Title: Afghanistan's Amazing DIY Internet
Author: Neal Ungerleider
Source: Fast Company
Date (published): 21/06/2011
Date (accessed): 10/07/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"FabFi is an ambitious project which is creating Internet networks for eastern Afghanistan whose main components can be built out of trash. It's low-tech, it's simple--and it works.

The Afghan city of Jalalabad has a high-speed Internet network whose main components are built out of trash found locally. Aid workers, mostly from the United States, are using the provincial city in Afghanistan's far east as a pilot site for a project called FabFi.

It's a broadband apart from the covert, subversive "Internet in a suitcase" and stealth broadband networks being sponspored by the U.S., aimed at empowering dissidents, but the goal isn't so different: bringing high-speed onilne access to the world's most remote places.

Residents can build a FabFi node out of approximately $60 worth of everyday items such as boards, wires, plastic tubs, and cans that will serve a whole community at once. While it sounds like science fiction, FabFi could have important ramifications for entire swaths of the world that lack conventional broadband.

FabFi is an open source project that maintains close ties to MIT's Fab Lab and the university's Center for Bits and Atoms. At the moment, FabFi products are up and running in both Jalalabad and at three sites in Kenya, which collectively operate as an Internet service provider called JoinAfrica. Inside Afghanistan, FabFi networks are used to aid local businesses and to prop up community infrastructure such as hospitals and clinics.

FabFi is funded primarily by the personal savings of group members and a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The technology used to create FabFi networks seems like it leaped out of an episode of MacGyver. Commercial wireless routers are mounted on homemade RF reflectors covered with a metallic mesh surface. Another router-on-a-reflector is set up at a distance; the two routers then create an ad-hoc network that provides Internet access to a whole network of reflectors. The number of reflectors which can be integrated into the network is theoretically endless; FabFi's network covers most of Jalalabad."

See also: FabFi

Title: Universal broadband for all: ANC
Source:MyBroadband
Date (published):15/11/2010
Date (accessed):16/11/2010
Type of information:article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
„In the ANC’s latest newsletter the ruling party punts the importance of broadband to all South Africans.

The ANC supports, among other things:

* Asymmetric interconnect rates for operations in rural areas;
* Re-farming voice spectrum to be used for broadband provisioning in rural areas;
* Prioritizing high capacity spectrum for wireless communications in rural and urban poor areas will be needed.”

Title: Wireless Networking in the Developing World, 2nd edition: A practical guide to planning and building low-cost telecommunications infrastructure
Pages: 425 pp.
Publisher: Hacker Friendly LLC
Date (published): 05/01/2008
Date (accessed): 05/04/2010
Type of information: training course material
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf, 5,1 MB)
Abstract:
The overall goal of this book is to help you build affordable communication technology in your local community by making best use of whatever re- sources are available. Using inexpensive off-the-shelf equipment, you can build high speed data networks that connect remote areas together, provide broadband network access in areas that even dialup does not exist, and ulti- mately connect you and your neighbors to the global Internet. By using local sources for materials and fabricating parts yourself, you can build reliable network links with very little budget. And by working with your local commu- nity, you can build a telecommunications infrastructure that benefits everyone who participates in it.

This book is not a guide to configuring a radio card in your laptop or choosing consumer grade gear for your home network. The emphasis is on building infrastructure links intended to be used as the backbone for wide area wire- less networks. With that goal in mind, information is presented from many points of view, including technical, social, and financial factors. The exten- sive collection of case studies present various groups␣ attempts at building these networks, the resources that were committed to them, and the ultimate results of these attempts.

Other editions, translations here.