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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.
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Not even smoke signals anymore?
Damnit! this "environmentally friendly" movement has gone too far!
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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.
...yak driving?
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;-)
That could have had something to do with it
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.
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.. 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.
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.
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.
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.
I think (but i am no expert), that setting up a wifi network is substantially easier than a mobile phone network; specifically for those who are not directly in the communications industry. Wifi requires standard, serviceable off the shelf hardware, and there is alot more free online info on how to setup wifi networks than how to set up a cell tower in your backyard.
See also http://nepalwireless.net/ as indicated on the BBC page.
Why use a low-data-speed, expensive to install, expensive to use, limited technology?
While each user's equipment is more expensive with WiFi, the user gets far more flexibility in their equipment, and the cost is more than offset by the cheaper access point (it can cost hundreds of thousands to set up a phone tower).
Using WiFi results in a high speed data connection, with internet access as part of the bundle, and the option to make normal phone calls if you want (using VoIP).
Probably the complete lack of a working mobile phone network in the mountains was a good reason for this. Can't really see a mobile being a lot of use without one. They had to build an entire communications network.
They chose wi-fi because it is cheap, easy to install/maintain, relatively power efficient and available off the shelf.
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