leo Waters



Best regards & God bless, 

Leo D. Waters
Cell: +234.802.338.1628
Tel/Fax: +234.052.251022 or 251084




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

[Edward Addo-Dankwa]

The E-Commerce for Non-Traditional Exports Project being implemented by
the Ministry of Food & Agriculture, Ghana, and supported by the
International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) seeks
to:

"provide efficient promotion and increased market transparency to
improve the negotiation position for small and medium scaled producers
and exporters/traders of non-traditional exports in the local and
international markets by the bringing together of the supply of and
demand for critical marketing information at the local level".

Ultimately, the project aims at enhancing the standard of living of
small and medium scaled producers and traders in rural areas in Ghana.

In practice, the project aims at providing Internet-based (or
alternative) marketing information services to small producers and
traders/exporters of Ghanaian non-traditional export products. Apart
from providing information, producers and traders can promote their
products via the web-based information system. On longer term, the
information system will develop into a market place for supply and
demand of products. The system will as such provide better access to
export markets. In addition it will function as a market place for the
national market.

In meeting the set out aims above, one of the main activities of the
project was to set up what is call "District Agricultural Information
Centres (DAIC) in the districts.  These centres are the information
access points for the producers and traders/exporters.  Connectivity has
been the main challenge for this project, considering the fact that
infrastructure in general is limited to the major cities in the country.

Computers with mostly dial-up internet connections have been set up in
most of these centers.  Although the dial-up is slow and expensive,
considering the fact that users have to make a trunk call to the capital
city, it is the cheapest connectivity so far.

Some areas are without telephone facilities at all. In these cases, the
project is experimenting with some radio equipment that is able to
transfer a telephone link from a range of up to 100km and can carry data
at speeds up to 32 kbps. The other altenative being used is to send the
information on CD ROMS to these centres.

Recently (Sept. 2003), the District Assembly (DA) in one of the
districts (Twifo Heman Lower Denkyira District Assembly) in the Central
Region has put up a VSAT for internet and voice telephony for mostly the
government departments in the district. This is a breakthrough that will
be replicated at other districts if it works well. The major problem
being considered here is the ability of the DA to pay for the recurrent
costs (which are quite high in our part of the world).

The main people expected to use this system are the few schools in the
area, a couple of Banks and some agro-based industries in the district.
These are expected to contribute to the payment of the recurrent costs.
It is expected that if this cost issue is worked out well, it will
greatly open up the district because information, which is the
life-blood for development, will be available to all.





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

[Robert Miller]

Dear GKD Colleagues:

I am following up on the series of emails that have gone back and forth
on this topic. I am a consultant who spent 19 years with HP prior to
taking early retirement last year. My last role was National Business
Development Manager for Education and Healthcare and I was engaged to
find the next disruptive technology that could change how
technology-assisted teaching, learning, and wellness could be
sustainably delivered in developed and developing countries.

Advanced Interactive, a Vancouver-Canada R&D organization, had partnered
with Canarie, the Canadian Government Internet R&D agency in 2000 to
develop a solution for providing high speed access to Internet resources
in schools, even when there was only a slow dial-up modem connection
from the school to the Internet. The outcome was the commercialization
of this distributed and remotely managed technology, which has evolved
and brings financially self-sustainable connectivity to under-served
communities, including those lacking electrical or communications
infrastructure.

I have 2 White Papers which will provide a comprehensive view of how
they have addressed this challenge. This is currently installed in
remote Aboriginal communities in Canada, in Uganda, Ghana, and soon in
Senegal. It will also be used as the secure delivery vehicle by several
Canadian Universities establishing bi-lateral campuses - one is rolling
out with 12 Universities in China and the other 40 Universities in
India. The curriculum provided by the Canadian University and a US
College is monitored and managed constantly, refreshed nightly, and all
student information is available at all times in any school that student
touches.

For more information or to discuss in more detail, please contact me. I
look forward to your response.

Regards
Bob

Robert Miller
EVP Global Inc.
Direct:   (416) 423-9100
Mobile:  (416) 464-7525
Fax:  (416) 696-9734
Email:   [EMAIL PROTECTED] 

"enabling virtual projects that narrow the digital divide"




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

[Shelagh Bocoum]

Mauritania, West Africa has fairly good internet access in regional
capitals. It costs less than $1/hour in most cases. Smaller towns
often don't have electricity, so that's another battle.

Peace Corps volunteers such as myself are involved in helping
Mauritanians acquire computer skills.

It will take a while for most Mauritanians to get to the stage of using
computers and the internet, but this is partly a simple problem of
literacy. That is, they can't read, so they can't make the most of the
internet. Granted, there is a lot of potential for using computers for
literacy training.

I'm finishing up with the Peace Corps in December and am looking for a
job, if anyone knows of anything. I'd prefer to stay in Africa, but am
willing to work on the east coast of the U.S. as well.  Please email me
if you would like me to send you my resume. Thanks.



Shelagh Bocoum




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

[Vicente Marasigan]

Peter Burgess wrote:

> There can be activities to bring connectivity to the underserved, but it
> will never be done with the organizational and funding framework that
> dominates development space today. The technology is available. The
> people are available. But the business model and value chain being used
> does not optimize what is available and use it to support development,
> but organizes to reward investors and corporate management OR government
> and the repayment of WB/IMF debt.
> 
> The big corporate world has actually created a connectivity monster ...
> with $zillions of investment that now is unbelievably surplus to their
> needs and obsolete as well. To some extent we have a replay of the AT&T
> fiasco of the early 1980s when they suffered from an earlier version of
> the corporate obsolescence crisis.
> 
> If anyone wants to invest in solutions that use best technology and can
> deliver affordable connectivity in the SOUTH, I would like to hear from
> them.

Peter Burgess is right in zeroing in on the connectivity monster created
by the big corporate world, the "business model and value chain being
used". The globalization being promoted in the North marginalizes the
South by binding it with huge NON-PERFORMING LOANS that are
self-perpetuating and exponentially growing. The overall solution is to
convert those NPLs into investments in a technology that achieves
macrodynamic equilibrium between North and South. The North has a huge
surplus of producer goods and services (e.g. country-wide chains of
giant factories for producing hardware and software and giant
laboratories for research into innovative techniques). The South has a
huge deficit of consumer goods and services in that they are
UNDER-SERVED in connectivity (and in everything else needed for
survival). The South will not prioritize connectivity if they have prior
concerns for survival.

The overall solution has already been discussed here on GKD as early as
April 16, 1997 and for the succeeding 36 months. In 1999, it has already
been published as a book entitled "Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in
Circulation Analysis" by B. Lonergan. My point now is that the best
technology that "can deliver affordable connectivity in the South" can
be deduced with precision from this MD-ECA.  (A review article entitled
"Macroeconomic Dynamics and the Work of Nations: Lonergan and Reich on
the Global Economy", by Paul Hoyt-O'Connor, appears on pages 111-131 of
"Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies" Vol 17 No. 2 for the Fall of
1999.)

This is in reply to the request for a solution from Peter Burgess.



Vicente Marasigan




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

[Dipak Basu]

The Moderator has asked:

> * Week 1: What activities are bringing connectivity to under-served
>communities? (10/27 - 10/31)

NetHope  has a slightly different model. NetHope is a
consortium of non-profits who work with under-served communities around
the world. NetHope attempts to improve basic community development,
healthcare and relief efforts by connecting case workers who work with
these communities to the Internet and provide them with IP Telephony
services. We have been successful in our endeavors in several difficult
regions of the world in terms of telecom infrastructure, and are in
process of adding 45 countries to the seven we have already addressed
(including Afghanistan, Iraq and Liberia).

> * Week 2: How much bandwidth is necessary to have a real impact on
>development... and why? (11/3 - 11/7)

For our target locations we have "standardized" on VSAT links with 64
kbps uplink/512 kbps downlink. This serves LANs of 10 PCs or less.  For
smaller 2 to 3 person project sites we are using RBGANs with
32kbps/128kbps. These are desired VSAT/RBGAN rates. Our usual
experience has been 50% to 75% of these numbers based on contention
ratios.


Regards
Dipak Basu  
Executive Director, NetHope 
Cisco Systems, Inc
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95070, USA
Direct: +1 408 526 4514
Mobile: +1 408 895 9588
www.nethope.org




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

[Al Hammond]

A resource that describes briefly many such efforts can be found on line
at --our Clearinghouse, with over 900 ICT for
development projects. Quite a few are basic connectivity efforts--both
networks, like n-Logue, EID Parry's Corners, ITC echoupal, etc., as well
as access points like telecenters (we list more than 100).  These
efforts vary widely--see our in-depth case studies of several of them
also posted at that site, and our analysis of telecenters.  In general,
all face high connectivity costs, and some also face regulatory barriers
or opposition from legacy telcoms; virtually all those in our database
seek to foster development.

Most of the telecenters do not have sustainable business models, and
will probably eventually fail. Many of the emerging networks that seem
sustainable target their efforts--eg to rural farmers, in the case of
ITC echoupal. Most use phone-line connectivity or VSAT, but n-Logue is
using wireless links. We believe that emerging wireless technologies
will dominate efforts to provide low-cost connectivity in the coming
years--both MESH networks using WiFi, and larger area networks using
WiMax.

In some areas, newer cellular networks may also compete for basic
connectivity, primarily because they already have a successful business
base, and we have documented a number of instances where cellular
companies are providing singificant social value (Grameen Telecom,
Vodacom Phone Shops).


Allen L. Hammond
Vice President for Innovation & Special Projects
World Resources Institute
10 G Street NE
Washington, DC 20002  USA
V (202) 729- 
F (202) 729-7775
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.wri.org
www.digitaldividend.org





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

[Peter Burgess]

Dear GKD Colleagues,

The first question is : * Week 1: What activities are bringing
connectivity to under-served communities? (10/27 - 10/31)

The bottom line . looking at the question from the point of view of
underserved communities is simply that essentially NO ACTIVITIES ARE
BRINGING CONNECTIVITY TO UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES.

Almost everyone that lives in an underserved community is as lacking in
connectivity today as they were one year ago and five years ago and 10
years ago.

The REAL penetration of connectivity FROM THE VIEW OF THE THE SOUTH is
almost NOTHING.

The sad tragedy is that this is NOT the way it looks from the NORTH.
While a few years ago there were no connectivity projects to visit and
write about, now there are hundreds, maybe thousands. So we get the
IMPRESSION that there has been significant progress. This is B*** S***.
Almost everyone in the poor and hungry world (about 3 billion people at
last count) is as poor and unconnected now as they were before ICT
became fashionable. And will be for the foreseeable future.

There can be activities to bring connectivity to the underserved, but it
will never be done with the organizational and funding framework that
dominates development space today. The technology is available. The
people are available. But the business model and value chain being used
does not optimize what is available and use it to support development,
but organizes to reward investors and corporate management OR
government and the repayment of WB/IMF debt.

The big corporate world has actually created a connectivity monster ...
with $zillions of investment that now is unbelievably surplus to their
needs and obsolete as well. To some extent we have a replay of the AT&T
fiasco of the early 1980s when they suffered from an earlier version of
the corporate obsolescence crisis.

If anyone wants to invest in solutions that use best technology and can
deliver affordable connectivity in the SOUTH, I would like to hear from
them. It is clearly obscene that connectivity costs so much in the
SOUTH when the use of modern technology is so low cost.

I would like to ask the development expert analysts to wake up and do
the numbers. And then change the policy framework and funding
allocations.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess

Peter Burgess
ATCnet in New York
Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805
[EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages




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

[Pamela McLean]

We have been asked to answer five questions, which are repeated below
with replies on behalf of OOCD 2000+

> 1. What activities are endeavoring to bring connectivity to
> under-served communities?

Oke-Ogun Community Development Agenda 2000 Plus (OOCD 2000+) is
endeavouring to bring connectivity to the rural area of Oke-Ogun in Oyo
State Nigeria

> 2. What are the goals of these efforts? To what extent are the goals
> attained?

The main goal is to enable self-help initiatives through better access
to information and communication systems. The founder of the project,
the late Peter Adetunji Oyawale, had a more ambitious vision than we
have yet been able to attain without him, but gradual progress is being
made.

Peter wanted to start by setting up an integrated information system,
with a particular emphasis on inclusion for the illiterate poor.
Illiteracy is a problem. In Oke-Ogun English is the main written
language, but Yoruba is the main spoken language. This means that people
who have not had sufficient primary education to become fluent in
English are illiterate adults. Peter wanted to include community radio
in his information system because, as he would say "We must speak, speak
to people in the language they understand".

Peter also wanted to set up ten Community Digital Information Centres -
one in each of the ten Local Government Areas of Oke-Ogun. The centres
were all to enjoy full connectivity. He saw this all tying in closely
with established community mechanisms for communicating information.
Tragically Peter was killed in Ibadan in December 2000 before he had
time to do much more than interest people in his ideas. However his work
has continued.

Regarding radio - OOCD 2000+ has established a close relationship with a
proposed Community Radio station based in the state capital of Ibadan,
but as the station has been waiting for over a year to be granted a
broadcasting license that part of the project is on  hold.

Work towards establishing Information Centres is having more success.
The first OOCD 2000+ InfoCentre opened in Ago-Are in June 2003. Ago-Are
is the town where Peter was born, and where he is buried, so it is the
natural centre for the project. It is well beyond the reach of the
telephone networks which are limited to large urban centres such as
Ibadan, several hours journey away. Our next goal is to develop the
InfoCentre in Ago-Are into the *coordinating centre* for additional
InfoCentres.

As there is no connectivity in Ago-Are we use a system which has been
described as the "Oke-Ogun information relay". Peter was part of the
brain drain and settled in London. When he was killed he was in the
process of setting up links between his friends and supporters in the UK
(on the connected side of the digital divide) and those in Oke-Ogun (on
the under-served  rural community side of the digital divide). That link
now consists of the InfoCentre in Ago-Are; the road from Ago-Are to
Ibadan; expensive and unreliable public internet services in Ibadan;
emails between Ibadan and the UK; and volunteers in the UK who have
inexpensive Internet access and use their home computers on behalf of
the OOCD team in Oke-Ogun (finding information, making contacts, and
collecting information on CD-Roms to send to OOCD 2000+). This relay
enables the OOCD team and the community it serves to be included in some
of the benefits of connectivity - albeit in an indirect, delayed and
very limited fashion. Now that the InfoCentre is opened and acting as a
focus for information issues, the possibility of opening a VSAT email
bureau is being actively investigated. Meanwhile the relay system
continues.

> 3. Who is being served by these connectivity efforts? Are the benefits
> widely distributed? Do some groups "win" and some "lose" in these
> connectivity efforts?

It is early days to make any judgement. The InfoCentre itself only
opened in June. The information relay developed gradually while the OOCD
team were working together to establish the InfoCentre, and has only
recently begun to serve wider needs.

> 4. How do connectivity efforts seek to ensure that all groups benefit?

Regarding inclusion - the key people locally involved in setting up the
project (VSO volunteer from Kenya, David Mutua; local farmer, Timothy
Oyawale; and Local Government development worker, Amos Adedokun) have
always emphasised comprehensive community involvement. When the centre
opened representatives of many different groups were at the
commissioning ceremony which was performed by the local hereditary
ruler, the Aare of Ago-Are. In August an informal information needs
analysis was undertaken in the town. Meetings have been held with
various special interest groups. The groups (in alphabetical order) are
the Aare of Ago-Are and his chiefs, the Ago-Are community committee,
Distance Education teachers, farmers, health workers, school teachers,
women, and youths. Between them these group cover a wide range of
people, socially, economicall