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Discussion |
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Providing a remote rural community with Internet access can be a challenge at the best of times. If the intended target audience does not have access to telephones or any of the other traditional telecommunications infrastructures, the challenge becomes even greater. The Information and Communications Unit of the CSIR (icomtek) did just that in a project in Manguzi, a rural community in South Africa's KwaZulu Natal province. |
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The initial part of the project consisted of the establishment of a Telecentre in the centre of town. The Telecentre offers various services, amongst which is Internet access (web browsing and e-mail) using a dial-up link. It should be mentioned that the area is characterised by a near total absence of a telecommunications infrastructure and that this is one of the few telephone lines in the area.The community's desire was that the facilities offered at the Telecentre should be available to the |
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| Manguzi community centre | |
| largest possible audience, including the students. However, walking (cars are an extreme luxury, there is no public transport such as busses and trains, most people don't even own a bicycle) the 5km to the Telecentre on a regular basis was not practical. | |
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At a community workshop we were approached by one of the headmasters with a request to connect his school to the Telecentre, in order for his students to have access to the facilities from his school, eliminating the need to walk to the Telecentre. There are unusual challenges in providing Internet connectivity to a sparsely populated rural community separated by vast distances from the nearest urban development. We soon found that for various reasons the "normal" solutions (telephone, cellular telephone, VSAT, ISDN, Leased Lines, spread spectrum technologies) weren't appropriate in this situation. An additional requirement was that the solution implemented should be cheap, suited to the specific regulatory and geographic environment, robust and suitable for a particular application, namely web browsing and e-mail. The solution we implemented consisted of a combination of radio communication and satellite broadcast technology. Two schools were identified by the community to participate in this project. Each school was provided with a computer. Attached to this computer is a radio with its antenna, as well as a satellite receiver card and DSB dish. The Telecentre has a small local area network and serves as the hub of the network because it already has Internet access. A computer was connected to the Telecentre network to act as router. This machine has an Ethernet card installed and a radio connected. |
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| Shayina High School | Mapula Senior Primary School |
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When a user at one of the schools wants to access the Internet, the request is relayed to the Telecentre via the radio link where a Unix fileserver dials on demand to execute the request. The requested information is then downloaded directly to the user's PC using satellite broadcasting technology. The solution is feasible due to the asymmetric nature of the data requirements of Internet applications. In addition to providing the schools with the infrastructure, the teachers were also trained in how to use a computer, utilise the Internet as educational tool and to contact colleagues using e-mail. |
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| Objectives | |
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The main reason for the introduction of ICTs to Manguzi was to facilitate access to opportunities and information. We also wanted to create a local ICT capacity by training young people nominated by the community to support and manage the Telecentre and schools network. They are also capable of training other members of the community to make productive use of the facilities. To make a tangible difference in the lives of learners and teachers in an area where |
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| Community members recieve training | |
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educational support is extremely hard to come by. To use the Internet as a means of training teachers and to enable collaboration and sharing of learning between them. This project is unique / innovative because of the combination of existing technologies used to provide Internet access to the schools, as well as the very low cost of the implementation per |
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| school. In addition the monthly recurring cost to the schools is nil. This is due to the fact that the radio link between the schools and the Telecentre does not cost anything. The cost of the telephone call from the Telecentre to the ISP is covered by the income generated by the Telecentre's activities. This project was implemented in a very poor area. Had money not been an issue we could have installed VSAT at each of the schools. | |
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| Learners in training | |
| Outputs and Benefits | |
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