Edward,
Would broadband imply a higher ROI? Not necessarily. The margins for
rural service are always tight. Every incremental cost counts, including
the cost of a basic payphone set. Rural ROI is highly dependent on
willingness and ability to pay for services offered. Rural customers are
very
Njideka, This is an interesting initiative and the notion of scanning
handwritten letters is a nice innovation as it permits a more direct
communication of content.
It's not clear from your third point,
3) The youth agents will have a customized form they will use to
document the message(s).
Simon Woodside wrote:
I would say rather that the different technologies that are available
are so different and so randomly effective it's impossible to say that
either low-bandwidth or high-bandwidth is better.
Maybe it is because we are thinking upside down? We should not first
look at the
Vicram Crishna wrote:
Today, villager's messages are being delivered on paper to an Internet
Cafe and then transcribed into email for delivery worldwide by someone
who holds an email account.
This reminds me of my first encounter with the Internet in 1992 when I
visited the Nicholas
I am a Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford and the focus of my work is to
develop a rural messaging service that will give villagers a voice to
the world.
What I am proposing is a youth-led process to help villagers that don't
use computers or the Internet, but want to communicate with their
loved
Sorry for piping up without an intro, but I just returned from Uganda.
There community radio stations offer an email service to rural
listeners. Friends can email you care of the radio station and, at a
designated time, the radio will alert everyone who has received an
email. The charge for
In India, we have the public call offices (PCOs) -- essentially manned
telephone booths where the revenues are shared between the telco and the
PCO operator. There are more than 600,000 of these PCOs across the
country. There are many Community Information Centres where one can
access the Internet
Regarding Tony Roberts' reply to Simon Woodside:
Simon Woodside wrote:
Not only that, but the high cost of a PC or a laptop needs to be
considered. A PC is expensive, whether it's connected to high-bandwidth
or low. So a substantial sum of the total ICT investment isn't going to
change no
Cliff, this is a very interesting line of argument -- if this way of
using the internet through an intermediary is a general practice in
Africa because of the lack of connectivity, it might mean amending some
of the theories of Internet communication from the idea of the Internet
as a many-to-one
Since much of the Internet technology (laptops, telecentres etc) seems
to be landline based, yet it is cellular telephony that is flourishing
in many of the less developed countries, is there a 'disconnect' here
that may be inhibiting the spread of the Internet to rural areas?...I
just came back
Hello,
I'm happy to hear Stuart Gannes' voice on alternative means of
connectivity. Stuart's Digital Vision program has been instrumental in,
among many other activities, promoting the use of store-and-forward
models as a way to deliver information services in advance of reliable
connectivity.
The GKD Moderator has asked:
3. Can information distribution centers (e.g., public access
telecenters) offer a viable economic solution to a community's
information needs, by, in effect, sharing a single high-bandwidth
connection among many users, and thus spreading the cost?
My name is
On Wednesday, November 12, 2003, Pam McLean wrote:
Ben Parker asked about experiences on solar powered VSAT
I don't have time to give details now but can't let the question go by
without brief reference to the Solo. It is designed for rural Africa. I
saw the second generation prototype
My name is Jorge Duran and i work as Senior Technology for Development
Advisor at the InterAmerican Agency for Cooporation and Development of
the Organization of American States in Washington, DC.
The Moderator has asked:
3. Can information distribution centers (e.g., public access
On Monday, November 10, 2003, Ben Parker wrote:
The other major challenge we face in two remote telecentres
UNICEF supports in southern Sudan (at least two days from the nearest
telephone) is the generators. These need lots of fuel and oil and are
prone to breakdown. Regular desktops are much
Simon Woodside wrote:
Not only that, but the high cost of a PC or a laptop needs to be
considered. A PC is expensive, whether it's connected to high-bandwidth
or low. So a substantial sum of the total ICT investment isn't going to
change no matter what the bandwidth plan might be.
I would beg
Ben Parker asked about experiences on solar powered VSAT
I don't have time to give details now but can't let the question go by
without brief reference to the Solo. It is designed for rural Africa. I
saw the second generation prototype during field trials in Oke-Ogun. I
undertand that some
Right, Peter!
You've extended my argument yet another step past the ICT solution
(where I had chosen to end my examples at the border of ICT and non-ICT
solutions), and I entirely agree.
You can still go into markets in much of the developing world and find
someone whose business it is to write
On Friday, November 7, 2003, at 08:26 AM, Cornelio Hopmann wrote:
Hence: if the alternative is to connect many (and through-out the
country) by low-bandwidth or a few with megabyte links, go for the
first. The latter will come -almost by itself- as technology costs fall
and demand increases.
Wire Lunghabo James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
However I would also like to add that many times when we talk of
connectivity, we mean having probably a connection to either the
internet directly or to the telcos etc. Has some one ever thought of
creating a network of villages linked together
Dear All,
I am Meddie Mayanja, working for the World Bank Institute. I wanted to
contribute to the debate in the context of my experience in the ICTs for
Development and my current position.
1. Are high-bandwidth connections necessary, or even important, to
making a real impact on
1. Are high-bandwidth connections necessary, or even important, to
making a real impact on development? Or are the costs and problems
inherent in establishing such connectivity too high -- and unsustainable
-- for underserved areas?
1. High bandwidth: I think enough to do Yahoo! mail or
I would like to throw in my 20 ounces of salt ... and support Pam
McLean.
Stories from my life:
When changing the German National Research Center for Computing in 1985
for the Engineering University of Nicaragua I felt like I was
transported to the moon - dark side. Whereas in Germany I had
My name is Sandra Roberts, I work with a project designed to support ICT
initiatives in the SADC (Southern African Development community) region.
We are represented currently in 12 of the 13 countries in SADC and have
nodal points in Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa.
Recently we conducted
Here is a bandwidth sharing option I have been thinking about. I plan to
deploy this in Indonesia soon. The idea is to get a business, (perhaps a
bank?) that has some bandwidth in a district setting, to share its
bandwidth with a health center through a wireless access point placed
somewhere near
Mark Lediard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Here is a bandwidth sharing option I have been thinking about. I plan to
deploy this in Indonesia soon. The idea is to get a business, (perhaps a
bank?) that has some bandwidth in a district setting, to share its
bandwidth with a health center through a
Mr. James,
Regarding your last question about linking villages via wireless, you
may want to check in with the Jhai Foundation. They have been creating
WiFi networks to link villages with each other and the internet in Laos.
The project website is:
Hi List,
I will attempt to provide my views on the questions posed:
1. Are high-bandwidth connections necessary, or even important, to
making a real impact on development? Or are the costs and problems
inherent in establishing such connectivity too high -- and unsustainable
-- for
Dear GKD Members,
Last week GKD members provided a number of cases that described how
connectivity is being established and used in countries such as Nigeria,
Ghana, Mauritania, Uganda, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Tanzania,
Kenya, Panama, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq, Philippines, Pakistan,
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