That is our mission. We would like to help you.
We have traveled down the road you are considering and would like to share our experiences with the goal of helping you achieve your vision.
Today we met a new friend working on a project in Nicaragua and had a good email exchange. I thought the dialog would be valuable for others interested in educational, healthcare, and economic development projects in Africa, Central America, and SE Asia.
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On Sun, Jun 17,
2012 at 10:05 PM, Mark nigogosyan wrote:
Hello,
I live in
Lacrosse, Wisconsin and my wife and I are very
involved as a volunteer for Global Partners, a nonprofit group that has been going to Nicaragua now
for 3 years.
A big component
of our project is community development in a few small remote villages in Nicaragua Santa Celia and Santa
Marta (a mile or so North).
Education,
Health care, and business development are issues we work on. We
have been doing some hard thinking on what might help jump start some
businesses there and an "internet cafe " came to mind. This
could be a business and might have nice secondary effects in the community.
I was even thinking about funding via Kiva (if you don't know it worth
a look). The rub is
that there is barely cellphone service (one bar when you walk to the top of a
knoll).
I have been
doing some investigating and came across your sight and got very excited!
I would greatly
appreciate some more details from you (email, references, even Skype chat) so I
might understand what is involved. I am pretty geeky (very amateur
programmer, built several computers from ground up, know how to set up home
wireless networks, incessantly tooling around with my mac, etc). I don't
have any experience setting up long range wifi's and would like to get an idea
of the feasibility of this. I understand wifi is line of sight(?) so I
thought one bar might suggest the possibility of more signal if it was on a
tower.
Any thoughts you
might have would be greatly appreciated!
Regards
Mark Nigogosyan
La Cresecent MN
On Jun 18, 2012, at 8:50 AM, G Jason Schnellbacher wrote:
Hello Mark.
Thanks for
reaching out. We would love to help.
After some
hands-on experience in-country, we figured out that open Internet like what we
enjoy in the States is not economically sustainable unless the local telecom
operator is a partner. The cost of "backhaul" (the wholesale
ISP pipe) is simply too expensive. Subsequently, we observed this same
problem in other deployments in the developing world; funding eventually dries
up and the networks go dark.
However, the
potential benefits to the community are undeniable. The opportunities for
education, healthcare, and business development are real.
In the
absence of developing a partnership with the local teleco or government,
we concluded the only way to ensure a sustainable deployment was to build local
area networks with 'local' intranet content hosted on servers within the
community.
Is there power
available in the communities you would like to serve? Do you have anyone
that has a willingness to learn that would be available to be the network
administrator on-site? If you have both of these then you may have a
good opportunity.
With power
available and a secure place to host a little bit of equipment, you could
probably get everything set up for around $5K (including UPS battery
backup). You would need to plan for the following:
- Purchase an eGranary ($3,500
+ shipping)
- Recruit a network administrator from the local community that has a
knack for problem solving and budget the annual salary in your
business plan)
- Purchase some WiFi equipment or try to get donations for used WiFi
equipment to provide access to the eGranary server within the local area
network ($500 or less depending on coverage area needed).
- Seek donations for used laptops, netbooks, and tablets with WiFi
(If you're the hacker type, maybe even check out Raspberry Pi
and see if you can build computers on the cheap with old
monitors?). This could even be a trade for the village to make
money; building computers based on Raspberry Pi and selling them to other
villages. We recommend Ed-Ubuntu OS; free, stable, and includes
educational materials.
- Purchase an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) for battery backup in
case there are disruption in power (which happen often in the developing
world as I am sure you know) and take it with you on a trip (but note,
these can be heavy so plan ahead with regard to airline baggage fees).
We revised the
vision with the attached presentation. The new strategy is all about locally
hosted content. Future visitors can always bring new content from the
States or wherever via 'sneaker-net' (bring it with you on
USB drives). The missions department at my church loves this
idea because they could get healthcare workers from the congregation to give
lessons on different topics relevant to the partner community and have them
recorded and translated so they can be watched in-country without buffering or
interruptions in the video quality. This way medical professionals can volunteer
and participate in missions without actually traveling. It was seen as a
win-win-win deal for everyone involved. You could explore something
similar if you want.
There is an
online demo available here if you would like to see how it works:
Hope this helps.
Do you have any
other questions?
How do you want
to proceed?
Cheers!
Jason
On Mon, Jun 18,
2012 at 2:39 PM, Mark nigogosyan wrote:
So kind of you
Jason-thanks!
Electricity-yes
they have it.
I understand
your point about an ISP pipe being pricey but what would stop me from, say,
getting 100 kbit service in our home office in San Ramon, popping a directional
antenna to Santa Marta 5 miles uphill, and getting the village (entrepreneur)
access to distribute and augment Egranery.
In other words I
might use wifi for local distribution but also for a point of aces to the
Internet.
Internet down?
Then I could have the intranet (egranery) still running.
Biggest rub?
Very little English knowledge in these villages. I understand most of
egranery is in english but a big advantage is if there were English
lessons for the students cached on egranery.
As for an
administrator, I'll need to check that out. What a great opportunity for
a motivated smart kid.
Can you give me
more detail on the wifi hardware needed? Any prepackaged directional wifi kits
floating around?
Thanks!
Mark Nigogosyan
Sent from my
iPad
On Jun 18, 2012,
at 3:10 PM, G Jason Schnellbacher wrote:
Hello again.
Glad to be of
service.
You
should definitely be able to get an ISP connection in San Ramon and shoot
it line of sight to Santa Marta
(if it is 5 miles away). The key is line of sight and the associated
elevation. No trees or hills in the way. If you have that, it
should be no problem.
Then in Santa Marta , you could
further distribute with WiFi with one or a handful of hotspots depending on the
size of the area you want to cover.
If you do this
though, you could easily overload the ISP connection to the point where it
would be unusable. To solve this problem, you could use the ISP connection
to sync the eGranary with updates or for SMTP (email) only or
whatever. Maybe even limit outside Internet access to people that
pay? That was the idea we liked best... eGranary and local communications
within the WLAN or other villages/networks interconnected via some type of
point-to-point WAN and if people want to use the 'outside Internet' then it
requires a small payment. That could maybe help fund the salary of the village
network administrator. Remember, you will have to continue to pay the cost of
the ISP every month so have a good plan for that.
There is some
Spanish content but not much. However, if you can find your own content
(from the department of education in Nicaragua or elsewhere) you can
load your own content and make it indexable/searchable on the WLAN. Ideal
content would be the Spanish GED equivalent and other guided study programs. I
am sure you could connect with a prominent library in the Spanish speaking
world to try and get license to some of their online content. WiderNet,
the group that created the eGranary, may even be able to help you (but may want
to get paid; not sure).
I know the Khan
Academy has over 1100 lessons in Spanish (and believe these are already
included in the eGranary but if not, you could request to have them added
or add them yourself). These are really good and were recently featured on 60
Minutes.
Additional FAQ
on eGranary
I think you can
find what you need to make the eGranary valuable to the community. Remember, you can always add more content
over time.
The WiFi
equipment will depend on what exactly you want to do. If you want long
range point to point links, you will need two Ubiquiti Bullet M2s and two high gain grid antennas (with
female-N connectors).
If you want to
set up a mesh network for access throughout the village, you can do that
multiple ways depending on your budget and technical capabilities. If you
are good with Linux and some troubleshooting, you can buy Ubiquiti M5
Nanostations for backhaul and Picostations M2 for access and flash them
with new firmware to mesh them. However, this is only recommended
for experienced Linux sys admins familiar with WiFi network design. The
easier path would be to buy some commercial WiFi equipment that can mesh and
provide an nice management console (we've had good success with Ruckus).
Or if you only need one AP for a library/internet cafe type place,
then that is the easiest of them all. Just buy one Ubiquiti Picostation M2,
mount it on a pole, and crank up the power to 1W; that should get you 100m
radius coverage outdoor. Indoor coverage range would depend on the
building materials.
If you just did
the 1 PtP link and the 1 Picostation in the village, you would be looking
at around $400 USD for the Ubiquiti WiFi equipment and antennas.
Hope this helps.
Let me know if
you need anything else.
Cheers!
Jason
On Mon, Jun 18,
2012 at 3:32 PM, Mark nigogosyan wrote:
You're the man
Jason!
I am going to
tak to my partners and give you an update....