Connecting Rural Burma/Myanmar
to the Global Village
(Community Telecommunication Project)
SOME EXAMPLES AND SOME EFFORTS
THOMAS KHAIPI
#ICT4D
Myanmar in World map
Map of Myanmar(Burma/Birma)
Das Land stand seit 1962 unter einer Militärherrschaft, bis
diese am 4. Februar 2011 einen zivilen Präsidenten als
Staatsoberhaupt einsetzte.
Amtssprache : Birmanisch
Neue Hauptstadt : Naypyidaw
Staatsform : Republik
Fläche : 676.578 km²
Einwohnerzahl : 51.400.00 (Volkszählung 2014)
Bevölkerungdichte : 75,97 Einwohner pro km²
Unabhängigkeit : 4. Januar 1948 (vom Vereinigten
Königreich)
Bruttoinlandsprodukt :
Total(nominal) : $ 51,925 Milliarden
Total (KKP) : $ 82,679 Milliarden
BIP/Einw. (nominal) : $ 832
BIP/Einw. (KKP) : $ 1.325
Motivations
 Technology
is the currency for economic and
social developement.
Agenda
What is Community WLAN?
 Community Development Projects
 Goals and Benefits of Wireless Network Project
 Technologies








Regular Wifi Networks vs MESH Networks

About Open Hardware Project (Village Telco’s Mesh Potato)

Technogies ?? – for ICT4D
Project Locations ( 7 Villages)
Project Status
Risks and Lessons learned
Others advanced technologes and their efforts (Open GSM?)
Conclusion
Discussion
What is Community WLAN
(Why Wifi Technology for rural area communication ?)

Community WLAN in Germany?
Freifunk.net –
Freie Netze werden von immer mehr Menschen in Eigenregie
aufgebaut und gewartet. Jeder Nutzer im freifunk-Netz stellt seinen
WLAN-Router für den Datentransfer der anderen Teilnehmer zur
Verfügung. Im Gegenzug kann er oder sie ebenfalls Daten, wie
zum Beispiel Text, Musik und Filme über das interne freifunk-Netz
übertragen oder über von Teilnehmern eingerichtete Dienste im
Netz Chatten, Telefonieren etc.
Community Development Projects

Educations

Communications

Healthcare

Etc..
Goals and Benefits of Wireless
Network Project

Communication



Increase communication facilities in isolated rural areas by providing

Free Local VOIP Phone services

Free Internet Services

Video conferencing facilities
Healthcare

Establish a tele-hospital in rural health centers

Provide medicals assistances to the villagers through telemedicine program
Education

Increase opportunities for School Students

Creating a live tele-teaching program

Providing contents (in local languages??) to the students and villagers


Offline Wikipedia, Khan Academy, http://internet-in-a-box.org/
Business Opportunity
Technologies

Regular Wifi Networks
Wireless repeaters work
by taking an existing
wireless signal and
re-broadcasting it.
Technologies

MESH Networking(AdHoc Networking)
- mesh networks see every device on a
network directly connected to every
other device without the use of a central
router or switch.
- In a mesh network, data travels from
device to device in short hops until it
reaches its destination, rather than being
directed by a central device.
Technologies

MESH Network - Routing protocols for Mobile Network

There are more than 70 competing schemes for routing packets across
mesh networks. Some of these include:

B.A.T.M.A.N. (Better Approach To Mobile Adhoc Networking)

OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing protocol / proaktives Routingprotokoll) RFC 3626
Technologies

MESH Network – advantages

Using fewer wires means it costs less to set up a network, particularly for large
areas of coverage.

They rely on the same WiFi standards (802.11a, b and g) already in place for
most wireless networks.

Mesh networks are "self configuring;" the network automatically incorporates
a new node into the existing structure without needing any adjustments by a
network administrator.

Mesh networks are "self healing," since the network automatically finds the
fastest and most reliable paths to send data, even if nodes are blocked or
lose their signal.

Wireless mesh configurations allow local networks to run faster, because
local packets don't have to travel back to a central server.

Wireless mesh nodes are easy to install and uninstall, making the network
extremely adaptable and expandable as more or less coverage is needed.
Technologies

MESH Network – Disadvantages

Complex Routing needed..

Need to store Routing Tabel in each Node

Each Node work as Router, -> 100 % need to run all the time

Higher power consumption on each Node
Technologies

About Open Hardware Project (Village Telco’s Mesh Potato)

http://villagetelco.org/

MESH Potato

B.A.T.M.A.N

Gateway Server with Billing System

Entrepreneur

Up stream VOIP and PSTN

modest capital
Technologies

B.A.T.M.A.N – Routing Protocol

Distributed intelligence

Every node knows: Available nodes, total metric towards each destination
and best next hop for each destination

No Information about the full routing path is necessary. Works well as nodes
come and go.

Works well in practice (e.g. 500 node Freifunk network in Berlin,Germany)
Technologies for ICT4D


GNU Health (GNU Health is a Free Health and Hospital Information
System)

Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

Hospital Information System (HIS)

Health Information System
OpenMRS


OpenMRS is a collaborative open source project to develop software to
support the delivery of health care in developing countries.
SANA.MIT.EDU

Global Health Informatics to Improve Quality of Care
Project Locations
Chin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village, Tedim Township, Myanmar
Project Locations
Chin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar
Project Locations
Chin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar
Project Locations
Chin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar
Project Locations
Chin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar
Project Locations
Chin State,Myanmar

Thuklai Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar
Project Locations
Chin State,Myanmar

Khuasak Village/The Siyin Valley, Tedim Township, Myanmar
Project Locations
Chin State,Myanmar

Road to the Siyin Valley and Thuklai Village main road, Tedim
Township, Myanmar
Project Locations
Chin State,Myanmar

Voklak Village, Tedim Township, Myanmar
Project Status

9 active WLAN AP in Thuklai Village

All these APs need to replace with
Mesh networking Technology
Risks and lessons learned

What can go wrong?

What happens when the trainers goes home?


Train the Community to fix problmes

Focus on keeping network running

Train many people, not just one expert
Sustainable Strategy/Plans ?


How can we make the network more reliable?


Is there Project Transparency?
Electricity problems, etc..
Do we need special licence for 2.4 and 5.0 Ghz frequency bands in
Myanmar/Burma?
Others advanced technologes and
their efforts (Open GSM?)

R H I Z O M A T I C A – Mobile Communications for All, Oaxaca
Village, Mexico

UC Berkeley’s Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions
(TIER) research group Deliver Low Cost Cellular Service to Rural
Indonesia

Billige Mobilfunk-Boxen für abgelegene Regionen, Heise.de Online
Conclusion
The project is unfortunately finished yet to the full.
However, we have been able to see many efforts from it.
Many villagers and school students can now have
acces to internet and get a lot of information from our
local content server (Offline Wikipedia, Khan Academy
Learnings Meterials etc..).
With this project, we also have aimed and created the
local free voip telephone system, which serves for and
gives a huge advantage to all the villager.
References:
http://villagetelco.org/ - Village Telco Open Hardware project
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking - Mesh Networking
wireless.ictp.it/publications.html - Telecommunications/ICT4D Laboratory - The Abdus Salam
International Centre for Theoretical Physics
http://wndw.net/index.html - Handbook for WIRELESS NETWORKING IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD
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