Telecommunication

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

Telecommunications

What we do in this area:

“The cost of bandwidth in Africa poses a barrier to the continent’s effective participation in international trade and the knowledge economy, while limiting local markets and education. Without adequate bandwidth Africa runs the risk of being left behind in the global race. The Shuttleworth Foundation is, therefore, actively investing in a project portfolio that will contribute towards solving bandwidth limitations in the African context.”

This month’s highlights:

To democratisation the telecommunication infrastructure Steve Song have began publicising and promoting Village Telco model used by Dabba in explaining the concept and actively engaging with the African wireless networking community to build support for Village Telco concept. Discussions have also began with the CSIR, Cisco, and IT46 to lay the groundwork for a collaborative Open Source, VillageTelco initiative and much excitement is being stirred. David Rowe comments:

‘…key to large scale roll out is just 1 successful business. People are reluctant to innovate, but happy to copy.

Now that the business model side has been nailed I have nothing to do for the rest of this year ‘

Exciting times indeed – just imagine communities controlling their own communications in this way, a really inspiring way to join the knowledge economy!

To help drive ‘Connected Cities’ we have made contact with project leader for Cape Town’s Dark Fibre initiative and arrange to meet to discuss progress to date and opportunities for the Foundation

Alison Gillwald has been working with us to drive the Telecommunication Policy piece of our work. We have agreed on strategy to make interventions at ICASA hearings over the next year. Breaking into policy groups, and gaining traction from great ideas posed is proving more and more problematic as industry ’seals’ the decision making process. We are hoping to ensure they become more open and transparent.

In the process of building the networks, we have been meeting with people such as Goltz Wessman from Fastcomm and Elma Philanthropies.

Bandile Sikwane from iWeek and Jennigay Coetzer from Business Day, both did interviews and reports on Steve’s view of the industry, you can also find Steve’s commentary on this blog. On all subject from reforms happening in Kenya to the death of WiFi!