Connecting Rural Burma/Myanmar to the Global Village(Community Telecommunication Project)

SOME EXAMPLES AND SOME EFFORTS

THOMAS KHAIPI

#ICT4D

Myanmar in World map

Map of Myanmar(Burma/Birma)Das Land stand seit 1962 unter einer Militärherrschaft, bis diese am 4. Februar 2011 einen zivilen Präsidenten als Staatsoberhaupt einsetzte.

Amtssprache : BirmanischNeue Hauptstadt : NaypyidawStaatsform : RepublikFläche : 676.578 km²Einwohnerzahl : 51.400.00 (Volkszählung 2014)Bevölkerungdichte : 75,97 Einwohner pro km²Unabhängigkeit : 4. Januar 1948 (vom Vereinigten Königreich)Bruttoinlandsprodukt : Total(nominal) : $ 51,925 MilliardenTotal (KKP) : $ 82,679 MilliardenBIP/Einw. (nominal) : $ 832BIP/Einw. (KKP) : $ 1.325

Motivations

Technology is the currency for economic and social developement.

Agenda What is Community WLAN?

Community Development Projects

Goals and Benefits of Wireless Network Project

Technologies Regular Wifi Networks vs MESH Networks

About Open Hardware Project (Village Telco’s Mesh Potato)

Technogies ?? – for ICT4D

Project Locations ( 7 Villages)

Project Status

Risks and Lessons learned

Others advanced technologes and their efforts (Open GSM?)

Conclusion

Discussion

What is Community WLAN(Why Wifi Technology for rural area communication ?)

Community WLAN in Germany?

Freifunk.net –

Freie Netze werden von immer mehr Menschen in Eigenregie aufgebaut und gewartet. Jeder Nutzer im freifunk-Netz stellt

seinen WLAN-Router für den Datentransfer der anderen Teilnehmer zur Verfügung. Im Gegenzug kann er oder sie ebenfalls Daten, wie zum Beispiel Text, Musik und Filme über das interne freifunk-Netz übertragen oder über von Teilnehmern eingerichtete Dienste im Netz Chatten, Telefonieren etc.

Community Development Projects

Educations

Communications

Healthcare

Etc..

Goals and Benefits of Wireless Network Project

Communication Increase communication facilities in isolated rural areas by providing

Free Local VOIP Phone services

Free Internet Services

Video conferencing facilities

Healthcare Establish a tele-hospital in rural health centers

Provide medicals assistances to the villagers through telemedicine program

Education Increase opportunities for School Students

Creating a live tele-teaching program

Providing contents (in local languages??) to the students and villagers

Offline Wikipedia, Khan Academy, http://internet-in-a-box.org/

Business Opportunity

Technologies

Regular Wifi Networks

Wireless repeaters work by taking an existing wireless signal and re-broadcasting it.

Technologies MESH Networking(AdHoc Networking)

- mesh networks see every device on a network directly connected to every other device without the use of a central router or switch.- In a mesh network, data travels from device to device in short hops until it reaches its destination, rather than being directed by a central device.

Technologies MESH Network - Routing protocols for Mobile Network

There are more than 70 competing schemes for routing packets across mesh networks. Some of these include:

B.A.T.M.A.N. (Better Approach To Mobile Adhoc Networking)

OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing protocol / proaktives Routingprotokoll) - RFC 3626

Technologies MESH Network – advantages

Using fewer wires means it costs less to set up a network, particularly for large areas of coverage.

They rely on the same WiFi standards (802.11a, b and g) already in place for most wireless networks.

Mesh networks are "self configuring;" the network automatically incorporates a new node into the existing structure without needing any adjustments by a network administrator.

Mesh networks are "self healing," since the network automatically finds the fastest and most reliable paths to send data, even if nodes are blocked or lose their signal.

Wireless mesh configurations allow local networks to run faster, because local packets don't have to travel back to a central server.

Wireless mesh nodes are easy to install and uninstall, making the network extremely adaptable and expandable as more or less coverage is needed.

Technologies MESH Network – Disadvantages

Complex Routing needed..

Need to store Routing Tabel in each Node

Each Node work as Router, -> 100 % need to run all the time

Higher power consumption on each Node

Technologies About Open Hardware Project (Village Telco’s Mesh Potato)

http://villagetelco.org/

MESH Potato

B.A.T.M.A.N

Gateway Server with Billing System

Entrepreneur

Up stream VOIP and PSTN

modest capital

Technologies B.A.T.M.A.N – Routing Protocol

Distributed intelligence

Every node knows: Available nodes, total metric towards each destination and best next hop for each destination

No Information about the full routing path is necessary. Works well as nodes come and go.

Works well in practice (e.g. 500 node Freifunk network in Berlin,Germany)

Technologies for ICT4D GNU Health (GNU Health is a Free Health and Hospital Information

System)

Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

Hospital Information System (HIS)

Health Information System

OpenMRS

OpenMRS is a collaborative open source project to develop software to support the delivery of health care in developing countries.

SANA.MIT.EDU

Global Health Informatics to Improve Quality of Care

Project LocationsChin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village, Tedim Township, Myanmar

Project LocationsChin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar

Project LocationsChin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar

Project LocationsChin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar

Project LocationsChin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar

Project LocationsChin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar

Project LocationsChin State,Myanmar

Khuasak Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar

Project LocationsChin State,Myanmar

Road to the Siyin Valley and Thuklai Village main road, Tedim Township, Myanmar

Project LocationsChin State,Myanmar

Voklak Village, Tedim Township, Myanmar

Project Status

9 active WLAN AP in Thuklai Village

All these APs need to replace with

Mesh networking Technology

Risks and lessons learned

What can go wrong?

What happens when the trainers goes home? Train the Community to fix problmes

Focus on keeping network running

Train many people, not just one expert

Sustainable Strategy/Plans ? Is there Project Transparency?

How can we make the network more reliable? Electricity problems, etc..

Do we need special licence for 2.4 and 5.0 Ghz frequency bands in Myanmar/Burma?

Others advanced technologes and their efforts (Open GSM?) R H I Z O M A T I C A – Mobile Communications for All, Oaxaca

Village, Mexico

UC Berkeley’s Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER) research group Deliver Low Cost Cellular Service to Rural Indonesia

Billige Mobilfunk-Boxen für abgelegene Regionen, Heise.de Online

Conclusion

The project is unfortunately finished yet to the full. However, we have been able to see many efforts from it. Many villagers and school students can now have acces to internet and get a lot of information from our local content server (Offline Wikipedia, Khan Academy Learnings Meterials etc..).

With this project, we also have aimed and created the local free voip telephone system, which serves for and gives a huge advantage to all the villager.

References:

http://villagetelco.org/ - Village Telco Open Hardware project

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking - Mesh Networking

wireless.ictp.it/publications.html - Telecommunications/ICT4D Laboratory - The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics

http://wndw.net/index.html - Handbook for WIRELESS NETWORKING IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD -