Activity Description: Villagers in Cambodia, Costa Rica, Rwanda, Paraguay and India are getting connected to the global network, using technology from Massachusetts-based First Mile Solutions. FMS' DakNet technology provides connectivity to villages through a unique drive-by WiFi technique. The project provides e-mail addresses, phone services and web capability to individual villagers. While they are not always connected to the network, villagers can access them any time to write e-mail, record messages or conduct web searches. Every day, a vehicle drives slowly into the village, uploading stored data and downloading them to the central machines. When the vehicle returns to the base station, data are uploaded to a satellite and can be sent anywhere in the world.
Activity Update: FMS now reaches 40,000 villagers through its various projects and is unrolling its first local branch in India. The company plans to spend $30 million over the next six years to reach India's market capacity of 220,000 villages. After the start-up phase is complete, this system will be entirely financed by private investment and profits from low service fees. For the purpose of spreading United Villages services to other countries where operations are not currently active, the company has begun offering a franchise service open to qualified entrepreneurs.
FMS has three major future projects in the pipeline. They plan to utilize cellular networks to transfer data to their customers, eliminating the need for most Fixed Access Points. The company also plans to begin offering a private internet currency service whereby users may purchase goods using credit from their prepaid United Villages accounts. Finally, FMS is in preliminary talks with major search engine providers to create innovative new caching technology that would essentially offer many internet services in an offline format.