The AirJaldi Summit mentioned here last week brought together a lot of people working with low-cost wireless connectivity in Asia. Discussions on the list serve created to follow up on the Summit indicate activity in parts of Latin America as well. Today the New York Times reports on similar networks in Africa in an article entitled "Wireless Technology to Bind an African Village". Nonprofit Inveneo is engineering and deploying solar-powered WiFi networks for NGOs in 18 projects scattered through Uganda and a number of other countries in the region.

These projects show technical feasibility and the social impact of rural connectivity. They also show that rural connectivity can be achieved at very low cost. But they beg the question of scale. And that raises the question—if it’s so low cost to provide rural coverage, and rural communities are so eager for service, why don’t mobile phone companies use WiFi and VOIP to extend their networks inexpensively into rural areas? In Africa, many mobile companies are already using satellite connections as back-haul for their cellular base stations—so it is not much of a stretch to use them to connect up rural WiFi networks, in areas that are too sparsely populated or too remote to justify putting in high cost cellular equipment.

Regulators have pushed for more universal service for years. Now NGOs are showing how to use new technology to accomplish that goal. Isn’t it time for the carriers to step up?

If you've ever wondered what it's like to be doing base of the pyramid work on the ground, you should talk to NextBillion friend and ally Patrick Donohue.  Patrick got his start in the BOP universe as a MBA student of Stuart Hart's, back when Stu was running the Center for Sustainable Enterprise out of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School.  Since graduation, Patrick has worked with the William Davidson Institute (of the University of Michigan) on their Base of the Pyramid work and is an active participant in the BOP Protocol process.  In short – he's part of the who's who of the Base of the Pyramid universe.

Naturally, Patrick is a blogger and a photographer.  Sadly, his BRINQ blog and photostream had been quiet for many months – until last week.  Evidently Patrick's been too busy with his work in Brazil and India to write it up and document with pictures, but he's caught up in style.  I strongly recommend his latest post, Belated Postcards from India and Brazil, to hear first-hand what it's like to work with multinational corporations, NGOs, universities, and others to put the BOP strategy to work.  An excerpt:

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Oxfam International has just published a report, "In the Public Interest: Health, Education and Water and Sanitation For All." One can hardly dispute some its assumptions - it's a scandal that people go without basic services, the money is theoretically there to solve problems, aid policies are often misguided, local governments have often proven incapable, incompetent, corrupt and uncommitted to their own citizens' welfare.  But one can argue with their solution set...it's like going back to the future.   

As I read this report, the private sector is seen as the enemy at worst and a wild beast to be caged at best, the profit motive as antithetical to welfare, and more aid as the solution.  The past and current failures of the public sector in the developing world to make headway in solving these problems for billions of people across all regions are acknowledged but then largely ignored.  The Oxfam doctor's prescription is to throw more money at these self-same entities - but more consistently and in larger amounts. 

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