[Telecentres] WanderPod Brings Wi-Fi Anywhere

[Don Cameron]

That is an interesting article Andy... Who says a Telecentre must be in a
building? A trailer, caravan, bus, old shipping container on a truck...
there are a great many varieties of portable Telecentre plying the worlds'
hard to reach places. I know it's a digression from our purpose but you
might like the following account from Ratanakiri; why use a trailer when you
can just as easily use a motorbike? Admittedly the bikes don't carry a
satellite dish (yet)...


TECHNOLOGY-CAMBODIA: Ingenious Efforts Widen Road to Information

"Every morning, 'motomen' aboard donated motorcycles with Wi-Fi-equipped
boxes ply five different routes around the province, starting from the
central hub located at the Ezra Vogel School behind the provincial hospital
in Banlung to collect e-mail from the satellite dish. 

Passing by one village school to the next, the e-mailmen transmit the
downloaded messages and retrieve outgoing mail. At the end of the day, they
return to Banlung to hand over collected e-mails and web search queries for
the satellite hub to relay to the Internet. 

Encouraged by the initial success, plans are afoot to deploy the Internet
Village Motoman Project to AAfC/JRfC's network of 250 schools all over
Cambodia, including places like Pailin in western Cambodia, a former
stronghold of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. 

Our focus is really on remote, isolated areas largely underserved by
government," says Nuon So Thero, AAfC/JRfC country director. In a country
heavily dependent on foreign aid, the Internet Village Motoman Project is
helping address the digital divide in Cambodia's emerging information
society.

Full story: http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=25467

Rgds, Don