Around the Edges

What’s the similarity between my blogging and wireless network access? [Answer at the bottom of this post]

Eric Brewer of the University of California, Berkeley, gave an interesting keynote presentation this morning, discussing wireless technology and a project supporting eye clinics that perform cataract operations in remote locations for approximately $10 per patient. The details will be available elsewhere online. One of the things Eric has done is to stretch the range of wi-fi greatly – currently tested to 60km, but they’re going to test at a range of 280km and there is no reason it shouldn’t work. This would be particularly important in India, where almost all people in the country reside within at least 80km of a network connection point – so if this could be bridged by wireless, it could be a big improvem ent in availability of access.

Today’s panels are focusing on wireless as a component of ICT4D (Information and Communication Technology for Development) and on business models for wireless in communities. The business aspects are particularly interesting to me, of course, because of my business background, but for community wireless to succeed it has to pay its own way – it cannot be provided thru grants and gifts from elsewhere. (Obviously many other factors are also important and are being discussed here.)

Of course the presentations were all very good, but I was particularly struck by Ashish Saboo’s description of the development of communication capabilities in India. Years ago, private phones were rare the the shared public phone, known as a PCO, was the model where a phone was available (like a phone booth in the US) within a few minutes’ walk of any resident. Private phones have grown in popularity, but the shared PCO still plays a large role here. Internet cafes, which generally do not serve coffee, became a way people could afford to use computers because computers cost up to 15 months of family income for many people. So the shared use of a privately-owned but publicly available facility became very important. Pay-as-you-go cellphones have similarly been a big success here, and although phone service is very inexpensive (it is my impression that) many residents may not be able to establish credit or pay large fees on an ongoing basis, so pay-as-you-go is a perfect model. Ashih points out that the appearance of “killer-apps” could help bring the technology further into the field – applications such as voice-over-IP where people can converse thru the Internet without having to read or write or type or even learn to use a computer (to any great extent).

The conference has a broad international base of attendees. More than once there has been a question raised of whether we could have more representation from younger ages and from some specific under-represented countries (and continents, such as Africa). This is a challenge that the group certainly should address – funding for travel would be the specific issue. Holding the meetings in countries which can benefit from the meeting is laudable, but even here in India we don’t quite have the preponderance of attendees from India that I would have wanted – it’s “good attendance” but not a majority.

[Answer to my question: Wireless tends to operate “around the edges” of the existing Internet infrastructure, solving the “last mile” problem; my blogging also operates “around the edges” watching what’s going on outside the main sessions because those are already well-attended and documented.]