BBC News,
Fiona Graham, Technology of business reporter, 5 February 2013
 |
| Wide open spaces: Projects like the one in Nanyuki could let people in the more remote areas connect to the internet |
"This
is the greatest achievement I can say for this school. [The students] are
finding it a great favour that they should be the first school in Africa to
have this kind of a project. It is very exciting. They wonder how they got
there."
Beatrice
Nderango is the headmistress of Gakawa Secondary School, which lies about 10km
from Nanyuki, a market town in Kenya's rift valley, not far from the Mount
Kenya national park.
The school
is situated in a village that has no phone line and no electricity. The people
that live here are mostly subsistence farmers.
"We
don't really have a cash crop, but the farmers do a bit of farming," says
Mrs Nderango.
"They
grow potatoes, a little bit of maize, but we don't do well in maize because of
the wild animals. They invade the farms."
 |
| Going online: The schools are being supplied with computers as part of the project |
Although
Kenya has fibre optic broadband thanks to the Seacom cable, most of rural Kenya
is not connected and until now getting online would mean travelling to town.
But all of
this is changing, thanks to technology that uses the unused parts of the
wireless spectrum that is set aside for television broadcasters - the white
spaces.
The colour
of television
The project
is part of the 4Afrika Initiative, an investment programme being announced by
technology giant Microsoft, that also includes a new Windows Phone 8 smartphone
for the region and investment in help for small businesses on the continent,
and in education and internships.
 |
| The base stations work in the same way as mobile phone masts, and will create massive wifi hotspots |
For the
white spaces project, the company is working with a Kenyan ISP, Indigo Telecom,
and the Kenyan government.
The ISP is
installing wireless 'base stations' - or masts - that are solar-powered, to get
round the lack of mains electricity.
The base
stations act as a link to the nearest main cable connection to the internet,
without the expense of extending the fibre-optic network.
 |
| The solar panels will power the bases stations - and also charge computer equipment |
The signal
supplied is much more powerful than normal wifi.
"What
we are calling TV white space, that is just a different set of frequencies. It
is between 400 megahertz and about 800 megahertz, and those radio frequencies
will just go further," says white spaces expert Professor Robert Stewart
of Strathclyde University.
"They
can go through walls, they will kind of bend around hills, they will give you
much better connectivity. And of course, that's why the TV guys chose that in
the first place."
Local
schools, a healthcare clinic, a government agriculture office and a library
have been connected in the first part of the pilot.
Ms Nderango
says internet will benefit teachers and students alike.
"Students
will now be introduced to e-learning, they will be able to carry out the assignments,
they'll be able to do a lot of research," she says.
"To
add to that, there is the exposure to the rest of the world."
And she
believes the wider community will benefit as well.
"It
will change lives, because on the internet you can access information about
skills.
 |
| Beatrice Nderango (right) says the new computers will make teaching easier |
"The
farmers for example will improve their skills, and learn
entrepreneurship."
Business
networking
Microsoft's
Fernando de Sousa says getting rural areas online is a crucial part of making
them economically viable.
"There
is... a commercial responsibility that both private and public sector have
across Africa to bring technology and bring access that can then drive economic
growth, economic development and sustain employability, especially outside of
the metropolitan areas," he says.
"It is
going to significantly increase the ability for innovation and the great ideas
that Africans have to actually reach markets and become available for use by
consumers... I think that there is a fantastic opportunity for Africa to
showcase its own capabilities in the world because of the increased
access."
 |
| The local healthcare clinic will be part of the network, opening up access to telemedicine resources |
The next
step is to open the network more generally to the business community in the
area.
"The
commercial viability of actually deploying white spaces on a broad spectrum
across the communities, is something that is very important... because a) it
can't be a subsidised service; and b) it is not a private government or
community network," says Mr de Sousa.
"It
really needs to be a commercially viable network. Bringing small businesses
online and enabling them to use the technology is very, very important."
This is not
the first time TV that white spaces have been used in this way - in the UK
pilots are underway on the Isle of Bute in Scotland and in Cambridge.
In the
United States, Wilmington, North Carolina, has a white spaces project in place,
and the Air.U partnership hopes to connect rural college campuses. There are
several test beds around the world.
More is
planned. In Africa, Google is sponsoring a project in South Africa that will
connect 10 schools in the Western Cape for six months, that will launch soon.
There are
obstacles: in many countries this part of the spectrum is licensed, and the way
it is used is changing as television services move to digital. National and
international regulators are looking at how to allocate space, to avoid having
competing services trying to use the same space.
For now,
and probably in the long term, TV white space networks will be complementary to
fibre-optic broadband rather than a replacement. But Strathclyde University's
Prof Stewart, one of the men behind the pilot on the Isle of Bute, thinks that
for remote rural areas it may be the most cost-effective option.
"If we
find that rural communities in developing or developed countries can access
this without significant expense, then it will make a difference," he
says.
"It is
not going to solve all the problems. It is not for everyone. But it will
solve problems for some folks."
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