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WiFi Lifeline For Nepal's Farmers
bahree writes "BBC is running a pretty interesting story on how yak farmers in the mountains of Nepal, where there are no phones or other means of communication, are using wireless Internet technology to keep in touch with their families, buy/sell livestock and exchange vetinerary tips."
This is something that ought to be used in more locales than just Nepal - imagine how this can be put to good use in any underdeveloped nation. Solar-powered WiFi networks and computers, teaching reading and math, and even more advanced topics. Using freely downloaded and distributed learning materials, or learning materials created by teachers.
--I am Sun Tzu of the Borg. Resistance is feudal.
First India, and now Nepal....makes us Americans feel we are in the stone age.
Not even smoke signals anymore?
Damnit! this "environmentally friendly" movement has gone too far!
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
I wonder if they use IRC over their wireless so they can have a good "yak"...
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
how do these people get their electricity?
Sounds like these people are very remote. It makes me wonder how they are even getting power for their PCs and network gear. Solar? Generators?
It's amazing the good that has come out of the internet. This setup may even save someone's life at some point since these people can now "call" for help.
A common misconception is that farmers are low tech hillbillies. In the real world more the 70 percent of farms are "online". Farmers increasingly use databases of yeild / irrigation / fertilizer to optimize their operations. Same thing goes for ranchers, where the daily milk output of dairy cattle is tracked against the feed going in. When output drops over time, the cow is sold for prize beef (dairy cattle are held to a high standard).
I would even venture to say that there is a higher percentage of farms that are internet enabled then classical brick and mortar business
Just my 2 cents
Colin McNamara
Senior Network Engineer
Openwave Systems
"The difficult we do immediately, the impossible just takes a little longer"
Well, this is interesting. Here is some potentially sensitive equipment placed in a rural, relatively inaccessible region. Wonder what happens if something breaks, like, say the transmitter/ap they are using? Forgive me for the paranoid thoughts, but working in support for quite some time, i have learnt that the worst things happen to you when you least expect them.
Uh-oh, my tinfoil hat is on and my gun is loaded and cocked. Four consecutive Slashdot stories without a single comment... what gives?
...yak driving?
Never argue with an idiot, he'll just lower you to his level and beat you with experience.
Why don't they just set them up with mobile phones? Cheaper, easier to use, etc. Of course, not as flashy and newsworthy as Internet.
If there are no phone lines or other infrastructure, where are they getting their electricity for all this WiFi from? Do they all have solar cells as well?
Obligatory Ren and Stimpy reference
I thought everything in the post was good, except the part about it being interesting.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
luckily now if anyone were to try to invade nepal, they could quickly mobilize their army...
He say 1 and 1 and 1 is 3, got to be good lookin' cause hes so hard to see...
Electricity in some of these areas is not easy to come by. The valley below Mt Everest shares a hydro electric generator via a community coop. The electricity amounted to slightly over one 60 watt lightbulb per house.
There are computers to be found. They do have Internet all the way to the Everest base camp now. But most of the people in the region are living very simple lives. Collecting yack dung to burn for heat and fertilizer.
Great people if you ever get a chance to visit.
my father taught at a nepalese school as research for his thesis, and some of the comments from the students, about how long it takes to get to school, are astounding.
how about 1 weeks walk plus a 2 hour helicopter ride for one student, 3 day walk and 2 day bus ride for another. this is not just a handful of students either, very remote communities.
Many move to the school, and do not return home until completed years later, simply because it takes so long, by the time they got home they would have to return to school!
so, this has to be good for farmers in similar situations.
Those guys may be dirt-poor according to our standards, but they sure use technology to better their lives, unlike us.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
High-tech technology is exactly what will help out these places. Simple example. Before the advent of mobile phones in India, there was a waiting list of upto 4 years to get a landline. This bred lots of courruption and black-marketeering. Even once you got a landline, you were at the mercy of the local linesman, who would disconnect your line if you didn't pay him his additional monthly salary (usually a bottle of cheap, local rum/scotch). Further, everytime it would rain, your line would go dead. That meant another bribe. Then one day they decided to launch mobile phone service in India.
Average time to get a mobile phone connection: 24 hours
Major Network outages (affecting more than one telecom circle - one circle is roughly the size of a city): ZERO
Look on linesman's face when he realizes HE's going have to chase after YOU to sell his shitty landline connection: Priceless
That's one example, since I'm into feeding the Trolls, here's another:
Electronic Voting in India, which has already been covered in slashdot.
Technology helps everybody, especially the poor. No you can't feed a honeless person a microchip, but I can promise you that it helps ensure that food reaches that person cheaper and faster than before.
My Favourite Meme
You're an idiot.
.. greatly improves the qualkity of life for these people.
..; people would kline up to use it .. now many have them and use it to talk to family (ask for money?), get medical help, and also get valuable information about supply demand .. as in you find out that someone is purchasing your crops and you take it directly to them ..saving you time/money/energy and reducing waste.
This solution is cheaper than farm equipment which also requires fuel (which is expensive).
This "hi-tech solution"
I am originally from a developing country and a lot of my family depend on farming. When the first cell phone was brought into the village
You have simply no idea how important improved communication is to quality of life.
Well I guess being that high getting line of sight is not a problem.
This is pretty cool/amazing: People on the top of mountains with WiFi equipment attached to pieces of trees can get high-speed (I assume it's high-speed since the article mentions video conferencing) Internet access. However, at the same time, it's kind of amazing how people in the United States can't even get high-speed Internet access when they're a couple hundred miles from a major city. Does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture? I mean, it's great to see people making these kinds of advances, but this just goes to show you that maybe we need to take a serious jump on to the WiFi bandwagon, or we need to rework some of our existing technologies.
(P.S. "we" = United States -- Since I don't live anywhere else, I can't speak for anyone else.)
I really think there is a large market for WISPs in 3rd world / developing countries. I really want to get involved and learn more about mesh networking, and deploying large scale wireless, etc. Can anyone recommend any good reading on the subject? (I've seen some recent /. articles, but not much else).
Must use GNU! Anyway, I'm happy that WiFi is being so widely adopted however why do I get the feeling someone is doing this because they can? There is no phone and yet there is supposedly a stable source of power? Possible, yes, likely, no. ANd there people are supposed to be able to buy a computer.... heck, if memory serves me correctly, the Nepalese dollar is worse than Canada's...
Back in March there was a bit of discussion on the wireless-longhaul list regarding setup in Nepal.
0 4-March.txt.gz
http://openict.net/pipermail/wireless-longhaul/
The list-archive front end seems to eat much of the text, but it's all there in the gzipped archive:
http://openict.net/pipermail/wireless-longhaul/20
Agreed that the terrain is not as demanding as in Nepal (flat plains vs. extremely hilly), but the goals look similar. They also have a pretty Coverage Map
The ranges they get out of wifi links are also pretty good - 5kms is on ordinary antennas, while with properly aimed parabolic antennae (antennas?) they get upto 40 kms (25 miles)
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
... But somebody's going to have to explain to them that http://yakse.cx/ is *not* a veterinary resource.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
they have given india a break. take it away Nepal.
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
I can almost picture a neighboring yak herder perched just over the ridge, with an antenna made from a Pringles can, stealing bandwidth...
Yeah, high tech like metal knives. A friend of mine went to Nepal and was treated like a god because he brought Swiss Army Knives as gifts. Metal mining is considered unclean and miners defile the earth, so miners are an untouchable caste. It should come as no surprise there is virtually no metals industry in Nepal. So even metal knives are relatively rare in Nepal, they have to import them, which is also pretty rare.
SO, are you getting the picture here? We're talking about a country where goat-herding is a high-tech dream job people aspire to. These people don't need high tech crap like computers, they need high tech crap like metal knives, electric lights, indoor plumbing, refrigerators, vitamins, etc.
Its good to see wifi finally being used for something good, something useful. Something other than the ability to surf and drink your starbucks at the same time..
I wonder what their range on thoes things is?
snowulf.com
Yes, good examples of appropriate uses of technology in these sorts of places - but the OP has a point. 9 times out of 10, stories like this on slashdot ARE about complete wastes of money.
PersonalTelco has an excellen review on Open Source Wi-Fi software. Could be something for Nepal's farmers!
In the real world more the 70 percent of farms are "online"
With all due respect I'd beg to differ. This may be true of the "North" (USA, Europe, Australia, NZ), but if you mean '70% of the total number of farms / farmers in the world' , I'd guess to disagree. Sub-Saharan Africa, India, China...
Indeed many have problems gaining regular and guaranteed access to water.
Communication is great, as long as you know how to use it.
I think what the author of your parent message was getting at is that it is pointless to throw technology at people without teaching them how to use it. People that have never used laptops and Internet before wouldn't have a clue about what to do if something broken, or why you shouldn't open attachments from 5qh2iotigosd@aol.com as, even though they didn't order any prescription drugs, there's a really important document they have to read...
This "hi-tech solution" may greatly improve the quality of life for those people if they were given the means to learn how to do this themselves ("give them a well") instead of giving them technology ("give them a bucket of water").
--
The trouble with pedants is that they're always right.
of what Hillary and Norgay think of this accomplishment
See also http://nepalwireless.net/ as indicated on the BBC page.
2004-05-25 12:06:46 Wi-fi lifeline for Nepal's farmers (articles,wireless) (rejected)
Great, now I can swap more Robin Sharma songs. His music is incredible. If you're looking for some Eastern tunes, without the "High Pitch" whining sound, then Robin is the man!
He's the 5th Sexiest Man in Nepal for his "his roving eyes, wet lips and flirtatious manners."
Solid.
It needs to be said that this might not last long now. Communists who are ravaging our country have destroyed most of the communication infrastructure (telephone, radio, tv towers etc). I suppose it was ok while it was under the radar, but these people will now be targeted. The Maoists have a lot of support among college kids in the US (I am sure there are a few on slashdot as well). The fact that it was on the BBC, here and probably countless other sites does not help. While it is nice to talk about these things, the media should be careful when publicising some things particularly when dealing with the saftey of the people involved.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Not knocking the coolness and geek apeal of being able to surf the net in a remote location, but it seems if they needed to be able to communicate plain old voice radios would be cheaper (both in money and power) than computers, hubs, and wireless nodes.
. there used to be a sig here.....
I wouldnt be so sure about their need for knives - I have been trying to acquire a traditionally made Gurkha "Kukri" for my collection. The kukri, with its angled blade is a formidable multipurpose tool - serving much the same purposes as the machete in South America. Of course, it doesnt come with a flip-open screwdriver - I guess thats what made the swiss A-knives popular items!
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
i was born and raised in Nepal. 'khukuri', a machete like blade was made quite popular in WWII by 'Gurkhas'. (google 'British Gurkhas' or Gorkha depending on how you want to pronounce it..) so it's not like nepal has never seen a metal blade. they reason they were so excited to see the swiss knives was 1) it was a gift. they were being polite. 2) a swiss knife is a thing to be delighted over.
Metal mining is rare in nepal not because it's considered unclean but because if you look at the topography and size of nepal, you'll quickly notice that it goes from about before most people here get the idea that metals are a rarity in nepal, consider this: there is a car manufacturing plant in nepal that opened recently. engines and tranny are imported from china. i think the body and assambly is done in nepal. but again, i think the raw metal is imported because mining is a challenge in a country with a small and *extreamly* rugged topography.
to say that nepal is "a country where goat-herding is a high-tech dream job people aspire to" is, let's just say, slightly off the mark. a friend of mine is working on a beowulf cluster in his home. and not of yaks. ;) it's kinda like the equavalent of saying "oh, i went to the US and everyone there lives in trailer parks."
as far as being treated like a god, well, there is a saying in nepali that says guests are gods. you would get that treatment from any nepali even when not under a knifepoint.
i find it interesting that good hospitality is mistaken for glee over a metal blade. i guess given the rarity of hospatility in the western world, people have a hard time recognizing it.
I note your comments, but my friend was a wool importer and spent his time out in rural areas where they really DO herd goats. He described the people as living in "stone age conditions" and I have no reason to dispute his accounts, especially since he showed me photos. These were people who could not afford expensive luxuries like metal knives. Do you really think their lives would be improved by solar powered computers with wifi?
Is a vetinerary what you get when your veterinarian has an itinerary?
Do yaks run GNU?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
to prefer thinking of the mountains of nepal as not needing this stuff?
isn't it possible to look at regions of the world not as potential markets, but also as places where people live (happily) without the baited hook of western consumerism dangled in their noses?
there are places where the music is folk music, and you can tell what region it's from. places where each village has its own recipes, over 1000 years old. places where a person need not work 50 hours a week just to support his mortgage, toys, wife's wardrobe and car, with its 20 gallons of arab blood in the tank. there are places where people are happier with less. there are places where most of a person's time is free time, where life is simple, and the stress of paying ten bills each month isn't enslaving the population. places where the divorce rate is almost zero, and advertising is so rare that it's an oddity.
who thinks the west has the right answer for them? wifi to the mountains of nepal.
God help us.
who knows, maybe there's no harm done.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
If my post identified the title of the song whose lyrics were posted without credit to the songwriter, that's offtopic? I think not, moron.
For Nepal WiFi is prefect with it's mountainous terrain a digital repeater would have huge coverage.
http://www.gobpl.com
MOD PARENT UP! >> find it interesting that good hospitality is mistaken for glee over a metal blade
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
High-tech technology
I am sorry, you want the Department of Redundancy Department. Go down the hall past the ICU Unit and the ED Department. When you get to the ATM machine, take a right - can't miss it!
Clues for the clueless:
High-tech technology = high technology technology.
ICU Unit = Intensive Care Unit Unit.
ED Department = Emergency Department Department.
ATM machine = Automatic Teller Machine machine.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
You missed the point. They were just happy to have a new knife. They didn't care if it was Swiss or Swedish or whatever.
and maybe they were just happy to recieve a gift from a guest.
My friend said he went there every year, always brought gifts, but never made such an impact as with the knives. In fact, on a previous trip he asked the locals what would make good gifts and was told to bring knives since they were so scarce.