VOIP Phones Give Villagers a Buzz

Wired News
02:00 AM Sep. 12, 2005 PT

SAN FRANCISCO — At first glance, Inveneo’s office eight floors above Market Street resembles any high-tech startup — computer parts scattered on desks, Wi-Fi antennas mounted on the wall. But adjacent to the front door hangs a large colorful map of Africa, and a few steps away a stationary bicycle is hooked up to a backpack-size power generator.

From this base, a small group of determined geeks is using solar- and pedal-powered voice-over-internet-protocol phones and Wi-Fi to bring local, national and international dialing to remote areas of the world, beginning with a few villages in western Uganda where nothing resembling a telephone system has ever existed.

“What we’re bringing to them … is two-way communication, which they’ve never had before,” said Kristin Peterson, chair and co-founder of the year-old nonprofit effort.

The organization has already installed its Linux-based VOIP stations at four isolated villages in Bukuuku subcounty, serving a total of nearly 3,200 villagers.

Each village in the Bukuuku program has a custom-built computer with a 2-GB microdrive, to eliminate moving parts, along with 256 MB of RAM and a 533-MHz processor. The computer is wired to a regular analog telephone set and a directional Wi-Fi antenna, which transmits the internet signal to a central hub at one of the villages.