| In East Timore, there is no local phone service to speak of. Most people have cell phones, but they can't afford to use them. That costs 25 cents per minute, for people who earn about a buck and a half per day. That situation is duplicated in developing nations around the world. Australian Amateur Radio Operator David Rowe VK5DGR is part of a group that's trying to change it. They've engineered a local phone system that's cheap to install and almost free to use. It's based on WiFi mesh networking, and it's being tested in South Africa and East Timore. They call it The Village Telco. And it's working. David related the story of the Village Telco at the 2011 ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference, at the Saturday Night Banquet. The DCC is an annual, three-day weekend conference covering digital communications in Amateur Radio. On Saturday night, a banquet features a speaker, usually talking about some personal aspect of their involvement in technology. We present David's story here. David also addressed the conference on his development of CODEC 2, an open-source, low bit-rate vocoder for digital voice in Amateur Radio. That program will be offered soon, along with the rest of the talks at the 2011 DCC. |
