| Libera o wifi - 15/05/2020 |
| COOLAB |
| Technical Community and Civil Society | The Americas | Brazil |
| During the pandemic, we realized that connectivy needs would go beyond our regular work in community networks. In fact, being forced to stay at home would make more people depend on Internet conectivity to have access to safety, mental health, and basic necessities. The problem is that many people depend on mobile phone internet for messaging, ordering and even paying bill, and in Brazil most of the subscription have data caps (although some providers charge zero ratinhg for some services). Since the data needs increased and the caps didn't, many get to the end of the month disconnected and without funds to buy extra gigabytes. In order to address that, CooLab started a campaign named #liberaowifi - free your wifi - stimulating people with fiber data, adsl or even extra mobile data to share their internet conectivity through wifi connections within the community. To help the people who wanted to help, we created channels on Whatsapp and Telegram giving technical support on how to share their connections and published information about it on social media. We also started a development research on building share box kits: distributable devices that rely on mobile data to create open temporary hotspots inside needy communites such as favelas and rural settlements. |
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Source Link Keywords: wifi, share, community network, inclusion, minorities |