Re: New Technologies for Rural Applications

["Irfan Khan" <khania2@super.net.pk>]

Executive Summary: New Technologies for Rural Applications

More than 2.5 billion people – over 40% of the planet’s population –
live in rural and remote areas of developing countries. Of the small
fraction that has any access to telecommunications, radio broadcasts
and voice telephony have traditionally been the main services
provided. Today, a wide variety of new telecommunication applications
such as e-mail, e-commerce, tele-education, telehealth, and
telemedicine, among others, has made access to interactive multimedia
services as important for rural and remote communities as voice
connectivity alone. Since each rural district or community requires a
different mix of voice, text, image, video and audio communications
to best meet its needs, today’s telecommunication network operators
must be able to support a wide range of services, applications and
bandwidth levels at a reasonable cost.

The Valetta Action Plan (VAP), formulated at the second ITU World
Telecommunication Development Conference in March 1998, sought to
promote universal access to basic telecommunication, broadcasting and
Internet as tools for development in rural and remote areas. Focus
Group 7 has spent a year researching technological developments that
have the potential to support telecommunication applications which
are commercially viable, or sustainable through other transparent
financing mechanisms, in rural and remote areas of developing
countries.

Rural and remote (or just “rural”) areas exhibit one or more of the
following characteristics:

- scarcity or absence of public facilities such as reliable
electricity supply, water, access roads and regular transport;

- scarcity of technical personnel;

- difficult topographical conditions, e.g. lakes, rivers, hills,
mountains or deserts, which render the construction of wire
telecommunication networks very costly;

- severe climatic conditions that make critical demands on the
equipment;

- low level of economic activity mainly based on agriculture,
fishing, handicrafts, etc.;

- low per capita income;

- underdeveloped social infrastructures (health, education, etc.);

- low population density;

- very high calling rates per telephone line, reflecting the scarcity
of telephone service and the fact that large numbers of people rely
on a single telephone line.

These characteristics make it difficult to provide public
telecommunication services of acceptable quality by traditional means
at affordable prices, while also achieving commercial viability for
the service provider.

Focus Group 7 Findings on Applications

Focus Group 7 found that the Internet is the most widely used
platform adopted to deliver multimedia applications in rural areas of
developing countries. While much negative attention in developing
countries has been focused on the use of the Internet as an illegal
bypass mechanism in the international traffic arena, the long-term
importance of the Internet for developing countries lies in its
potential to improve the domestic flow of economic and educational
resources between isolated rural communities and urban centers. Areas
of application for Internet- and other communication-based
applications include telemedicine and public health education,
coordinating regional food security efforts, making
governmentsponsored agricultural extension services more effective
and accessible to rural farmers, and enabling more rural children,
adolescents and post-secondary students to receive an education,
among others.

Applications development: Communication-based applications are being
designed and implemented in rural areas of developing countries by a
wide variety of actors in addition to public telecommunication
operators (PTOs). A significant portion of the expertise required to
develop sustainable, connectivity-enabled applications for rural
areas is located within the professional, academic, business and
agricultural sectors, among others. Not only do schools,
universities, government departments, international organizations and
NGOs routinely design and implement customized applications, they
also independently purchase and set up information technology (IT)
equipment. As a result, public telecommunication operators are
increasingly required to support a heterogeneous mixture of networks,
protocols and bandwidth requirements away from urban centers.

The need for basic literacy, computers skills and training in the use
of ICT applications remains a significant challenge for rural areas.
Language barriers and the complexity of personal computer (PC)
operation have been shown to hinder Internet diffusion. Many
innovative schemes have been devised in rural areas to overcome these
barriers. Although not widely utilized, techniques such as voice
mail, translation of content, and icon-based telephones indicate that
foreign languages and illiteracy are not necessarily barriers to the
use of communications services, if the end user’s needs are
comprehended and addressed. Relevant content is extremely critical to
the success of any rural application.

Community and business development: A great deal of progress is being
made in rural community and business development through the
introduction of telephony, telecenters, e-mail, and radio broadcasts.
For example, an infoDev-sponsored organization named PeopLink has
established an e-commerce programme allowing local artisans in
developing countries to bypass middlemen and market their products
directly to first world consumers. Two of the key requirements for
the success of community and business development applications were
found to be local language support and the availability of relevant
content.

Telemedicine: The motivation and commitment to telemedicine in
developing countries is very strong. This motivation is often backed
by a willingness to pay for systems which are expected to improve
health outcomes and lower medical costs in the long run. Telemedicine
services may be perceived as more of a necessity in developing
countries than they are in the industrialized countries, resulting in
a greater willingness among the former to change established methods
of doctor-patient interaction and health care administration.

Telemedicine and telehealth applications are not limited exclusively
to expensive, high bandwidth services. As long as the local medical
community remains motivated and committed to implementing
telemedicine and telehealth programmes, there are a wide range of
health benefits that can be achieved through remote patient
monitoring and diagnosis, multimedia communication links between
urban and remote facilities, and broadcast of health information over
radio and television.

Distance Education: Unsurprisingly, the focus group found that
university-level distance education programmes lend themselves to
cross-border implementation. Using distribution by satellite or
Internet, the adminstrative costs of running distance education
courses can be spread over a very wide potential student base. A
number of existing programmes, such as the African Virtual University
(AVU) and the distance education network of the University of the
South Pacific (USPNet), are already based on the concept of cross-
border educational access.

Focus Group 7 Findings on Technologies

Problems with installation and maintenance of wire plant have
prompted the widespread use of wireless systems in rural areas. Nine
types of wireless access systems were identified through the case
studies and ITU activities, illustrating existing and emerging access
options for reaching rural communities. Given the trend toward shared
facilities such as telecenters, university extension centers, post
office kiosks, etc., as well as the variety of revenue models
associated with social services in the health, educational and
ecommerce fields, the focus group considered technologies which
expanded the number of supportable applications as well as those
which demonstrated lower per-line costs.

Demand for Internet-based telecommunication applications in rural
areas, particularly e-mail, has resulted in new applications of old
technologies, such as VHF radio systems and meteor burst
communications, for non-real time services. In addition, new
combinations of existing technologies are extending the reach and
flexibility of wireless access systems, as well as reducing total
costs through the integration of sharedsystems and components. In
particular, many rural operators are deploying very small aperture
terminals (VSATs) and point-to-multipoint terrestrial radio systems
integrated with wireless local loop systems based on standards such
as PHS and DECT.

Access options on the horizon for rural areas include a number of
technologies that are new to the rural marketplace or still under
development.

- Cdma450 and GSM400 cellular base stations implemented in the 450
MHz range are scheduled for commercial introduction in 2001. The use
of the lower frequency bands will enable each base station to cover
approximately double the area achieved by existing digital cellular
base stations operating in the 800-900 MHz frequency range.

- Third generation cellular systems, known as IMT-2000, are designed
to deliver a wide range of traffic types and volumes more efficiently
and inexpensively than the current generation of wired and cellular
telephony networks.

- Gateways based on ITU-T Recommendation H.323 support real-time, two-
way communications between local area networks (LANs) and the PSTN.
Such gateways offer developing countries the option of constructing
local and wide area networks to deliver telephony and other services
in rural areas, without undermining existing investments in the PSTN.


- Wireless router networks, integrated with IP telephony software,
have the potential to provide significant cost savings and social
benefits as multi-service application platforms for telecenters,
government offices, schools and other organizations in rural areas.
Since these technologies are largely untested in rural areas, Focus
Group 7 recommends that BDT conduct pilot projects aimed at
confirming the technologies’ robustness in rural environments and
effectiveness in dealing with multimedia applications such as
telemedicine, distance learning and so forth.

Information technology and multimedia terminals: It is of the utmost
importance that ITU-D strive to raise awareness of the rural
information and communication needs of developing countries within
the computing and information technology industry. Unlike the
telecommunications industry, which has been doing business in
underdeveloped rural areas for several decades, companies in the IT
sector are generally unfamiliar with the environmental and social
requirements of rural areas of developing countries. Multimedia
systems profiled by Focus Group 7, some of which were only launched
during the period in which the report was written between June and
August 2000, demonstrate many features with potential lifetime cost
savings for rural areas. For example, information appliances
supporting e-mail, World Wide Web (WWW) browsing and e-commerce
applications provide simplified user interfaces in packages with
fewer maintenance requirements than traditional PCs. Internet client
network solutions can offer Internet service providers (ISPs) the
ability to upgrade their rural customers’ browser and applications
software remotely, reducing the skills requirements for telecenter
operators and rural schools. Finally, technical institutes and R&D
organizations in developing countries such as India and Indonesia are
developing their own custom, low cost IT terminals and devices.

Renewable energy solutions: The lack of mains energy supply in many
rural and remote areas is a major obstacle to deploying
telecommunication infrastructure. Many governments, agencies, and
NGOs are currently working to support broader or massive use of
telecommunications and IT systems in unelectrified rural areas As a
result, Focus Group 7 recommends that governments, administrations
and recognized operating agencies consider closely linking renewable
energy specialists with rural telecommunication and ICT initiatives.


In the past two decades, the most important use of renewable energy
and hybrid systems in telecommunications has been for off-grid
telecom repeaters. Due to the high cost of the repeater equipment,
the critical role the repeaters play in the larger telecom networks,
and the unattended nature of the systems, these power systems have
been very carefully sized and designed using highly capable and
experienced engineers. In contrast, the power requirements for user-
side installations – such as wireless local loop terminals, PCs and
cellular handsets – are relatively small. For such user-side
equipment it will generally not be possible to rely upon the same
approach to power system design as has been used for telecom repeater
systems. Therefore, Focus Group 7 recommends that ITU-D support the
efforts of the international renewable energy community by
disseminating practical and useful information on small power systems
for rural telecommunication installations to ITU-D members, project
partners and other organizations.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The report of the Maitland Commission, issued seventeen years ago,
set a goal to bring telephone services within easy reach of all
humankind before the 21st century. In order to remain consistent with
this goal after a decade of tremendous expansion in the social
applications of information and communication technologies, an update
of the target proposed by the Maitland Commission is recommended.

In support of the goal of promoting the development of new
telecommunication technologies for rural applications, FG7 offers the
following six recommendations:

1) Promote the development of low-cost information appliances for
rural use.

2) Create a renewable energy handbook on small-scale power systems
for rural ICTs.

3) Increase collaboration with micro-finance organizations to help
develop communication-based rural businesses and applications.

4) Conduct pilot projects of packet-based wireless access
infrastructure for multimedia applications.

5) Maintain and expand the FG7 Web site.

6) Hold a symposium on new technologies for rural applications.

The Focus Group 7 also proposed the creation of a Task Force,
consisting of a small group of volunteers among the ITU-D Study Group
members to assist the BDT Director with the implementation of FG7
recommendations. The mandate of the Task Force may include:

- Monitor implementation progress of all FG7 recommendations;

- Formulate suggested criteria for the establishment and location of
pilot projects;

- Contribute to cross-communication and coordination efforts among
all parties.

Based on extensive research by Focus Group 7, this report concludes
that there is a need for robust telecommunication systems combining
low-cost, wireless access technologies with packet-based networks for
the possible delivery of Internet in rural and remote areas. Such
systems are deemed likely to hold various advantages for the
provision of information-based applications in rural areas. As the
concept of universal access expands to include services that are more
complex than traditional voice and fax telephony, the development of
shared-use, easily maintained multimedia terminals for community
centers must be explored in order to find socially effective
solutions for providing Internet in rural areas.


read complete report at http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/fg7/pdf/FG_7-e.pdf