technology, policy and activism for rural telecommunications arun mehta
TRANSCRIPT
Technology, Policy and Activism for Rural Telecommunications
Arun Mehta
www.holisticit.com
www.radiophony.com
www.indataportal.com
Reading List http://www.saschameinrath.com/writings/WirelessingTheWorld.rtf http://www.netparadox.com/fccletter.html http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~gaj1/auctngg.html http://indataportal.com/optical/WOC.htm http://www.freifunk.net:8080/sc2004/wiki/ThankYouDjursland
Technologies we look at
FM Radio WiFi Wireless (Free Space) Optical Communications
Why Radio? Natural: we know how to speak before we know how to
read and write. Flexible: we speak five times faster than we can type and
10 times faster than we can write Cost-effective: only communications technology the poor
can afford Growing: currently exploding on the Internet Democratic: far more people are able to produce quality
audio content than written
An ecologically-friendly Public-Address System
The same sort of range as a loudspeaker, but unlike the regular PA system,A hundred can coexist, without mutual interference24-hour operation possibleExcellent quality at the furthest pointYou can turn it off in your space
Innovative uses of FM Low-cost simultaneous translation (used at Asian Social
Forum, >8000 people had cheap FM radios with earphones, we had one FM transmitter for each language
Radio browsing: post questions to the radio station, someone finds out the answer, broadcasts the answer in the local language
Open source design on our website, we only come to know when there is a problem ;-)
For a radio station you
need…
An antenna…
MD player or equivalent, a mike, an operator…
A 50mW transmitter!
How about permission? 50 milliWatt FM transmitters in the form of
cordless mikes and car door openers were widely sold in the market, and so, we assumed that they were legal.
With 50 mW, we could reach about 500 meters outdoors
The WPC objected… So we asked (Apr. 16, 2003) how come the rich were
allowed to do Karaoke with FM transmitters, but a poor, self-help womens’ group could not popularize micro-finance with it?
WPC replied: “Use of certain wireless toys and gadgets under certain conditions are exempted from licensing requirements, in specified frequency bands."
Anything above 1mW needs a license
Why WiFi? Broadband Open standards Multitude of suppliers Open source, free software Doesn’t need experts to set up and maintain (e.g.
Djursland, Denmark) Same tech for WAN and LAN, so large quantities
and low price
How to change policy
responses to discussion papers Oral comments at open house meetings Legal challenge Experimentation license “Piracy”
Why Wireless Optical? No regulatory bottlenecks No license fees Power efficient (to get the same focussing with 1GHz,
you need an antenna that is 100 meters across), so lower capital cost
Higher intrinsic security: hard to intercept a light beam without interrupting communications
Components (lasers, photodiodes, CCDs, lenses,…) are inexpensive, off the shelf
Compatible with optic fiber, our preferred long-distance medium
Low Cost Transceiver
Mike-chip-laser for sending audio FM Radio for receiving A PC with optical receiver at a high point picks up
light, converts to audio, queues for transmission via a low-cost FM transmitter
This is effectively an audio chat channel
How to get technological change without vast resources
You write about it on the Net You talk about it at conferences Start a mailing list (e.g.
[email protected]) Use a Wiki for collaborative work Get universities interested…
Moral of the story Engineers no longer can get by knowing
technology alone They need to understand law (e.g. IPR), policy-
making process, psychology, teamwork, communications,…
They need to be activists The rest of the world need to understand
technology too