Andrés at Joensuu

Part two of the series on ICT4D, read part 1 for a background
Imagine you have a remote university in an African country where available internet is slow and hard to get to your door. Imagine you want this university to be part of the digital village, where journals can be read online, emails can be sent and received, learning materials can be accessed and modified and, why not, videoconferencing is possible. If you are reading this from somewhere else than in Africa you most likely can do that all. But how to plug an African University in Kenya to the internet. The connectedness should mainly address the communication and teaching activities that will start between University of Joensuu (UoJ) and the University in Kenya (UiK).

If money and administrative stuff were not an issue, the way I’d like to see this happening is by creating a virtual private network (VPN) connecting UiK to UoJ. This can be achieved by installing two very small aperture terminals (VSAT) in each location and getting a data plan that connects both of them directly. VSAT’s are the fastest way to connect remote locations to the grid and are widely used in Africa. For a description on performance look here, for a possible provider here. A small antenna (~3m diameter) connects to a satellite. Improvements in the technology claim faster speeds and weather-proofness, i.e., rain nor clouds will affect. In the VPN configuration, connection to UoJ would be about 2mpbs, enabling videoconferencing, VoIP, … Another benefit is that they would also access the same journals, UoJ can access to. These two benefits make the idea quite compelling.

Other alternatives include simple VSAT to connect to the internet, which is not usually fast and depends on some remote hub to provide with reliable access. Finally, if project start is delayed we may wait for the undersea cable to provide internet to Kenya. They claim it will be 5000% cheaper for Universities!! But something must be bad with their calculations…

As I mentioned before, UiK are also low on the computer facilities. I would equip the university with some good laptops that connect via wireless.

These are just not so crazy ideas, but they need a lot of polish when it comes to affordability, sustainability, and other ilities.