Village Telco

What is the Village Telco?

The ‘Village Telco’ is developing a low-cost, scalable, standards-based WiFi telephone company toolkit using open source software and open hardware.

What makes the Village Telco different from similar projects is its distinct focus on the creation of a sustainable business model for entrepreneurs to provide competitive voice services to businesses in areas where there is limited or no access.

While the Village Telco concept was being developed, Dabba, a start-up company based in Johannesburg, was already offering low-cost voice services over WiFi networks using open source software in Orange Farm, a township south of Johannesburg.

A partnership developed between the Shuttleworth Foundation and Dabba, where the Foundation committed to help develop, document and popularise the technologies in use by Dabba in the form of the ‘Village Telco’. This gave the Foundation the opportunity to invest in open source communication tools that could immediately be practically applied by companies like Dabba, to make a difference in rural communities.

Why Village Telcos?

Communications infrastructure is an essential ingredient for economic growth, yet access to telecommunications is often not available and very expensive for the poor in developing countries.

Traditional telecommunications operators use a ‘connect-out’ model where infrastructure is deployed according to a centralised roll-out plan and access is given to communities at the discretion of the operator.

By contrast, the Internet developed on a ‘connect-in’ model, which resulted in substantially faster growth of Internet infrastructure than traditional telecommunications infrastructure. The Village Telco is an attempt to bring an Internet-like ‘connect-in’ approach to the deployment of telecommunications infrastructure. Any entrepreneur with modest resources and technical ability will be able to deploy a Village Telco and this can foster user innovation in communities.

For example, around the world mobile users have pioneered new, unintended uses for their phones. From ‘beeping’ to credit-transfer, poor communities, given the opportunity, will adapt technologies to better serve their needs. The Village Telco is intended to open up such opportunities for local innovation by building upon the principles of openness and flexibility of use.

How does it work?

The Village Telco consists of three basic components: a billing and user management system; a wireless mesh network; and, affordable handsets for users. A fourth component is upstream telecommunications connectivity for the Village Telco although it is conceivable that a Village Telco could provide sufficient value by just offering local voice services in areas where upstream connectivity is either unavailable or unaffordable.

Many Village Telcos are likely to find it challenging to go through the process of interconnecting with a combination of upstream Internet and mobile operators. This opens the door for the more advanced implementers of Village Telcos to offer upstream connecting services to smaller, newer, or less technically advanced Village Telcos in a given region. In South Africa, Dabba is a likely such ‘upstream’ telco that could offer interconnection services to Village Telco startups in the region.

Who is likely to invest in a Village Telco?

The most likely candidates to invest in a Village Telco are local businesspeople who might already be offering some sort of ICT access, such as a cyber cafe or telecentre. Limiting the amount of specialist knowledge required for deploying this kind of technology is one of the core aims of the Village Telco.

• Village Telco