[Grassroots-l] [IAEP] Village electricity and Internet

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 1:31 AM, Edward Cherlin<echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
> From my daily Google alert on OLPC, two of the essential pieces of the
> Earth Treasury mission. I have been wishing for a way to get these
> services into every accessible refugee camp and region of oppression,
> and here it is. I have called him to discuss how Gnuveau/SolarNetOne
> might collaborate with the profusion of OLPC projects around the
> world.
>


Hi,

For the connectivity aspect, you may also want to look at
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090630005312&newsLang=en
The article describes a device which lets you combine multiple
cellular "broadband" modems together. In countries like India, EDGE
connections are getting cheaper (eg: I pay around 4 USD a month - no
caps on data transfer). Of course, EDGE has not reached everywhere,
but basic GPRS is available even in places like the Sundarbans (the
inhabited portions), and EDGE is spreading fast (this especially true
for the private network operators, who are a bit more expensive than
the govt owned company). CDMA is also spreading fast in India - I
think the Khairat school pilot was being provided connectivity through
a single CDMA modem.

Thanks,
Sayamindu


-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]