More on rural communication (Except from email by Arun Mehta)

A country renowned as an IT superpower imports almost all of its telecom. The one significant exception has been Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, and the team around him. Those who are familiar with the subject know, however, how many years he lost, trying to convince the government to allow him to deploy the technology nationwide. In fact, even after the earthquake in Bhuj, when the destruction of telecom facilities seriously compounded the disaster, they weren't allowing him to deploy CorDECT phones, and it needed string-pulling at a political level to get them to stop dragging their feet.

Telecom was once an industry sector, in which the rate of technological development was determined by how slowly lawyers at the ITU could hammer out international agreements. Lately, however, the pace has picked up considerably, and soon, we will see in telecom the furious pace of change we see in the computer world. The reason why this is critical to Mission 2007, is that some of these technologies could dramatically cut our budget for providing access. Instead of only reaching 100,000 villages, we could reach all 600,000, for the same amount of money, or we could divert some funds to our efforts in providing services, training, etc.

As an illustration, let me briefly describe two exciting technologies I saw at whatthehack last month, which was an international hacker conference in Holland that takes place every four years.

One of these is GNU Radio, http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/doc/exploring-gnuradio.html
The mobile phones we use are actually computers, but the companies that make them keep tight control over what you can do with them. For instance, they essentially prevent phones from talking directly to each other, even when they are within range. Instead, they must communicate via a central exchange, which may be a long distance away. GNU Radio is, essentially a completely open radio, with two transmitters and two receivers that can operate at any frequency upto 2+ GHz that can operate simultaneously. In addition, much of the complex techie stuff has been encapsulated in software modules various people have written, so even those without sophisticated telecom knowhow can develop telecom solutions.

There are myriad uses to which this device can be put, a few of which are listed in the document cited above, but from a rural perspective, here is what I imagine: you go to a village with your CDMA phone, the GNU radio detects that and automatically downloads from a PC the software needed to talk to it: You can now start to make Internet telephony calls through your CDMA phone! The same, of course, applies to a GSM phone irrespective of the frequency band it works in. Simultaneously, the same GNU radio could do WiFi for long-distance connectivity.

This device isn't expensive: I almost bought one for 400 Euros, of course in larger quantities the price would come down significantly. Now that smart programmers have such hardware in their hands, many amazing applications are expected, for instance a receiver that can simultaneously pick up and record a dozen FM radio channels.

http://wiki.whatthehack.org/index.php/Wifi_over_500_km%3F_Impossible%3F describes my second example, a project in Equador, where with inexpensive, off the shelf harware, they have been able to communicate good quality voice at distances of a thousand km, even with moving vehicles! The antennas are only a few meters above ground, so the huge expense we would otherwise incur in setting up masts would be saved (not to mention increased robustness during disasters) This technology is excellent for broadcasting. A radio station to cover such distances would cost tens of crores of rupees. Since a GNU radio could also take care of this application, you would only need to add, in each village, a low power FM transmitter costing a few hundred rupees, and you would have the same reach! This solution would, in addition, allow the village, as necessary, to delink the local transmitter from the big one, and discuss its own affairs, so we would be, for far less money than it costs Prasar Bharati to set up a single FM transmitter, be setting up one large station, and thousands of small ones. If anyone wants further information on this, I have a 5 MB pdf that I would be happy to mail you.

Talking of low power FM, please do take a look at http://www.india-gii.org/wiki/index.php/LPFMDelicensing . An AM/FM radio is the only telecommunications device the poor can afford. While in the city, you and I routinely use cordless microphones, which are FM transmitters, the government goes to great lengths to prevent people in villages from using transmitters of equal power. For two and a half years, we have been trying to talk to the ministry of IT, in particular the WPC, to find out why they take this bizarre stand, and except for a couple of two-line responses, they haven't even replied to our letters.

Is it any wonder then, that we continue to import telecom technology, even when the most expensive part, the software inside, was written in India. Once, we fought the British, because they exported our cotton, processed it, and sold it back to us. What a pity, that our bureaucrats force us to do the same in a sector that is even more important for poor people today.