OER ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES, AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES
and increased attention to this platform. At the moment, attention is focused on high-end users and high prices, but that is likely to change within five years, driven in part by the huge volume of potential users in developing countries. Hence it is important for Hewlett to consider how this platform can serve the needs of education.
A second major trend is the rapid evolution of fixed wireless broadband networks, the Wi-Fi family (802.11), and the newer and longer-range Wi-Max family (802.15). These are spread-spectrum radio technologies very similar to those used in mobile phones, but they are newer, optimized for data rather than voice, with much higher throughput capacity and generally less expensive equipment—in large part because they are based on industry-wide standards that are attracting many manufacturers. They can operate in both licensed and unlicensed (free) parts of the radio spectrum. A still evolving mobile Wi-Max standard may become the 4G technology of choice for mobile carriers. Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) based on these technologies are proliferating in the United States and are about to take off in Europe. But the critical point here is that the low cost of these technologies and their rapid rate of evolution may provide a route to affordable broadband coverage even in rural areas of developing countries.
The model system has a number of components, as follows: Wi-Max-fixed wireless or new generation satellites (designed for IP-based traffic) as backhaul links to reach rural communities; advanced Wi-Fi mesh networks within such communities or to link a group of communities; and, initially, Wi-Fi–enabled phones including multi-mode mobile phones or PC–phone hybrids that provide Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol (VOIP) voice service.[1] New “smart” mesh networks can be deployed without an engineer, can be remotely monitored, draw so little power that they can be solar-powered when needed, and can provide service up to several kilometers from the access point. A significant list of applications, agricultural information, financial services, health alerts, instant translations, and educational services can be delivered via such phones and voice-based systems. This model has already been deployed in rural Mongolia, where it is rapidly being commercialized, and a larger deployment in Vietnam is in the planning stages. (See Next Section.) The central features of the model are: (1) the user interface is a phone, with minimal tech-support or literacy issues; (2) it provides voice service at radically lower cost than any switched network. For calls within a local rural network, which accounts typically for about half the traffic on a local phone system, the cost is essentially zero; for calls to other Internet phones, the cost, like a Skype call, is minimal. Only calls into the switched network need incur significant tolls. And (3) it is a broadband network capable of supporting PCs, advanced mobile phones, or other Internet
- ↑ For more details, see “A New Model for Rural Connectivity,” by Al Hammond and John Paul, posted at www.nextbillion.net.
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