The South African Government has launched a drive to provide Telecentres
to communities and Internet access to schools. The Telecentres are normally
centrally located with respect to clusters of schools and other community
services. In the context of this drive, a Telecentre was established in
Manguzi, a remote town in the KwaZulu Natal province in South Africa. The
surrounding schools did not benefit from this centre due to the inappropriate
distance between the schools and Telecentre. In addition, the schools could
not be connected to Internet directly due to the absence of telephones. In
this case study we will show that existing "off-the-shelf" technologies were
not applicable to the specific situation and hence there was a need for a new
solution.
There are unusual challenges in providing Internet connectivity to a
"sparsely" populated rural community separated by vast distances from nearest
urban development. This case study details how we combined existing Internet
access technologies to overcome various obstacles such as the lack of existing
telecommunications infrastructure, remoteness of area, as well as political
and economic issues. Furthermore the solution implemented had to be cheap,
suited to the specific regulatory and geographic environment, robust and
suitable for a particular application, namely Web browsing and e-mail.
We used the asymmetric nature of the data requirements of the specific
applications to our advantage, using radio links and satellite broadcast
technology to provide the required connectivity. We will discuss the expected
merits of the new solution and its implementation. We will also present our
practical findings and discuss how it compared to our expectations.
Similar needs and situations exist in other parts of the world,
especially those that have a lack of telecommunications infrastructure, very
remote rural areas that are very sparsely populated. We hope that the outputs
of this paper can contribute to the technology decisions of people responsible
for rolling out Internet infrastructure in similar environments.
Contents
Introduction
Background
Problems and
Requirement Specifications
Methodology
Implementation
Findings
Conclusions and
Further Work
Introduction
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 (Mikomtek) did just that in a project in
Manguzi, a rural community in South Africa's KwaZulu Natal province. The
initial part of the project consisted of the establishment of a Telecentre in
the centre of town. The community's desire was that the facilities offered at
the Telecentre should be available to the 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
five kilometres to the Telecentre on a regular basis was not practical. 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. In this paper I hope to show why the "normal" solutions weren't
appropriate in this situation. The challenge lay in devising a cheap, robust
and legal solution.
Background
Manguzi
Manguzi is a rural community in the Maputaland region of the KwaZulu Natal
province of South Africa. It is situated about 15 kilometres south of the
Mozambique border en route to the Ponto Do Ouro border post.
Figure 1: Map of Manguzi and environments
The area is 60 square kilometres in size with about 100,000 inhabitants.
The people are very poor, most are subsistence farmers. Maputaland offers
subtropical and tropical climate zones, and embraces an ecological diversity -
both terrestrial and marine - that makes it one of the most a popular
ecotourism destinations in South Africa. It has a largely pristine coastline
with coral reefs, estuaries, lakes systems, forests and rugged mountains. In
the past it has been sheltered from major human intrusion by the tsetse fly
and malaria and has therefore remained relatively sparsely populated and
unknown (and underdeveloped). The biggest tourist attraction is the Kosi Bay
nature reserve, which is renowned for its remoteness and unspoiled beauty.
During the last couple of years, ecocultural tourism has become an important
means of sustainable rural development in the area. A number of projects are
underway in the area to promote ecotourism among which is the introduction of
Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) in the form of a Telecentre.
Telecentre
The community runs various projects, one of which is the Telecentre. The
Telecentre was established with the help of the CSIR's Information and
Communications Technology Unit (Mikomtek) and has been operational since
September 1998. A big problem in the area is the near complete absence of a
communications infrastructure. Most homes and businesses don't have telephones
and an Internet Café is unheard of. The Telecentre is situated in the centre
of town and its purpose is to address this lack of telecommunications
infrastructure by providing IT and telecom services to the community. It
consists of two parts:
- A phone shop with five telephone booths and a fax machine; and
- The IT component,which consists of a local area network with eight
Windows 98 personal computers and a FreeBSD file server. It is connected to
the Internet with a dial-up analog connection, which dials on demand, as a
user on the network requests Internet access. They also provide services
such as word processing, scanning, printing, photocopying, etc.
Since its establishment the community has actively used the services
offered by the Telecentre.
Problems and Requirement Specifications
Recognizing the potential of the Internet as information source, Mikomtek
was requested by a headmaster of one of the schools in the area to connect his
school to the Telecentre to enable his students to utilize the facilities
there, specifically the Internet.
In a well-developed telecommunications infrastructure the solution would
have been trivial: install a modem, open an account with an Internet Service
Provider and you're connected. In a remote rural area, far removed from urban
development and telecommunications infrastructure, this request was not so
simple, for the following reasons:
1. Underdeveloped telecommunications
infrastructure:
- The vast majority of homes and businesses in the area do not have
telephones. A couple of public telephones are available in the town itself,
but due to the absence of transport, are not freely accessible to anybody
outside the town. Imaging having to walk many hours or even days to make a
telephone call!
- Although cellular coverage is available, it is very patchy and
unreliable. Due to the high cost associated with ownership it is not an
option for most of the local inhabitants and exists mainly to serve
tourists.
- High bandwidth services such as ISDN, VSAT and leased lines are not
available.
2. Of the 71 schools in the vicinity of Manguzi only three have electricity
and none have telephones available to connect to either the Internet or the
Telecentre.
3. The funds available for installation of the required infrastructure were
extremely limited. The reasons for this were that unemployment stands at 85%
and the area is predominantly agriculturally-based and under a tribal
authority.
4. The solution therefore, had to be cheap and preferably not involve
recurring monthly costs.
5. For a variety of reasons, which will be explained later, none of the
traditional telecommunications infrastructures were suitable.
6. Telco (Telkom) monopoly.
7. In South Africa, rural tribal authority politics combined with our
particular legislation and historical inequalities in access provision makes
for an interesting and risky mix.
Methodology
1. Obtain community buy-in and co-operation.
Even more important than
choosing the most appropriate technology is the co-operation with and buy-in
from the community. Together with the community a pilot project was launched
with the aim of exploring the various options available to provide Internet
access to the schools.
2. Identify schools as partners for the project.
Two schools - Shayina
Secondary School with 1,002 students and Maputa Senior Primary School with 450
students - were nominated to participate. They were ideal for a couple of
reasons:
- Both have electricity;
- They are close enough to the Telecentre (3 - 5 km) to make for easy
access to both sites during the installation and testing phases; and,
- Despite being relatively close to the Telecentre, the schools did not
have line of sight to the Telecentre, enabling us to properly test the
solution installed.
3. Identify possible solutions and test suitability.
In deciding how to
connect the schools to the Internet, we explored the various traditional
methods available (more detail later in the paper) and came to the conclusion
that none of these were suitable. The first choice would have been to install
access technology directly at the schools. This was not possible either
because of limited financial resources or because the technology was
unavailable. The Telecentre had a dial-up link to the Internet and the
required infrastructure (account with an ISP, modem, file server, trained
manager capable of providing the necessary support) and it was decided that
the easiest option would be to utilize this link to provide Internet
connectivity to the schools. We then had to find a way to connect the schools
to the Telecentre network.
4. Establish relationships with relevant partners.
This was largely
dictated by the technology chosen.
- Maputaland Development and Information Centre (MDIC): Community
organization and owner of the Telecentre;
- WBS: Existing Mikomtek partner. Black empowerment company (necessity to
conduct successful business in post apartheid South Africa) in possession of
a license roll out a wireless network.
- Siyanda: Satellite Broadcasting ISP. Already involved in providing
Internet to rural schools.
5. Technology options and considerations.
We investigated various
options to connect the two schools to the Telecentre. These options with
associated comments are given in Table 1.
| Option |
Comment |
| Telephone lines |
Not available |
| Cellular telephone |
Coverage not ubiquitous. Reception very unreliable. |
| Two-way VSAT |
Installation and monthly costs too expensive. |
| Spread spectrum radio solutions |
Requires line-of-sight but the two schools are not visible
from the Telecentre. License required. |
| ISDN |
Not available |
| Satellite Internet Broadcast |
High-speed Internet downloads via satellite uses telephone
line for the back channel to the Internet. No license required. |
| Low Frequency Radios |
Normally used for telemetry - are limited to very low
bit-rates. Attractive option because a partner company had a license and
line-of-sight isn't a problem. |
Table 1: Link options investigated to provide Internet
connectivity
An important consideration to keep in mind in the choice of solution was
that in South Africa, the Telco (Telkom) has a monopoly on fixed telephony
until 2003. This results in most independent and innovative solutions
(especially wireless solutions) running foul of legislation.
Implementation
As explained earlier, the Telecentre's dial-up analog connection was the
only available "entry point" into the Internet. In some way the schools had to
be connected to the Telecentre in such a way that they could access the
Internet on demand. The solution we implemented combined a variety of
"off-the-shelf" solutions, which on their own were not suitable.
Radio only solution
Mikomtek has a relationship with a black empowerment company with a South
African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA) approved license to
operate a mobile data network in the 420 MHz frequency band. We decided to
investigate the feasibility of using their radios to connect the schools to
the Telecentre. If someone at the school is interested in browsing the Web or
reading e-mail, the Unix server at the Telecentre dials on demand. We provided
each school with a PC, radio and antenna (Yagi). At the Telecentre one of the
Windows PCs acted as router. This PC was connected to the Telecentre Local
Area Network and also to a radio. Figure 2 provides a diagrammatic
representation of the network. The radios emulate a network card, enabling us
to run TCP/IP over the link. We managed to connect the schools to the
Telecentre and also access the Internet.
Figure 2: Configuration with radios only
We ran into a problem however. The radios used were telemetry radios, with
a maximum bandwidth of 4200 baud. This configuration was suitable for e-mail
but not for Web browsing. We had to find another way of downloading Web pages
to the PCs at the schools.
Radio combined with satellite broadcast
The asymmetric communications requirements of Internet applications could
be used to solve the problem. The eventual solution deployed combined
Satellite Internet Broadcasting with the radio network. The radio link via the
Telecentre is used for the uplink path (in place of a telephone line) and the
satellite is used to download Web content directly to the PC at the school.
Figure 3 provides a diagrammatic representation of the network combining the
two technologies. Satellite receivers are usually capable of receiving data at
much higher rates than what is possible via normal telephone lines. Siyanda
was selected as the Satellite ISP. Siyanda makes use of the PAS-7 satellite
whose Ku-band footprint covers the whole of Southern Africa. Their data
receiver is compliant with MPEG-2 DVB digital TV. The ordinary 90 cm Digital
Satellite Broadcasting (DSB) satellite dishes are used for reception. Requests
from clients are sent to Siyanda via Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) over
MWeb's (a local ISP) terrestrial infrastructure. Distribution of data is this
fashion is permitted under the Broadcasting Act of 1999.
The equipment required at each site is as follows:
| 1. Schools |
2. Telecentre |
| Radio |
Radio |
| Yagi antenna |
Omni-directional antenna |
| Satellite receiver card |
Connection to Telecentre LAN |
| DSB dish |
|
Figure 3 depicts the equipment used and provides a short description of
each.
Figure 3: Equipment used
Figure 4: Combined radio and satellite broadcast
network
Here is an explanation of how the system operates. Refer to figure 4
above.
- A pupil at Shayina Secondary School wants to access a Web page.
- The PC forwards the request to the PC acting as radio base & router
at the Telecentre, using the low speed radio link.
- The radio base & router forwards the request to the Unix file
server.
- Unix server makes a dial-up connection to the closest ISP POP: Siyanda
makes use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to tunnel their private
network's traffic across the public network of M-Web (a local ISP).
- The Unix file server forwards the request to a VPN server on the Siyanda
network. At the same time it loads a virtual adapter that connects to the
VPN server on the Siyanda network. The Unix file server needs to become part
of the Siyanda network before it can forward data requests to the Siyanda
network.
- The VPN server receives the request from the Unix server and forward the
request to the Siyanda proxy server.
- The proxy server requests the Web page, somewhere in the Internet, on
behalf of the PC at Shayina.
- The Siyanda proxy server receives a response from the Web server, and
forwards the response to the requesting PC at the school. The response
delivered using the high-speed satellite link, directly to the PC.
The total cost including personal computers are estimated at $2,300 for the
Telecentre and $3,000 per rural site. Refer to table 3 for a breakdown of
costs. The advantage of this solution is the fact that the bulk of the costs
are a once off. The recurring monthly cost is minimal ($40). In the case of
Manguzi, an arrangement was made between the schools and the Telecentre that
these costs will be funded from the profit made by the Telecentre.
| Item |
Unit Cost |
Comment |
| DSB Dish |
$200 |
At least one required per site |
| Usage cost (100 Mbytes download) |
$40 / month |
|
| Radio modem |
$900 |
One required per remote site and a shared one for the
Telecentre. (Adding more sites does not require additional equipment at
the Telecentre) |
| Installation |
$400 - $1200 |
1 - 3 man-days per site needed to determine suitable sites
for antennas, positioning and fixtures, etc. Variable "rural" surprises
may also feature |
Table 2: Cost of installation
Findings
- The main reason for the introduction of Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) to Manguzi was to facilitate access to opportunities and
information. It is succeeding in this mission. The members of the community
are actively using the facilities offered by the Telecentre to do word
processing, desktop publishing, send and receive e-mail, surf the Web and
perform numerous other activities.
- In the configuration as for the pilot project - which consisted of one
PC at each school connecting to the Internet - the performance can roughly
be compared to the experience of an Internet user with a 9.6 kbps dial-up
connection. This is much slower than the 30Kbit/s expected and can probably
be attributed to the extremely slow uplink.
- Training teachers in the utilization of ICT in education accompanied the
introduction of the technology to the schools. This was done in cooperation
with the KwaZulu Natal Education Department and SchoolNet SA (a NGO with a
Government brief to introduce Internet into South African schools).
Teachers, who had never seen a PC before, moved to basic Web literacy over a
week. However, skills degenerate if there isn't regular use and therefore,
professional development of teachers using the Internet has to go hand in
hand with establishing professional networks and support groups between
teachers in Manguzi and elsewhere.
- One of the biggest hurdles to overcome during this project was not
technological in nature, but related to community support and the politics
surrounding access provision. In South Africa, rural tribal authority
politics combined with our particular legislation and historical
inequalities in access provision makes for an interesting and risky mix. It
is important to introduce technology with the full buy-in and understanding
of the community. Everybody concerned should be realistic about what can and
cannot be achieved with the introduction of ICT; it is not an instant cure
all ills.
- Technical support for this project was a major challenge. Because of the
remoteness of Manguzi (minimum 8 hours by car, or 2 hours by airplane) it
was not possible to "jump in the car" and go to the site when something went
wrong. The project had to be planned in the finest detail and thoroughly
tested before being rolled out at Manguzi. Furthermore it is important to
have a person on site that is able to do at least first line support. The
solution (hardware and software configuration) must be extremely robust and
able to stand up to the rigors of rural life.
Conclusions and further work
This project proved to be a bigger challenge than initially expected. The
team learnt a lot about innovative use of technology, but even more about the
social and cultural aspects that accompany the introduction of ICT in rural
South Africa. We also saw the difference access to information can make in
peoples' lives. This project was limited to one PC at each of two schools. The
schools are also quite close to the Internet access point. Developments are
underway to increase the number of PCs supported at the remote site, the
distances that can be covered and performance. Rollout will be in a cellular
fashion with "base stations" - which will serve as the Internet access point -
each with their own "outstations".
About the Author
Ronel Smith is the Manager of Connectivity Business at e-tek (Pty) Ltd, the
commercialization vehicle of CSIR Information and Communication Technology.
The aim of this group is to be a "vibrant hothouse for new digital start-up
businesses". Ms. Smith has ten years of experience in IT and
telecommunications with a specific interest in broadband communications. She
has been involved in projects ranging from the design and implementation of a
wireless rural network to a large ATM network at one of South Africa's largest
universities.
E-mail: ronel.smith@mikom.csir.co.za
Editorial history
Paper received 8 September 2000; accepted 27 September 2000.
A version of this paper was presented at INET2000, Yokohama, Japan, in July
2000.
Copyright ©2000, First
Monday
Overcoming Regulatory and Technological Challenges To Bring Internet Access
To a Sparsely Populated, Remote Area by Ronel Smith
First Monday, volume 5,
number 10 (October 2000),
URL:
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_10/smith/index.html
