Wi-Fi Hotspot News

Up at 6am on a Sunday morning to collect Greg who's visiting us from Zambia to learn the wicked ways of the west.

He's already had to postpone his trip after the cloud of ash interfered with his flights. With the closure of some airports in Europe, as the cloud spilled over again, he's lucky to have made it!

Landing in Zambia last year, I felt as though I'd been dropped in a bath of cold water (metaphorically not physically - it was quite hot over there). The change of culture and environment will be nothing but challenging for Greg but that's the whole point of his trip. He's here to learn how we work so he can help advance parts of rural Africa.

I've been back in the UK now for just about 2 weeks, it's been next to impossible to write on the PolkaSpots Blog. Sorry if you've missed it, we've had more than a couple of complaints! I think I managed to use all my creative juices up writing from under my mosquito net in a wooden hut.

Much of our attention is currently is focused on Linknet's project to deploy a network of Wireless Hotspots across Zambia. It's great to see our system being used to it's full potential and Macha is currently seeing around more than 1Gb of data downloaded everyday. That's more than the average hotel and considering that's using a 128kbit/s satellite service, quite impressive.

Last week enjoyed the company of Mr. van Stam in the PolkaSpots office. He was staying with me for a week having been asked to talk at the CTO's conference on 'Investing in ICT in Emerging Markets'. Sadly we couldn't make it down but were able to read his presentation on the LinkNet site here.

Keep your eyes peeled over the next week for ways that you can help bring the Internet to rural Africa.

About 2 weeks ago, I was sitting in a small IT room in the middle of Zambia. It was a shock arriving and more of one getting back to the friendly faces and sunny weather of London town. What was I doing there? We were asked to go over and help save their precious bandwidth.

In the Southern Province of Zambia, there's a small village called Macha; it's home to the National Malaria Institute and Linknet. For a few years, Linknet have been providing an Internet connection to the local community via an expensive satellite connection. On a daily basis over 100 user share this 128kbit/s connection - that's quite a lot of people. Access has been slow to say the least.

The have recently introduced a single PolkaSpots Wireless Hotspot box to help control the connection. Each user receives a username and password and their bandwidth is carefully monitored. Nicely done!

While providing Wireless Internet isn't necessarily superficial over here, working with the Linknet team has opened my eyes. You'll notice that our blog has been a little sparse recently - in truth, it's hard to find something interesting to write when everyone around you is only focusing on seemingly insignificant problems. Perhaps from time to time we should open our eyes and look what's actually going on around us.

Much of next year will be spent focusing on helping Linknet achieve their dream of connecting Africa. Don't worry, we won't forget about you!