[governance] A 50-Watt Cellular Network

[McTim]

Compare this with the village telco model (www.villagetelco.org),
where profits are kept in rural and informal settlements instead of
all going to a telco.

Mesh potato beta unit draws 2.47 Watts at 12.3 Volts with radio on,
phone on hook, Ethernet and Batman running (3 nodes), ssh remote shell
connected via wireless. When the phone is off hook the power
consumption increases to 3.26 Watts.

Running gear on sunshine is nothing new either, but this may be the
1st crack at mass production of fully contained solar systems.

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel



On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 3:57 PM, Yehuda Katz <yehudakatz at mailinator.com> wrote:
> A 50-Watt Cellular Network
> Solar-powered base stations can link up remote rural areas.
> By David Talbot | Wednesday, February 10, 2010
>
> Art. Ref.:
> http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=24511&channel=communications&section=#
>
> Print:
> http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=24511&channel=communications&section=#
> -
>
> An Indian telecom company is deploying simple cell phone base stations that
> need as little as 50 watts of solar-provided power. It will soon announce plans
> to sell the equipment in Africa, expanding cell phone access to new ranks of
> rural villagers who live far from electricity supplies.
>
> Over the past year, VNL, based in Haryana, India, has reengineered traditional
> cellular base stations to create one that only requires between 50 and 120
> watts of power, supplied by a solar-charged battery. The components can be
> assembled and booted up by two people and mounted on a rooftop in six hours.
>
> One such station--dubbed a "village station"--can handle hundreds of users.
> Groups of such village stations feed signals to a required larger VNL base
> station within five kilometers. In turn that larger station, which is also
> solar-powered, relays signals to the main network. The village station can turn
> a profit even if customers spend on average only $2 a month on the service,
> instead of the $6 required to make traditional systems cost-effective, the
> company says.
>
> "We've scaled down the cost, the energy, and the equipment so that almost
> anybody can deploy it," says Rajiv Mehrotra, VNL's CEO. "It lends itself to
> many business models that can serve the bottom of the pyramid," a reference to
> the roughly 1.5 billion rural people who do not have access to electricity
> grids around the world.
>
> To date, some 50 VNL base stations have been installed in the Indian state of
> Rajasthan, introducing thousands of people to cell phone service for the first
> time. An African rollout is imminent, the company says, without elaborating.
> The initial batch of 50 stations supports only voice calls, not text or data, a
> decision mainly based on the fact that many of the new users may not be able to
> read or write.
>
> Besides enabling basic communication, cell phones can provide enormous
> financial opportunities for rural people, especially if those people adopt
> services that provide banking and lending via cell phone. More than half of
> India's 1.1 billion people lack any access to basic financial services, and
> instead pay usurious rates to local loan sharks. Furthermore, while
> microlending can lift people from poverty, only about 150 million people
> worldwide use such services. Expanded cell networks, together with banking
> programs geared to the rural poor, could change all of that.
>
> The base station rollouts are "incredibly empowering for the world's remote and
> low-income masses," says Valerie Rozycki, head of strategic initiatives at
> mChek, a mobile-payment platform based in Bangalore that is unconnected with
> VNL.
>
> Expanding cell networks in many rural areas comes down to the availability of
> sufficient electricity to power base stations. Existing off-the-grid base
> stations in India require expensive diesel generators. "The cost is substantial
> enough to make many rural markets unprofitable and therefore unwired," says
> Ethan Zuckerman, cofounder of Global Voices, an aggregator and promoter of
> blogging worldwide. "Solutions that reduce the cost of building a base station
> are helpful, and those that reduce the costs of powering a base station are
> crucial."
>
> Russell Southwood, CEO of Balancing Act, a London-based telecom and Internet
> consultancy focused on Africa, says low-energy, self-sufficient solutions will
> be key to expanding cellular access further in the developing world. "Energy
> costs are particularly high, as [base-station] sites often have two generators
> and some have three months' supply of fuel," he says. "Anything that cuts fuel
> costs is bound to be attractive to operators, and it's also a more sustainable,
> green approach to communications."
>
> But while VNL has optimized its unit for rural areas, it is not the only
> company making low-cost, low-power base stations. "We are seeing a trend toward
> commoditization" in the cellular industry, says Ray Raychaudhuri, director of
> WinLab, a wireless research laboratory at Rutgers University. "Where it was
> traditionally vertically integrated, you are seeing that break down into
> something that looks more like a Wi-Fi architecture, where you can buy a box
> and install it."
>
>
> Article Links:
>
> Rajiv Mehrotra, CEO, Haryana, India
> http://www.vnl.in/
>
> Valerie Rozycki, mChek
> http://main.mchek.com/
>
> Ethan Zuckerman, cofounder of Global Voices
> http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/
>
> Russell Southwood, CEO of Balancing Act:
> http://www.balancingact-africa.com/about.html
>
> Ray Raychaudhuri, director of WinLab
> http://www.winlab.rutgers.edu/
>
>
> Copyright Technology Review 2010.
>
> ---
>
> -30-
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