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UN Recommends WiFi for Poor Countries
amerinese writes "UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is now advocating that third-world countries be given funds to implement WiFi technology and 'leapfrog into the future.'"
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Remember AlohaNet? It is all back to square one...
Let's get them food before Internet.
Since these countries don't already have ancient, pre-existing infrastructure, they can roll out wireless faster than if they had a bunch of copper lines to every home.
look at estonia; ten years ago they were communist bloc peasants, now they're the fastest growing tech sector in eastern europe.
How about giving reliable electricity, then computers to poor third world countries first (and also drinkable water and sufficient food, since you're there) ?
...
Not everything in your home country looks as shiny as your UN office Mr. Annan
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It would be much more realistic to establish real industries first and then create an environment that would support an information infrastructure. If an high tech infrasture is put in place before industrial, educational, and commercial infrastructures are put in place then it would essential just go to waste. For example, there is no reason to have IT in Africa when they don't even have a textile industry in place that could benefit from more efficient practices.
Since when is it cheaper to use wireless than to plug in a wire? Price is very important in 3rd world countries, and I don't think they are willing to pay for the luxury of not having to put a cable into the computer.
Besides most laptop come with a wired ethernet adaptor, but not with WiFi. Therefore, a wire-based system makes a lot more sense.
From the article :
Pat Gelsinger, chief technology officer for Intel Corp, the world's biggest computer chip maker, said Wi-Fi was cost-effective, growing rapidly around the world and particularly appropriate for developing nations because it was neither government-regulated nor licensed and was built using industry-wide and worldwide standards.
Read : Pat Gelsinger, CTO for Intel Corp, recently visited Kofi Annan to do a sales pitch that went successfully.
Hey Pat, how about Intel donates some WiFi equipment to third world countries, to jumpstart the market if nothing else ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Why is IT always seen as some sort of miracle fix? Kids aren't learning in schools? Give them all computers to 'learn' on. People are living below the poverty line? Give them WiFi, that'll fix their economy.
What's that big tall white thing? Oh, it's an ivory tower.
As an italian I understand why Italy is severely technologically underdeveloped compared to the US.
:-(
To protect big Telco monopolies and cellphone companies that have invested billions in UMTS licenses, Italy has made laws that make it illegal to use wi-fi for implementing long distance links or to let private persons or small firms becoming a Wireless ISP.
You can become a WISP or do long distance wi-fi between your firm's sites but you need to ask for permission (and there is no assurance that the'll grant it to you) and possibly pay a yearly fee.
When I see communities like Seattle Wireless I'm sad because such things will never be possible in Italy (without a change of the law).
Italy is composed of many rural areas where there will no DSL for years because of the italian telcos unwilling to upgrade switches and equipement because the low return of investment.
Imagine many small towns of a few hundred people where only 5-10% will subscribe. It is economically unviable for the telcos to bring DSL in those places.
With wi-fi and small WISP it would be much easier, use a long distance wi-fi link, a a T1-like leased line or satellite and then give connectivity locally through wi-fi (point to multi-point: omni antenna at the distribution point and yagi/parabolic that the subscriber's home).
There are a couple of small towns where pilot projects where implemented but the actual regulation hinders small businesses of becoming WISPs.
sad sad
any prediction for Italy ?
Should we just ignore the reglations and start to build community networks ?
Just like in the filesharing case: you cannot put millions of citizen in jail.
The 2.4ghz spectrum is unregulated and we want to fully use it (like in the US).
Thoughts ?
I've seen a few "what about food before internet?" posts so thought I'd stick my oar in.
I have a friend involved with a project to provide internet access (WiFi because of the lack of existing infrastructure) and cheap, reliable computers to impoverished rural areas of Asia. My first question was the same as above - is being wired more important than food and other issues?
No, but one can help the other. Currently rural farmers can usually sell their produce to one buyer in the area because of the distances involved and lack of other communications. This gives the buyer a monopoly and they therefore set the prices. The hope is that with an improved communication system farmers can deal with several buyers which gives them a a much better negotiating position. They can also start collaborating on technique.
Add to this the ability to improve health and hygiene education (disease is a major problem in these areas) and you have a situation where technology can facilitate real improvements in the quality of peoples lives.
Now of course this article just looks like some kind of corporate magic trick:-
However leveraging interest / funds / hardware from this to support programmes such as the one above could have a big and worthwhile effect.
Why is everybody here always whining about giving poor countries food first, and then IT and stuff?
I believe in giving them a fishing rod instead of a few fish.
We can give them food. We can even give them means to grow food by. But they'll never be able to afford them for themselves. They stay dependent on foreign help.
The other thing we can do is help them make their own money. For that, the most important thing they need is education, the second is something to sell in this global economy.
The Internet is the best and cheapest way to get to information necessary for an education. Books are too expensive. Also, if they're going to have something to sell apart from bananas, they will need IT infrastructure for it in this day and age.
Getting good connectivity there is very important. There already is a fast cable running along the West African coast (SAT-3) but it's mostly unused since the land network isn't there. If Wi-Fi can help that (should be easier to setup than cable everywhere), great!
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Okay, so you say give them food first, then WiFi or other technology. You are wrong.
First; in many places most people aren't dying of hunger in their status quo. It's a flood, draught, war or whatever that makes people die in numbers. So, get them food all the time? No. Get them food when disaster strikes? Yes.
Second: in many places, the poor people are the ones who have no (profitable) profession. In today's world people can farm food much too efficiently to need everybody on the fields. What do the rest do? Drive rikshaws, play (or are) disabled, make themselves (or their kids) disabled, sell themselves (or others), or beg. There's a huge workforce with no skills in the poor countries. And, even if they had the skills, they usually don't have markets.
Now, tourism is a big player in any poor-and-warm country. To be successful, local guides et cetera will have to speak good english (education!), market their services abroad, do things so that western (or eastern) tourists will want to pay to them. In tourism and other professions innovation will also come in handy.
So, they need education to succeed. How can WLAN help that? Connectivity. In some places they have e-mail but no telephone, or the telephone is a crappy radio something, and the post office doesn't always work reliably or fast. People want to talk to each other. Second; with a somewhat fast WiFi connection, the good teachers (which are few) can teach students going to other schools. Third, the internet is a vast resource of learning material, especially when there aren't many (or good) books. Imagine volunteers teaching from their western living rooms. Or, far-away places reaching potential tourists over the internet. Or, even, people organizing their work or selling their products over the internet.
WiFi is cheaper than cable. I think I paid $2 or something (tourist price) for a 1-litre aluminium can that I turned into an antenna once.. a connector and a piece of rod made it into a nice antenna capable of over 1km. It is used between two villages 1.2km apart in Nepal, in a place where the shortest path (on the ground) between the villages is maybe 5km. WiFi tech is also being used there, to bridge distances of over 40km, with volunteer-made amplifiers.
There was a story about the place I'm talking about here. Also, I've been to the place =).
So, consider the cost and determination needed to ship useful amounts of food against the cost of helping education etc etc. One day, even the third world can count on electric communication nationwide, and that will benefit them a lot.
Let them starve to death while looking at a McDonalds web site... wouldn't that be ironic?
I don't pretend to be a world policy mover and shaker, but whenever we try to implement aid to 3rd world nations some self imposed autocrat always seems to get in the way of any real progress. The food is available its just not distributed. What they need is information, info on how to better maintain crops, where to locate agrarian equipment, and most importantly a collective voice. That is the seed of democracy. That's exactly why we see more and more countries like China trying futiliy to crack down on open internet projects. I'm not saying the model will work for Africa, but its a better bet than the sisyphean task of dumping food.
See topic. 'Nuff said.
Could an italian engineer hack up another kind of packet radio which could be cheaply manufactured in kit form? capture the hobbist movement, and keep the big players out of the loop until its widely installed. Smart Governments would love to be seen supporting local industry.
Don't break the law unless everyone is going to do it at the same time. You are dealing with hardware and any govt worth its salt is going to be able to interdict importers and couriers of physical objects.
then again, that kind of reminds me of that www.mnftiu.cc cartoon where the clip art guy says "You remember the war on drugs? Like how we used to have a drug problem and then they had a war on drugs and now you can't get any drugs anymore? It'll be just like that. Yeah!"
All they've got to do is to figure out how to create ploughs, tractors and medical devices of WiFi base staions and cards.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
WiFi is so cool when you can buy an AK47 for $150 and hand-grenades for $3 in such lovely spots as Congo DRC, Indonesia's lost islands, the WWI memorial frontier between Ethiopia and Eritrea, etc.
The the undeveloping nations of the 3rd world desperately need something much simpler: peace. This is beyond the UN's capacity to deliver, but a firm statement that the weapons trade is an evil that must be abolished would be a great start.
The 3.5 million dead in Congo during the last 5 years is worth something more than a campaign for WiFi, IMHO.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Let's bomb them instead, God is telling me to bomb the poor countries just like he told Bush to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq.
This fscking shit argument of food for third world countries instead of technology is the most ignorant oppressive crap I see consistently being spouted on slashdot (of all places).
/serial killer dictators
.. yours or theirs.
I am (originally) from a "third world" aka developing country. I grew up in the "third world" let me tell you this with authority. THEY DO NOT NEED DONATIONS OF FOOD. What they need is (in order of importance)
a) get rid of corruption
c) roads
b) capital to buy equipment (farming/industry)
c) cheap communications (internet, cell phones) e) free trade so their people can buy technology cheaper
d) reforms in education system (no memorization)
f) health care
g) security
h) Snoop Doggy Dogg
i) food
Donating food is the worst thing you can do to a country (except when there is an actual emergency/disaster)
Also what I hate is people running around claiming the govt. donates so much to the third world and now they dont have jobs/medicare etc. here. That's plain BS. The ultra miniscule drop of your tax that goes to "foreign aid" is not having any effect on any economy
AlohaNet and most of the cellular networks are the future of the third world (and even that of small town America). The cell sites are variable size and shape and can be scaled to meet the current AND FUTURE need just as they are in the first world.
Only the richest places on the planet can even consider copper to the home or small business better yet fiber.
-- Multics
A lot of this food aid being exported there is in the form of propietary grain crops -GM mostly-that very poor farmers will try to plant, and have crop failures then. They will be locked into to the globalist agrimonopolists cycle, and won't be able to save seed year to year, instead being forced to purchase seed, and already they are on subsistance level incomes, having to pay for seed will doom them to perpetual serfdom fpr the most part, even worse than it is now. It's the exact reason the forward-thinkers in those nations are trying to refuse "food" aid even when they desperately need it, they know it's a temporary fix, just like drugs, ie "the first hit is free". There's wheels inside of agendas with *free* "aid".
No offense to developing countries, but most of them would rather have clean water, or no civil wars, than the ability to get wireless access anywhere.
This has little practical value and the UN should be ashamed of promoting something so stupid.
I'm particularly interested in the remarks by Patrick Gelsinger, chief
technology officer of Intel, quote "focused on the catalyzing role
lenient regulatory statutes have played in spurring growth in nations
with advanced wireless infrastructures"
Patrick said, [quote from infoworld article]I think he's absolutely right that a lot of nations governments are
basically not well-educated about Open Spectrum. They see spectrum
still as something that they get cash from licensing. How do we
convince them that they can benefit even more from adopting open
spectrum policy?
His remark "unregulated, unlicensed spectrum" though is bad. Open
Spectrum is NOT unregulated. It is REGULATED to be OPEN. That includes
the very important aspect of power-level restriction and the rule "thou
shalt accept interference from other sources".
Also, I'm very concerned when I hear from government people in the
developing world that the 2.4 GHz band is not Open Spectrum but 'ISM'
which is an old USA-ism. The original ISM didn't allow any telephony to
be done. But that's ancient history. Unfortunately the old language
seems to have somehow propagated itself into the minds of some people
so that they think that ISM and Open Spectrum are the same.
simon
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