It’s the rainy season in Zambia. Rain is pouring down, shrouding the hills in a watery curtain and turning the soil to thick, red mud. Karl Jonas and Mathias Kretschmer of the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS in Berlin are waiting patiently in the small village of Macha for the sky to brighten. As soon as it does, they jump in their Jeep and start coaxing it along the muddy track to Ubuntu.

They’re on the lookout for the next water tower, transmission mast or similar high point, where they intend to install the high-performance radio router that will provide the two villages and the area in between with wireless Internet access.
Enlarge image FOKUS technicians scoping out transmission possibilities (© Fraunhofer Institute/FOKUS) The weather was just one of many surprises that Africa had in store for Jonas, the researcher holding a PHD in computer science, and his colleagues. And after all, that was why they were there: to get to know the country and its people better, and to gain a better understanding of their requirements.

In Macha, the people are only too happy to help Jonas. They lend him their tools and suggest suitable locations for the router. He is impressed by their attitude.“The people here have an incredible thirst for the Internet,” he notes. Not only does the Net provide them with an insight into the wider world, it can also significantly improve the quality of life where they are.

The health centres responsible for providing medical care to the local population frequently are without even a telephone. If a patient requires a particular medicine, they have to journey to the nearest hospital, perhaps half a day away. And often they’ll arrive there only to find it doesn’t have what they need either. The Internet would give each individual the chance to take responsibility for their own life planning. Jonas quotes a case in point: “Here in Macha, which is a long way from the nearest town, there’s a young man who is using the Internet to study at a South African university.”

The malaria hospital in Macha has a pre-existing satellite link that Jonas and his colleagues are seeking to tap into. Thanks to a WLAN connection, houses near the hospital have been enjoying wireless Internet access for some time, but the Fraunhofer specialists have now succeeded in extending the connection to the village of Ubuntu three kilometres away – where a new school is being built –using high-powered radio routers.

Satellite links are by no means rare in Africa; they are often used by development aid projects. “These connections cost three to five thousand Euro per megabit per month,” says Jonas. The bills mount up rapidly, even for a minimal 64 kilobit service.
Enlarge image Africa's population is never too young to go on-line! (© Fraunhofer Institute/FOKUS) “The hospital in Macha alone pays tens of thousands of dollars a year for its satellite link,” he reports. And that despite the fact that the link is poor, the data transmission speeds low. “A terrestrial connection would cost half the money and make the rest available for practical health care.”

While Jonas’ team installs an additional router on an old water tower, his gaze travels over the area already covered by WLAN. The plan is for a network covering 25 square kilometres to be up and running smoothly by 2012.

There are four to five billion people in the world who have no Internet access, particularly in developing and emerging countries. It is for these people that the FOKUS researchers are currently working to develop tailor-made communication networks. Their countries often have no electricity grid or infrastructure to speak of, and they certainly boast no specialists capable of repairing the damage that will doubtless be inflicted very quickly by the harsh climatic conditions.

The situation calls for radically different solutions, yet at the same time, the technology must be affordable for the people in question. To this end, in January 2010, Fraunhofer FOKUS officially launched the information and communication technology centre ‘NET4DC – Connecting the Unconnected’. The centre, which was set up by the director of Fraunhofer FOKUS, Professor Radu Popescu-Zeletin, is to provide access to global communications infrastructures and services for those living in rural areas in developing and emerging countries.

For more information about NET4DC