Long distance WiFi

My friend from UC Berkeley, Sonesh Surana, recently completed the deployment of a pilot project based on their research on long-distance WiFi links for Aravind Eye Hospital at Theni in Tamil Nadu, India. Remote medical services can now be delivered to many more people easily. The project has been a great success, and plans are underway to deploy it in other states, and create many more service clinics.

Melissa, also from TIER, gave a pointer to a company called Inveneo, that have set up similar long distance WiFi systems for VoIP and Internet access in Uganda.

Other similar initiatives are mentioned in this article from the NY Times. Yet another project, Green-WiFi, wants to produce under 200$ solar powered WiFi routers.