Bloglines - Impact of Wireless technologies in Africa

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:::M-Internet360::: Mobile Internet/WiFi business models and technologies

Impact of Wireless technologies in Africa By Jay Gohil on Africa Interesting piece from Timbuktu Chronicles on the impact of wireless technologies on African lifestyles: The advent of wireless technologies in Africa has liberalized access to communication,the ripples of which are impacting areas as diverse as banking, product pricing and medicine. The utmost enablers however will be true modular redundant wireless networks that exclude any dependency on centralised systems as is the case with existing wireless networks. Mesh Networks built on open source platforms with open source hardware will ultimately be part of the puzzle. DIY wireless Broadband as demonstrated by Mike Mckay of Hactivate in Malawi could prove to be critical, the objective"... is to bring bandwidth to Malawi especially its villages. By selling VOIP and relying heavily on Open Source innovations and communities as well as used equipment from Ebay to keep prices low..." Outlining the steps in greater detail, "...Take a bunch of Freifunked WRT54Gs and disperse them around the neighborhood, preferable on rooftops with antennas. Some of these would be connected to VSAT systems and therefore provide a route to the web. Then whoever wants to jump on the mesh, just turns on their machine and connects with normal DHCP to the ad-hoc network supplied by the mesh..."