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GBI Tech Series: “Bringing Telecomms to the Rural Edge”

GBI hosted its monthly Tech Series last Thursday, this time focusing on “Bringing Telecommunications to the Rural Edge.” Speakers shed light on the need, challenges and opportunities involved in the process of expanding connectivity to rural areas and promote development.

Ian Walter of Altobridge discussing low cost telecommunications solutions.

Photo credit: Laurie Moy

Ian Walter, Vice President of Technology at Altobridge, presented on “Low Energy, Low Cost Wireless Communications for Remote Communities,” an overview of the remote communities market and its size, key challenges and opportunities ensuring remote locations have access to affordable mobile and voice connectivity.

With the number of mobile subscribers set to exceed 6 billion by 2014, operators need to find innovative and cost-effective ways to expand connectivity to 2.1 billion living in rural areas, based on World Bank estimates.

“A combination of competition between the equipment vendors, government subsidies and initiatives such as the GSMA’s ultra-low cost handsets have combined to drive down the network and handset cost for service providers but site, backhaul and power costs remain high,” said Walter speaker on the key challenges of expanding connectivity in remote communities.

“None of the above initiatives address the operational costs that operators face when deploying sites in remote communities”, he added.

The solution is the solar powered Altobrige lite-site, which enables mobile network operators to bring mobile connectivity to remote communities at low cost. Meeting the needs of up to 1200 subscribers, the Altobridge lite-site has been specifically designed to optimize satellite bandwidth and minimize power consumption.

Troy Etulain speaking about USAID's connectivity project in the DRC

Photo credit: Laurie Moy

One project that will put these technologies into the field is headed up by Troy Etulain, Senior Advisor for Media Development at USAID. Mr. Etulain spoke about “Low-Cost Cellular Infrastructure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: LRA Affected Areas”, a case study on expanding connectivity in remote conflict areas.

Etulain offered contextual background on the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a militant group operating in Central Africa accused of widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation, sexual enslavement of women and children, to name but a few.

According to Etulain, the project’s goal is to empower civilians with the communications infrastructure to monitor and report LRA activity. This consist of partnering with public radio to report LRA incidents on a daily basis and installing on top of church buildings—for safety and higher access points—a base transceiver station (BTS) or cell site, a piece of equipment that facilitates wireless communication between user equipment and a network.

Eric White, ICT Sector Economist for GBI, showcased the “Broad Applicability of Low Cost and Low Power Telecoms Solutions,” that advance development such as mobile apps used in agriculture, health, and education.

The GBI Tech Seminar Series is hosted monthly at USAID headquarters and covers a range of topics from connectivity and telecommunications access to content and applications. A video of this months program will be available online shortly.

November 21, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Farmer to Farmer, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Joining ICT4D to learn about using technology for agricultural development

Judy Payne, Shaun Ferris, and Grahame Dixie at the ICT4D meetup. Photo credit: KDMD.

On August 22, the ICT for Development (ICT4D) Learning Network hosted an expert panel on how ICTs, or information and communication technologies, are enabling agriculture and improving livelihoods worldwide. The event, held at the USAID Public Information Library, was co-organized by Appropriate IT and the USAID-funded FACET Project, which is being implemented by FHI 360. FACET works to enhance agricultural value chains and facilitate trade in agricultural products across Sub-Saharan Africa by providing technical assistance on the use of ICT tools to improve competitiveness and productivity.

The first presenter on the panel was Grahame Dixie, the Agribusiness Unit Team Leader for the World Bank’s Agriculture and Rural Development department. Dixie’s presentation covered a lot of the new research by IFPRI and others about how farmers and people in agriculture value chains are using ICT and what the effects are. Focusing mainly on telephones (both public land lines and private cell phones), he explained that there is good evidence that phones are raising rural income (Peru), improving commercial farmer income (Philippines), and leading to changes in cropping mixes and marketing methods (Morocco). That said, according to Dixie, the most important function that phones seem to serve is to connect players in the value chain in a way that promotes trust between them, leading to sharing of critical market intelligence.

In Grahame Dixie’s experience, a critical area where technology can play a big role is logistics. To illustrate this point, he told this story about women backyard poultry producers in Bangladesh:

“[The women] found out that the prices that they received for their chickens was less than half that of the prices in the nearest major market. They decided to contact the visiting trader and demand an explanation for paying so badly. The trader explained that he had to cover all his costs of getting to and back from their village over the few chickens they could sell him, and he could not afford to pay them more. How many chickens would he need to buy to be able to pay sensible prices? Fifty, he replied. They found that he has a cell phone and now actively seek out sufficient chickens to sell from an extended group, and call him in when they have aggregated a sensible critical mass. The prices have increased–and this in turn has incentivized the production of more chickens.”

After talking with farmers, researchers have found that the most useful market intelligence appears to be the simplest—contact information, especially of buyers, input suppliers, and transporters. They also found that the crops for which ICT integration generates the most farmer benefits are high-value, semi-perishables. Another finding was that the person in the value chain who seems to benefit most is the trucker/trader with a cell phone. Dixie wondered if there may be a way to squeeze that additional profit now accruing to the trader to either end of the value chain to push more benefits to the farmers and/or end buyers.

As his presentation focused so heavily on cell phones and SMS technology, Dixie concluded with a brief look at costs. According to him, the prices of SMS messages in many countries are high and bordering on “iniquitous,” especially when compared to the cost of actually transmitting the message. The current cost/price structures, he said, might mean a role for regulators or possibly an open source software for broadcasting SMS.

September 13, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Closing the Urban-Rural Digital Divide: Connectivity Success in Mongolia

A rich dynamic taking place within the telecom sector is the emerging of new, low-cost solutions more suitable for delivering cost-effective solutions to remote, low-density rural communities. Studies have shown that there is considerable untapped demand in rural areas. However, until just recently the cost of delivery relative potential revenues, has limited carriers from making the needed investments to service those living in these rural communities.

Photo Credit- Mongolian Artist

USAID’s Last Mile Initiative (LMI) undertook a number of projects to explore the potential for identifying and exploring potential solutions. One of these was the Mongolia LMI project. The project was launched in mid-2005 with an initial Assessment that explored opportunities, including holding discussions with the government and discussion private-sector firms interested in becoming involved. Discussions were also held with the World Bank who at the time was exploring an initiative to support for a universal service program and to undertake some limited rural demonstration deployments.

During this early phase the most promising approach that surfaced was to form a partnership between the Khan Bank who has approximately 300 rural banks throughout Mongolia, and Incomnet, a local ISP with a satellite network providing connectivity to a growing number soum-center branches of the rural Khan Banks. The preliminary focus was on leveraging this satellite investment by adding a community-wide extension through the deployment of community-WiFi networks, with voice services provided through a low cost Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution set. In many ways this VoIP approach served as a forerunner to the now-emerging lower-cost commercial solutions entering the marketplace.

In late November-early December of 2006, the USAID-funded team returned to Mongolia to design a workable network using Incomnet’s satellite network and to develop a detailed project plan. This design and project plan put forward an approach consisting of three key elements;

the development of a detailed business-financial plan showing financial viability of rural access,
the support of technical assistance for the deployment of wireless networks in four rural communities that would provide broadband and VoIP services off the back of Incomnet’s Dial@way satellite network, and
a modest amount of risk capital required to install these four rural community networks.

The project was executed from mid-2006 through mid-2008, with full operations beginning in mid-2007.

The implementation took place in four rural communities: 1) the Saikhan soum of the Bulgan aimag, 2) the Tsengel soum of Bayan-Ulgii aimag, 3) the Chuluut bridge of the Ondor-Ulaan soum in the Arkhangai aimag, and 4) the Tsagaannuur bagh of theTariat soum in the Arkhangai aimag.

The implementation focused predominately on providing voice services via satellite-WiFi-VoIP, with PSTN interconnection. A final phase provided Internet access by placing a limited number of PCs within each of the four communities. For the initial installation an estimated 20-30 WiFi phones were distributed across the rural communities, with more to be added based on local demand.

The Mongolia LMI provided a valuable test-bed of experience, rich with lessons in several key areas for application well beyond Mongolia, including;

Even those living in the most remote areas are capable and willing to pay for telephony services,
The satellite-WiFi-VoIP solution sets is a viable, low-cost approach for delivering voice services into these remote areas, with the added advantage that the network can also deliver broadband Internet access,
The revenue from these rural communities is sufficient to pay for the network, its operations, and interconnection cost, making these profitable business ventures even without universal service funds,
Maintaining these systems in harsh conditions is a significant challenge requiring constant attention, and
The technical & business-financial model is replicable to additional rural communities throughout Mongolia as well as other countries.

The Mongolia LMI project also positioned Incomnet, through the capacity building gained through execution of this project, to aggressively pursue subsequent roll-out of yet additional rural communities being funded in part through the World Bank and the newly established universal service fund.

In many ways the experiences in Mongolia pushed the envelop of both technology and a viable business-financial model, with the conclusion being that there are viable solutions for both. Fortunately there has been significant advancement in lower-cost technical solutions since this project was concluded, that provide even more stable and replicable rural solutions to meet the needs of rural Mongolia, as well as other remote rural communities.

May 24, 2011/by actualize

Tag Archive for: cell phones

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