Came across this interesting article about a company called United Villages that is facilitating Internet access for remote rural areas in developing nations like India, Cambodia, etc by marrying the concepts of traditional public transport and short range wi-fi. The technology - Setup wi-fi enabled kiosks in villages that can be used for sending email, voicemails, messages,etc. These kiosks can be accessed by villagers by purchasing access cards for a small fee. When a bus, motorcycle that is equipped with wireless antennas (aka Mobile Access Point) passes by in the vicinity of these kiosks, it automatically picks up the data from the kiosks and transmits its to to the Internet through a hub en route.
The vision is great - to bring Internet access to remote areas in developing nations under $1. However this technology seems to have attracted only NGO's and Government organizations so far. Interestingly, the company has its roots in the "2002 $50K MIT Entrepreneurship Competition".
1 comment:
hey.. this sounds like a pretty neat initiative. I wonder how it will catch on tho. The countries being targetted with such technology are too high in corruption levels to actually let the connection be sold completely unmonitored by the provider.
If that were to happen, the sole purpose gets destroyed, with the rich city goers taking full use of it, and the rural areas not getting any access at all.
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