Wi-fi, Internet and other technology issues

Information Society: Voices from the South

Summary of discussions on the topic
'Freedom, rights, laws and ethics'

Prepared by Partha Pratim Sarker
Co-editor, Bytes for All
& Moderator, Information Society Discussion Forum

Time Frame: June 16 to July 31, 2003
Number of Subscribers (Until July 31): 372 members

Main theme line of discussion

2. Freedom, rights, laws and ethics: How to address these issues for Information Society in the South?

Sub-topics:

(2.A.) Community and Freedom
(2.B.) Development and Self-Expression
(2.C.) Issue of Censorship and Self-Censorship
(2.D.) Issue of Patent and Copyright
(2.E.) Wi-fi, Internet and other technology issues
(2.F.) Right to Communicate

Jim McDonnell forwarded a message on the issue of UN promoting Wi-Fi technology to bridge digital divide. The message was actually from BBC web site and is available here.

This debate on Wi-Fi or wireless technologies was particularly relevant to the current theme as many view these developments might provide low cost solution to wireless networking for the rural and under-developed economies. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said that "It is precisely in places where no infrastructure exists that wi-fi can be particularly effective,helping countries to leapfrog generations of telecommunications technology and infrastructure and empower their people."

Guido Sohene pointed out that Wi-Fi technologies can be deregulated, that means people can use freely available frequencies. According to him, Internet grew very fast and has been able to keep going because it is scale free. Scale free means that you cannot organize things to become scale free because the effort of organizing itself limits the scale to which things can grow to. 'Wi-Fi could do the same for networks as the internet did for communications and media. right now, you need to subscribe to an isp. that's a barrier to scale, right there. when you don't need to talk to anyone, can just get up, plug in, and go ahead, then the barrier to scale is removed'.

But Thomas Thichar raised his concern whether Wi Fi can really make any difference as its not the hardware itself but the policy and applications as to how hardware is used and maintained that makes the real difference.

But this concern isn't shared by many others. Mark Nelson described his own connectivity situation while living in Uzbekistan for 14 months and tried to explain why hardware issue can also be important. 'The cost of the service (Internet) was reasonable, and the ISP had modern equipment. However, the telephone and electricity infrastructure was so bad, that it took generally 15-20 minutes to get a connection'. To that situation, he thinks Wi-Fi can provide an effective solution.

Yaacov Illand from Kenya sets up a list of pros, cons and neutral opinions for Wi-Fi technologies. These are:

Pros:

• It's *much* cheaper than other forms of connectivity; proprietary wireless hardware costs about ten times as much, while stringing wire is far more costly.
• It can be set up by individuals and community organisations, not just by commercial service providers

• It doesn't deal well with many densely packed users, though this isn't a problem as far as it's use in development.
• It's finicky stuff, influenced by a lot of factors including the weather.

• It doesn't require a lot of expertise, but it does require some expertise.

Go to other sub-topics:

Information Society: Voices from the South is an online discussion forum run by Digital Opportunity Channel in partnership with Bytes for All. The forum will run until December 2003 and will discuss a number of broad themes related to the emerging information society and the process of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).