We explored Khayalitsha with Alan Levin looking for possible Village Telco entrepreneurs and developed criteria for an alpha release of the Village Telco. We also began planning a June workshop development sprint for the Village Telco to be held in Cape Town. All stakeholders including upstream providers are very sold on the idea of an Open Source strategy.

Steve Song met with project leader (Mark Neville) on Cape Town’s Broadband Fibre Initiative and obtained details on Cape Town’s strategy and background documentation along with a list of contacts in other municipalities to follow up with. There is very positive feedback from this initiative which is said to be a world class installation.

Steve also commented on operators’ submission to ICASA looking at their telecommunication policy and arranged to jointly author a submission with Alison Gillwald for presentation by Mark Shuttleworth to PIAC.
We also contacted Ant Brooks of ISPA and Anriette Esterhuysen of APC to discuss the formation of a multi-stakeholder dialogue around telecom policy.

In the News:

• Bringing cheap phone calls to poor communities – Business Day
• The democratisation of telecommunication infrastructure – Network Times

New blog postings:

• Dabba and Village Telco – Getting to Alpha – Defining what is required to get to first base with the Open Source Village Telco project.
• Building the Demand in Print-on-Demand – Exploring a demand aggregation model for Print-on-Demand.
• Open Concepts, Open Patents – A thought experiment to see whether there is scope for a Creative Commons-style license for ideas/concepts as an alternative to patenting.
• The Wisdom of Knowledge Management