Telecommunication
Very excitingly, we hosted the first Village Telco workshop. It exceeded all expectations both in the calibre of the people attending and the very concrete outcomes that emerged. Details of the workshop and its results are on the newly hosted website. One key result of the workshop is a plan to create a new device that merges the functionality of a low-cost mesh access point and an analogue telephony adaptor (ATA).
The week following the Village Telco workshop, Steve and Jason attended another wireless workshop at CSIR, this time funded by IDRC and focus on creating a Wireless Africa Alliance that would network low-cost wireless entrepreneurs across Africa. The Village Telco and the results of the workshop got a very good reception.
Telecommunication
We continued working towards democratisation of the telecommunication infrastructure by defining and organising the key players and stakeholders in the Village Telco initiative together. We will have a workshop next month and have commitment from all to participate fully. This will be the first time they have all been together and we are very much looking forward to shaping the project further.
Connected Cities
Steve Song met with Leon Van Wyk, head of Telecommunications Department for the City of Cape Town and was hugely impressed with the progress, stating:
Cape Town is poised to become the leading city on the continent in terms of high speed information infrastructure. Let’s hope many others follow their model.
This was also his first (of many) post featured on Techleader.co.za.
During the last quarterly review with the Trustees, Mark expressed his wish to help find some real, concrete and effective changes that he could propose in the Presidential International Advisory Council (PIAC). Consulted widely, Steve has met with Tracey Cohen (ICASA Councillor) and Paris Mashile (Chair of ICASA) amongst others to validate ideas for policy change . We have some exciting ideas and the draft is being internally reviewed by the trustees before being proposed in the official forum. Once the proposal parameters have been defined we will open it up for review.
Steve and Jason gave a talk about the Village Telco and Freedom Toaster at the Bandwidth Barn , organised by CITI, attended by entrepreneurs, government representatives (local and national), and VeloCITI participants .
New blog postings
Telecommunication
We explored Khayalitsha with Alan Levin looking for possible Village Telco entrepreneurs and developed criteria for an alpha release of the Village Telco. We also began planning a June workshop development sprint for the Village Telco to be held in Cape Town. All stakeholders including upstream providers are very sold on the idea of an Open Source strategy.
Steve Song met with project leader (Mark Neville) on Cape Town’s Broadband Fibre Initiative and obtained details on Cape Town’s strategy and background documentation along with a list of contacts in other municipalities to follow up with. There is very positive feedback from this initiative which is said to be a world class installation.
Steve also commented on operators’ submission to ICASA looking at their telecommunication policy and arranged to jointly author a submission with Alison Gillwald for presentation by Mark Shuttleworth to PIAC.
We also contacted Ant Brooks of ISPA and Anriette Esterhuysen of APC to discuss the formation of a multi-stakeholder dialogue around telecom policy.
In the News:
- Bringing cheap phone calls to poor communities – Business Day
- The democratisation of telecommunication infrastructure – Network Times
New blog postings:
- Dabba and Village Telco – Getting to Alpha – Defining what is required to get to first base with the Open Source Village Telco project.
- Building the Demand in Print-on-Demand – Exploring a demand aggregation model for Print-on-Demand.
- Open Concepts, Open Patents – A thought experiment to see whether there is scope for a Creative Commons-style license for ideas/concepts as an alternative to patenting.
- The Wisdom of Knowledge Management
March 2008
I feel like it is a David and Goliath month this month.
Technology trends shows that the digital divide between rich and poor countries is growing. While developed countries are expected to reach a broadband penetration rate of 28% in 2008, the corresponding rate for developing countries is just 3%. That is the reason why I am so excited about the Village Telco project that Steve is currently working on.
Also, Alexander Ponosov, the Russian schoolteacher who was put on trail for using Microsoft’s products illegally, even though they were pre-installed when the school bought them, has launched a campaign against.
We are helping to rally against the adoption of the OOXML standard and are imensley proud of South Africa and especially Geraldine FRASER-MOLEKETI for ensuring that Open Standards prevail.
The road to ‘open’ is a long one, but we are getting there.
Telecommunications
What we do in this area:
“The cost of bandwidth in Africa poses a barrier to the continent’s effective participation in international trade and the knowledge economy, while limiting local markets and education. Without adequate bandwidth Africa runs the risk of being left behind in the global race. The Shuttleworth Foundation is, therefore, actively investing in a project portfolio that will contribute towards solving bandwidth limitations in the African context.”
This month’s highlights:
To democratisation the telecommunication infrastructure Steve Song have began publicising and promoting Village Telco model used by Dabba in explaining the concept and actively engaging with the African wireless networking community to build support for Village Telco concept. Discussions have also began with the CSIR, Cisco, and IT46 to lay the groundwork for a collaborative Open Source, VillageTelco initiative and much excitement is being stirred. David Rowe comments:
‘…key to large scale roll out is just 1 successful business. People are reluctant to innovate, but happy to copy.
Now that the business model side has been nailed I have nothing to do for the rest of this year 
‘
Exciting times indeed – just imagine communities controlling their own communications in this way, a really inspiring way to join the knowledge economy!
To help drive ‘Connected Cities’ we have made contact with project leader for Cape Town’s Dark Fibre initiative and arrange to meet to discuss progress to date and opportunities for the Foundation
Alison Gillwald has been working with us to drive the Telecommunication Policy piece of our work. We have agreed on strategy to make interventions at ICASA hearings over the next year. Breaking into policy groups, and gaining traction from great ideas posed is proving more and more problematic as industry ‘seals’ the decision making process. We are hoping to ensure they become more open and transparent.
In the process of building the networks, we have been meeting with people such as Goltz Wessman from Fastcomm and Elma Philanthropies.
Bandile Sikwane from iWeek and Jennigay Coetzer from Business Day, both did interviews and reports on Steve’s view of the industry, you can also find Steve’s commentary on this blog. On all subject from reforms happening in Kenya to the death of WiFi!
Telecommunication
What we do in this area:
“The cost of bandwidth in Africa poses a barrier to the continent’s effective participation in international trade and the knowledge economy, while limiting local markets and education. Without adequate bandwidth Africa runs the risk of being left behind in the global race. The Shuttleworth Foundation is, therefore, actively investing in a project portfolio that will contribute towards solving bandwidth limitations in the African context.”
This month’s highlights:
We are developing 3 strategies within telecommunications.
1) The Democratisation of the Telecommunication Infrastructure. Trying to understand better how people can do it for themselves. One of the most promising opportunities in this area is the “village telco” model. Essentially “an easy-to-use connectivity solution that provides extensible local telephony with the possibility of upstream voice and/or data connectivity via POTS, mobile, or other IP services.” We have met with dabba.co.za and explored township locations of this pilot and are exploring how entrepreneurs would be able to support and run with this model.
There are parallels between this project and one in India. Dr. Mike Best from Georgia Tech is sending us the results to see if we can improve the experiment here.
2) Cities as hubs of innovation. Cities have a large role to play in developing this infrastructure and can really help to drive innovation. We are currently investigating municipal fibre strategies and the broader role of fibre such as Seacom.
3) Telecommunications policy. It is vital that policy allows the innovations we are trying to drive. We are working with Alison Gilwald from the LINK centre to deliver a paper on what policy needs to look like to get the most benefit for the citizens of South Africa. What are the points and leverage and what must we do?
Steve Song (Telecommunication Fellow) has blog postings at :
African Undersea Cables – Map
Community Pricing for on-demand publishing
Seacom Sets Date, Reveals Pricing
Yabba Dabba Do
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