Wired News<\/a>
\n02:00 AM Sep. 12, 2005 PT<\/p>\nSAN 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Complete with 70-watt solar panels and a bicycle generator — which can provide power in the event of no sunlight — each installation costs only $1,800, including the outdoor Wi-Fi 802.11b antenna.
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VOIP Phones Give Villagers a Buzz By Cyrus Farivar 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-journalism","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-co","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}