[wsfii-discuss] Economic Sustainability of Community Wireless

[Vickram Crishna]

We would be very poor advocates of the power of
internetworking if each one of us had perforce to
attend every meeting!

Not that I don't want to be there <slavering><thanks
very much for the suggestion>, but much better if the
money can be spent toward doing/testing/demonstrating
what I outlined.

--- jeff buderer <jeff at onevillagefoundation.org>
wrote:

> Vickram,
> 
> Thanks for your thoughts and support.
> 
> It would good if we could arrange funding to have
> attend the summit and
> present a session under this specific theme.
> 
> Are there any possibilities for this?
> 
> Actually the grant we in the process of getting will
> have a provision
> for radio and Kafui has used local radio to provide
> information about
> AIDS prevention for example. 
> 
> Even if you cannot attend I do feel it is important
> to discuss this
> topic and so possibly we could design a session
> around this and find an
> alternate person to present this at the session?
> 
> I know that this would be of real interest to our
> Partner Commonwealth
> of Learning www.col.org. Possibly we could discuss
> with them the
> possibility of providing some funding to have you
> come to Ghana and not
> only present but set up a workshop before or after
> the Summit? I will
> discuss this with Kafui privately.
> 
> Jeff
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wsfii-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org
> [mailto:wsfii-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On
> Behalf Of Vickram
> Crishna
> Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 9:13 PM
> To: Discuss list on the World Summit on Free
> Information Infrastructure
> Subject: RE: [wsfii-discuss] Economic Sustainability
> of Community
> Wireless
> 
> For some areas* it is very important to combine the
> installation of data networking with very local
> radio
> (FM) that costs peanuts in hardware terms to
> establish. 
> 
> In fact, the technology is completely rudimentary,
> and
> it is in learning ways and means to use such local
> radio effectively that the sharing of experiences
> from
> different parts of the world has meaning. 
> 
> I had much earlier suggested the inclusion of a
> workshop on this topic at winneba, but I personally
> have no access to funding to come there and share
> what
> I know. I believe Geekcorps had done a lot of this
> in
> Mali, and maybe Ian or someone else can take it up
> in
> Winneba. 
> 
> (*I use the term because while Aaron's use of the
> word
> 'retro' in reference to fiscal barter systems is
> redolent of academic life coffee sessions,
> nonetheless
> the social impact of a cash system is what we live
> with, and can easily see its bitter fallout and
> aspire
> for a better way; similarly the use of 'nations' or
> 'countries' only reflects artefacts that are neither
> historical nor implicit necessities, but what we
> currently live with).
> 
> --- jeff buderer <jeff at onevillagefoundation.org>
> wrote:
> 
> > Aaron,
> > 
> > Yes you are correct when you think about it at the
> > most basic level yes
> > costs are low.
> > 
> > However I guess some of us were coming from the
> idea
> > of creating
> > multipurpose community/telecenters to complement
> the
> > wireless networks.
> > 
> > This includes considering ways to promote local as
> > well as global
> > sources of income to sustain those facilities.
> > 
> > The idea is that we are not just talking about
> > wireless but a whole
> > suite ecosystem of ICT community development
> > services to promote
> > sustainability - cultural ecological as well as
> > economic. 
> > 
> > And so that process of unleashing human potential
> > using ICT as augmenter
> > of that process in a nutshell is what oneVillage
> > Initiative
> >
> http://www.onevillagefoundation.org/ovf/method.html
> > aspires to achieve.
> > 
> > Jeff
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: wsfii-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org
> > [mailto:wsfii-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On
> > Behalf Of Aaron Kaplan
> > Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 7:59 AM
> > To: Discuss list on the World Summit on Free
> > Information Infrastructure
> > Subject: Re: [wsfii-discuss] Economic
> Sustainability
> > of Community
> > Wireless
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Hi people,
> > 
> > sorry, all this talk about living without money is
> a
> > bit... well.. retro
> > 
> > Anyay, without having read all of the mails of
> this
> > long thread  
> > before, I want to simply
> > point you to our sustanability answer for the
> Vienna
> > funkfeuer.at  
> > network:
> > 
> > http://housing.funkfeuer.at
> > 
> > It works very well, people put their servers into
> > our housing / co- 
> > location cellar , they have a benefit from it
> (good
> > inet connection)  
> > and the wireless community network (funkfeuer)
> gets
> > bandwidth.
> > It is neither a corporation / nor a company but
> > simply a way to make  
> > our freenet sustainable for years to come.
> > 
> > voila!
> > 
> > best regards,
> > aaron.
> > 
> > 
> > On Apr 25, 2007, at 2:22 PM, marco wrote:
> > 
> > > hi thomas
> > >
> > >
> > > Thomas M. wrote:
> > >>
> > >> reading all these texts on business model,
> > economic sustainability,
> > >> ... I started thinking about what is the
> > economical model, in my way
> > >> of understanding it is model of society based
> > primarily on money, And
> > >> I thought isnit a way to have an alternative
> kind
> > of society based on
> > >> others values than money?
> > > I do agree so far but want to add that the
> living
> > without money,
> > > virtual, paper or coins, is an ideal, a good one
> > certainly. our  
> > > society
> > > is so deeply structured by markets (and markets
> > base and  
> > > commodities as
> > > money is this special commodity for exchange)
> that
> > we cannot just
> > > switch, even if all people would have this idea
> > spontaniously. u have
> 
=== message truncated ===


Vickram


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