[wsfii-discuss] Economic Sustainability of Community Wireless

Sat Apr 28 10:08:20 UTC 2007

Thomas, Ian,
    Thanks for sharing this wonderful dialogue.  Telecentre models are too
fluid. To be successful each centre has to adopt to its neighbourhood demand
. Hence the Template approach just does not works.  As you have rightly
mentioned short term capital is easily available & by the time you approach
the real test of survival , all the external actors just vanish. & left to
the locals to grapple the situation for which they are not yet prepared.

Unfortunately this has also lead to Telecentres movement worldwide often
blamed as an unsustainable venture.

So it is very important to get the local stake holders involved in operating
the project, make him a true partner in progress. They are the best judge to
what works for them.   Help them with training & help them access to honest
resource of various past projects across the world.
 We will find several publication about the launch of Telecentres but few
offer a honest post mortem reports.  Thus you need a online resource of
 collection of independent assessment of all such projects as to what made
them succeed or fail.  Not sure if any one will ever come forward to fund
such resource.

On the debate that   Economic value may or may not be connected with Social
value , well it make be because of lack of acceptable matrix. I hope one day
we will get an equivalent jargon like  Carbon credits / footprints  etc . to
measure the social benefits which such Telecentres/ community networks can
deliver.

I hope those attending WSFII GHANA will help set the thought process

best wishes

Ashish

On 4/27/07, Thomas Maketa <tmaketa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Mbote Ian,
>
> You are right you used the right word, in that context it is economical
> value.
> And you are also right in your analysis, in lesser developed country
> project should be self-financing, in the project we are setting up, the non
> free available services will have a price, but the least economically
> possible.
> The infrastructure chosen is the mesh network, so someone with his
> material can enter the network without paying anything, the cost intervene
> only if he wants to have access to Internet (a bandwidth must be paid). We
> would give access to voip functionality which will  be available for free
> inside the network.
> The goal is to use the resource available within community and to initiate
> an endogenous growth of the network.  We think that it is the model
> minimizing at maximum cost.
> So far did not launched anything yet spending time in all the offices of
> administration getting authorization and defending the project (private ISP
> dont see us with good eyes) hope we will be done soon.
>
> Cheers
> TM
>
> On 4/27/07, Ian Howard <ihoward at netdotworking.com> wrote:
> >
> > Mbote Thomas!
> >
> > Indeed.
> >
> > Regarding my use of the term "economic value" here. In the design of
> > networks in countries like yours, I have found that cash flow is the
> > greatest challenge. Local governments are not able to subsidize. Foreign
> >
> > governments wish only to provide short-term capital investment. Thus,
> > ultimately, most often in the developing world (lesser developed
> > countries) the model for supporting a wireless network must be
> > self-financing, and thus we must find the economic value, or there is no
> >
> > hope to find social value. In Canada, it is much easier for me to build
> > a network that is first focused on social value. Many of the community
> > networks here use such a model. They provide a social value, more than
> > an economic value. That can be done because the costs are negligible in
> > terms of the economic output of the community, whereas a network in
> > Congo, for example, can be a significant cost in terms of the
> > community's economic output, because costs are factors more and revenues
> >
> > are much more constrained. So, my use of the term "economic value", I
> > propose, is perhaps appropriate here as my point is that the network
> > will only survive if its economic value is greater than its costs.
> >
> > Ian
> >
> >
> > Maketa wrote:
> > > Hi Ian,
> > > Very pertinent what you said below, maybe we should accept that some
> > > project will have as only purpose to show a possibility, and it is
> > > people themselves who must embrace  it or not according to their
> > needs.
> > >
> > > Fundamentally what I draw from your reaction is that a model is
> > > adopted only if it suits a community needs, and as there are so
> > > different communities with so different needs , because of the
> > > difference in environments and mindset  in which they live, than an
> > > universal business model is utopia. (So difficult to take the freifunk
> > > or the server host based, or the FON , or the exotic model and
> > > transpose it at it is in a different context, I know that nobody
> > > proposed it !!!!!!).
> > >
> > > So we should look at model where all the same opportunities are given
> > > to everybody and anyone according to his background, availability ,
> > > willingness could grab it or not.
> > >
> > >
> > > Just a quick pique to a previous direction that the discussion took, I
> > > noticed the way you used "economical value" for you "if the network
> > > fulfill a need the community will keep it alive", shouldnt you say
> > > however "Social value"???  Why do we always associate something that
> > > has a social value to money?
> > >
> > > >>>>
> > > >:leaning to, such as in the phrase,
> > > >"Demonstrate the economic viability of sustainable development,
> > > promoting a variety of appropriate >sustainable technologies and
> > > approaches suitable to local conditions and preferences." We believe
> > > >that some models should be simply that, to demonstrate something, for
> > > the purpose of testing it and >showing people(training) them. Then,
> > > you later close the doors and if local peopl ewant that network, >they
> >
> > > will build it, as they will know how (if the project was done
> > > right).To get back to your mention of >FM, I might simply redirect
> > > your reference to state what is most important is that the network
> > > fulfil >ssome crucial need of the community, such as an FM radio is
> > > hungry for information, or that farmers >need to know market info. If
> > > the network then fulfils a real need, than the network will be kept
> > > alive by >the community. It will then have economic value.Cheers!
> > >
> > > !DSPAM:1,4631fec929642043112128!
> > >
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