(fwd) G8-> Reduce poverty:Mobile phones for all Africans?

Thu Jul 7 23:31:27 CEST 2005

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

  G8-> Reduce poverty:Mobile phones for all Africans ?
by ir. Jaap van Till, the Netherlands, July 7, 2005
  ========================================
  Poverty for millions of Africans can be effectively reduced by
  introducing low cost mobile phones in highly populated city area's
  and by introducing mesh networks of solar powered "Tellet" voice
  communcation devices for farmers and villagers in rural areas.

  Yes, the use of mobile phones has been shown to stimulate
  economic growth significantly [1], the poor people in developing
  countries recognize the value of telecommunication. And
  they are willing to pay for such services, especially SMS'es used
  for transactions and long distance agreements within their communities.
  The effect of telecom on wealth and quality of life has been
  shown to be especially strong in rural areas.

  On June 29 Arun Sarin, president of Vodafone published an appeal
  [2] "Mobile Penetration will boost Africa" (in NL - NRC "Bestrijd de
  armoede: geef Afrika mobieltjes") to the G8 leaders to pave the way
  for private investments in African countries for the rool out of
  cellphone networks. This appeal is based on the effects on small
  businesess and citizens seen in Africa with present networks and
  on the statistics of (1). Such rollout is part of the activity of
  mobile phone and chip manufacturers to bring down the price of the 
devices
  to less than 40 dollars. The objective is to sell after the present 
billion
  handsets (in rich countries and large cities) the next billion into
  (the smaller city area's) of the less develloped world. This is great 
and will
  have a very positive effect on  the lives of those who will use that
  next billion (3) where they can get wireless couverage.

  The problem is that this great plan leaves the rest of the world,
  outside the cities, in farms and rural areas, now about 4 billion,
  without tele-connections. This is because despite low cost
  devices the investments, maintainance and operation of the
  wirelessnetwork infrastructure (basestations, backhaul links and
  switches) is too high, especially in thinly populated rural area's and
  the poor farmers and villagers will not be able to pay the phonetariffs
  to recuperate the investments in the network. Also there is no
  infrastructure for electrical power present for the net as well as the
  handset batteries. So they will get NO telecom in the next decades,
  so millions have to travel for days to communicate, often without 
results.
  And they will probably move to the cities to get work.

  There is a solution for these problems. Recent technical inventions
  have succesfully implemented handheld devices which can act
  as store-and-forward relays of IP datapackets themselves
  (so called multi-hop routing). So a number of those devices
  will form a meshed radionetwork by itself (ad-hoc), without the need
  for costly infrastructure. Army vehicles and emergency services
  already use such self building mobilenetworks, linked to
  fixed networks. Disadvantage is that such multihop networks
  can create variable delay in the connections. Further advantage
  is that the total troughput of the mesh network scales up with
  the amount of devices. Transmission power (and battery use)
  can be scaled back and frequency space reused when the density of 
devices
  increases. The more people using Tellet's the better it gets!

  My proposal is to develop and implement such mesh-radio devices
  called Tellet [4, 5, 6] for use in rural area's in Africa, in parallel
  to the next billion plan of Arun Sarin et.al. in the city area's of 
Africa.
  The design of the Tellet at present is with solar powered batteries
  and for voice mail and group chat use only (so the delay is no 
problem),
  at first within local communities.

  We are busy designing the Tellet prototype functions. It is clear
  that the single-function Tellet is not simply a scaled down mobile 
phone, just like
  the iPod is not a scaled down CD player (or the car is not a scaled 
down
  train). It will have  a number of tele-functions significant
  for poor villagers and farmers.

  We are actively looking for funding (the Tellet Fund) from
  companies and charities to be able to built the first prototype
  series and do field tests in Africa.

[1]Waverman, Meshi and Fuss, (London Business School), “The impact of 
telecoms on economic growth in developing countries”,
       February 2005;
       paper is part of a Policy Paper series by Vodafone: “Africa: The 
Impact of Mobile Phones”, March 2005  www.vodafone.com/africa

     http://www.vodafone.com/assets/files/en/AIMP_17032005.pdf    
[2] http://news.ft.com/cms/s/27b4b892-e8c9-11d9-87ea-00000e2511c8.html
  [3) http://www.nextbillion.net/node/394
[4] van Till,   The TELLET Project Proposal,  July 2000, 
    http://www.vantill.dds.nl/divide.html
  [5] van Till, Netweaving the Local Village, Paper presented at the 
Int'l Advisory Council meeting of the IICD, The Hague, April 11, 2001

     http://www.vantill.dds.nl/weavinglocal.html
  [6] van Till, Netweaving Rural  Villages: Introducing THE WEAVE, paper 
presented at the "ITS 12th European Regional Conference”,
        International Telecommunications Society   (www.itsEurope.org) 
Dublin, Ireland; September 2-3, 2001

      http://www.vantill.dds.nl/4b_4b.html

##########################################
  Met vriendelijke groet - with kind regards,

       prof. ir Jaap van Till
       connectivist

  Stratix Consulting BV
  at Amsterdam Airport and Roombeek-Enschede NL

  Specialists on computernetworks and human networking.
  You can trust on our judgement on networks,
  technology & business

  Tfn: +31 (20) 44 66 555    Schiphol Centrum
  mob. phone: +31 (6) 5530 3210
  mailto:jaap.vantill at stratix.nl  
  URL: http://www.stratix.nl
  ##########################################

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