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The Internet by Motorbike
MrHatken writes "An interesting combination of wireless, wheels, and store-and-forward email: 'In Cambodia, motorbikes act as routers for a store-and-forward email system: The New York Times reports on a system that allow remote villages in Cambodia to send and receive email via Wi-Fi-equipped motorbikes. The Motoman system converges in the provincial capital where a satellite-enabled school uploads and downloads email for the remote recipients. The system is funded in part through U.S. benefactors who aren't just sending money; they're spending time there as well, and helping to improve the quality of medicine and people's livelihoods.'"
It sounds extremely familiar....
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Why stop at WiFi, I'm sure they could use PDAs (simputers) and even iPods (Hell I know I could). Maybe they'll be the first with real WiFi iPods? email generally needs a terminal at both ends.
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
so we can say that the ability of sending and receiving email became one of the things which essentially needed for human life just like proper medicine for example... or at least the benefactors think so...
;-)
Two years or so ago I visited Tami Nadu, a poor state in the south of India... Even in the smallest towns (say, 20 inhabitants which is nothing in India), you would find a place offering dirst-cheap internet acces (typically 2 or 3 computers sharing a 33.6k line). People there had taken to using that instead of phone because it was much, much cheaper! It allowed for exemple parents who had a son or daughter studying or working in an other city to contact him at a fraction of the cost of a phone call. It also allowed farmers to have up-to-date information on market price for their product or to ask for the delivery of fertiliser or spare parts for those who had a truck, or to know when one of their relative living in a city had an opening for a temporary job (at a building site, for exemple). It was amazingly useful - and it was not designed for tourists. Though we were happy to use the places, we were often the only foreigners the guy in charge of the place had had for clients this year. And while it was slow, for text emails a 33.6 line is more than enough. You really wanted to kill spammers there though - downloading 50 spam emails using broadband is annoying, but on a shared 33.6k line it's a real pain
People who reacts to article like that by saying that internet is a luxury are missing the fact that basic internet services like emails or simple websites are in practice often the cheapest way to communicate - you get far more information out of your phone line. And even poor farmers in third-world countries need to communicate, if only to the nearest city. Internet is more than just a greater provider of pr0n and pirated music...
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Romantic as hell, part of the myth of the Old West.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of quarter-inch tapes."
Of course, this is on a slightly smaller scale, but I'm pretty sure that the quote fits.
~UP
Eat the Path.
I spent seven months there last year. It was fun and CHEAP. For instance, rent was $60/month in Sihanoukville (port city on the coast, with beaches, etc.) and included cable TV with HBO etc. Meals are about a buck, for local food, 3-4 dollars for western food. Beers are 50 cents, pack of cigs is about the same. Internet cafes run about 75 cents an hour. Total bills about 400 a month, with rent, food, repairs, gas, beer, weed, cigs, ladies, etc...
:) 20 Women on you in a second saying "Oooh, handsome man" and grabbing you.. $5 goes a looong way here. University girls wanting some extra cash. Go to the ports and the price is much lower I hear.
There are 4 paved highways in the country, creatively named Highway 1,2,3,4.. The rest of the country is dirt roads. Most of the motorcycles are Sanyangs, and Citi's all made from honda plans, in chinese factories. I miss my Sanyang 90. Many people think moped looking things are lame, but they do go for a week on a dollars worth of gas. And they do not break much. There are many places to fix them.. Imagine an Indy 500 pit crew. You pull in, explain what is wrong and six guys with wrenches descend upon your bike.. 20 minutes later a new piston ring is in place.
Bigger bikes are usually dirt bikes. Knobby tires etc. The roads are BAD. During the rainy season (June - Oct) whole roads disappear. Nothing but mud. I loved it! Dirt bikes are a lot of fun, until you have an accident and the nearest hospital is 100km away.. I recommend spending 1500 on a dirt bike. Less than that you will fix it a LOT. All are stolen from japan, and none have a working lock..
Weed is legal to buy, and many bars/restaurants have a jay or two being passed around at all times. Language is not a problem as 30% speak english, and Mandarin/cantonese. All places tourists are at speak GOOD english. Not like Thailand for instance. The people are friendly, IE a huge downpoor and I pulled over, and spent the night at thier place. They scrounged up a mosquito net and a bed, etc.
Food is OK. I like Vietnamese, and Thai a lot better though. Seemed too sweet, and rarely spicy.
sExpats seem to like it a lot, as everything goes, and cheaply. Going into a bar is good for the ego
Beware the expats running bars, etc. All of them are losing money subsizing backpackers from Europe and the scams are rife. Oddly the locals, who are indeed very poor, are quite honest. They will "scam" you by charging an extra 10 cents for a beer, and they love to haggle, but really, the expats are the problem.
Not sure if this makes any sense as I am currently drunk in Xiamen China..
ps. If you lose your job, go to asia. You can live a LONG time on very little money here, and with a VOIP box, you could do phone interviews for 10 cents a minute.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
I spent a month in Cambodia in 2001 and while an scheme like this has some merit its just not what they need.
They have only one real road in the entire country from Sihanoukville (the only port) to Phnom Penh (the capital). People in remote areas have almost no access to medical care unless they are able to make a long (up to 10hrs) journey in the back of a pick-up over the worst tracks you have ever seen.
A better use of the money would have been to fund road building programs, teams of visiting doctors / nurses and mobile clinics.
As a side note if you *had* to get email out to the provices I would have thought expanding the countries mobile phone network coverage (which is already pretty good) would have been cheaper in the long run and no matter how slow the connection would still be faster than waiting for the bike to show.
If you're interested in the type of projects that do work in Cambodia you may like to take a look at http://www.starfishcambodia.org
I'm hoping this website isn't sitting on some guy's motorbike. Please be gentle, folks: we don't want to slashdot a biker.
I'd say that as simple and relatively inexpensive as the scheme sounds, it should certainly be worth at least a try. I'm sure it's a hell of a lot cheaper than the current Rover mission, for all *that* does to directly benefit the third world.
Communication and education are necessary ingredients in the transition to an industrial society. One of those emails could include a whole lesson on some vital skill or area of interest to a young Cambodian child, prepared by a volunteer school system in Paris or New Jersey. A digital photograph of a wound or infection might save that child's life by bringing a surgeon on the *next* motorcycle.
Pollution? Please. I imagine the Cambodians don't have tons of surplus fuel just lying around to burn. The very nature of the situation means that the system will evolve in the least wasteful way possible. Of course a bike pollutes, but I doubt these provinces are Los Angeles....
This is just a start. Think back to when email was exclusively the province of Universities and the occasional large corporation, or when the Web was brand new. The Internet was growing slowly back then because public interest it hadn't reached a critical mass: it just wasn't on the radar screen.
If there are enough emails pouring in and out of a province by motorcycle, all those people may just educate themselves on how to build a repeater station halfway between their village and the next, pool their resources, and now another village has a live Pringle's can connection to the nearest motorcycle-served village...or all the way to Pheom Penh.
Sheesh. If you want to help, instead of whining about mispent money, learn French or Cambodian and *send* a volunteer tech support email by motorcycle to one of these villages. And while you're at it, pull that shitty old 10GB 5400 RPM hard drive out of your closet, partition it for 'em, and have *that* arrive at the village at the same time as your email on how to install it on the local node.
Along with the practical applications of such a system, consider also the following benefits...
School children and teachers will be able to research educational web sites to further their education. Local farmers will be able to communicate with other villages and towns to sell their crops to interested buyers, and vice versa. Villagers that require assistance will be able to order groceries and supplies from other towns that could deliver the goods to the village. Sick people, through the help the village doctor, will be able to explain illnesses to qualified doctors elsewhere around the world for advice, and even attach a picture or movie file of the illness with the email. Teachers will be able to cooperate with other teachers and school boards to encourage children's education and attendance. Also, friends and family can keep in touch no matter how far the distance between them. The potential is endless, and the overall benefits of such a system is going to revolutionize these remote reaches forever.