Providing telecenters is certainly charitable. However, one must wonder why the WEF, author of "Sustaining Growth and Bridging the Digital Divides," would digress in choosing such a limited process, based on oldest most costly technology, for enfranchising what becomes a special (elite/empowered) community of interest... and more so when such funds could instead be deployed for an all-inclusive network infrastructure. There are obviously powerful political interests in play, on several levels.
To claim that the collective countries involved do not have access to sufficient resources for a sustainable all-inclusive (universal/low-cost) wireless medium bandwidth network infrastructure, superior to both cable and DSL, is false. As the aforementioned WEF report clearly explained, this African initiative is empowered by political will, but lacks technological and moral justification. Please read the 35-page WEF report before attempting argument. Alan Levy Mexico, D.F. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Timothy Anderson wrote: > At the meeting of the World Economic Forum now taking place in New York > City, the WEF Digital Divide Task Force proposed three WEF initiatives > to be piloted in Ghana. The goal of each is to extend Internet access > for students into remote, rural schools that will not otherwise be > connected for several years. Each seeks to develop and test new > collaborative business models that are sustainable, scalable, and could > be rolled-out to other countries in Africa. The three WEF pilots are: > (1) an ISP experimenting with a business plan placing telecenters in > rural schools to provide students with free Internet access; (2) a team > of Ghanaian NGOs installing used computers in 38 rural schools to > connect them to the Internet; and (3) partnerships between two > universities in Ghana adopting the content adaptation, teacher training, > and computer/network maintenance for their neighboring primary and > secondary schools. ------------ ***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.globalknowledge.org>
