TelecommunicationsInnovation, and

The Village TelcoUWC

1 March 2010

Steve SongTelecommunications Fellow

Shuttleworth Foundation

email: steve.song@shuttleworthfoundation.orgblog: http://manypossibilities.net

skype: steve_l_songtwitter: stevesong

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=it_net_user_p2&idim=country:KEN:ZAF:ZWE:MYS:EGY:TUN

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=it_net_user_p2&idim=country:KEN:ZAF:ZWE:GBR:MYS:KOR:EGY:TUN

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTIC4D/Resources/5870635-1242066347456/IC4D_2009_Overview.pdf

Connectedness

Quantitychanges

everythingqualitatively

...more is different

For networks, more isn't just more...

The Birthday Paradox

5 nodes

10 connections

10 nodes

45 connections

Communication Networks

2Innovation1Efficiencies

“You need a very low cost of

experimentation, right? If things

are expensive to try people will

hold back from trying them and

they’ll spend all their time trying

not to fail. If the cost of

experimentation falls though, and

I mean falls precipitously, then

people will spend a lot of time

experimenting, and instead of not

failing, the goal becomes to fail

informatively to learn something

from the things you tried.”

on enablng innovation

http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2009/11/full-interview-clay-shirky/

The average Kenyan spends

more than 50% of their disposable

income on mobile services.

1.Tinkeringis the new

inventing

“Economic growth occurs whenever people take

resources and rearrange them in ways that are more

valuable. A useful metaphor for production in an economy comes from

the kitchen. To create valuable final products, we

mix inexpensive ingredients together

according to a recipe.”- Paul Romer

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/EconomicGrowth.html

What would happen if everyone had the freedom to tinker

and adapt their telephone networks?

2.Emergenceis the new

order

From a mechanistic metaphor...

... to a more organic, living metaphor

TelephoneInfrastructure

InternetInfrastructure

What would happen if we could deploy

telephone networks more like Internet

networks?

3.Quantityis the newquality

Google's Search Servers

Lots of inexpensive commodity technology

outperforms expensive custom

made servers.

What would happen if telephone

infrastructure were so cheap anyone could deploy it?

4. Atomsare the new

bits

The Cantenna

What would happen if we could design our own telecom infrastructure?

paradigmshift

1995Walled gardens

2009Walled gardens

expensive, locked down telecoms in Africa

++ cheap, tinkerable,

broadband technology ==

opportunity

Village telco workshop June 2008

OpenWRT – A linux distribution for embedded devices

Asterisk – a telephony development toolkit

A2Billing – an Open Source billing system for Asterisk

Afrimesh – mesh management and mapping tool

David Rowe

Elektra

Rael Lissoos

Come join us!

http://villagetelco.org

Creative Commons

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Steve SongTelecommunications FellowShuttleworth Foundation

email: steve.song@shuttleworthfoundation.orgblog: http://manypossibilities.netskype: steve_l_songtwitter: stevesong