SuperWifi in rural Nepal — notes from the field
There was something playful about off-roading through tides of dust and haze and finally reaching a summit amongst pointy peaks, only to hear the sound of contemporary Nepali pop music dancing its way down the hills.
Welcome to the highest point in Dhading and the likely site of our future SuperWifi antennae installation.
Dhading is just over 30 miles from Kathmandu, as the crow flies, but Nepal has a far more adventurous journey in store than that might suggest. The many hills and winding cliffs have us driving for five thrilling hours until we reach Dhading. From there, the highest point, offering our SuperWifi uninterrupted signal to the villages below is a further 3 hours, all off road, all uphill. That’s why it’s already home to technology requiring a similar signal potential, like Dhading FM, whose music can be heard round the clock at the summit.
It’s an important journey, not only do we get to visit a school we’re hoping to connect to the internet en route, but the journey also serves as a humbling reminder of how resilient and resourceful these local communities are.
72 hours on Superwifi in Dhading later, these are our most significant developments:
Design to learn
One of the key objectives of Frontier Technology Livestreaming is to build, measure and learn as we take small steps through the implementation of these frontier technologies. For SuperWifi, it became clear that the most useful first sprint* should install the antennae and connect just one school first, so that we can learn from that experience and invest what we learn in the work that follows.
Borrowing > Building
Our initial plan had been to lease some land at the top of the hill and build a mast. But once we reached our musical summit and saw a few masts were already there, our thinking shifted. Borrowing mast space from an organisation is faster and cheaper than building our own. Talks are currently underway with those who came before us to see if we can attach our antennae to their masts.
Sustainable business models
While an ISP partner has provisionally agreed to donate connectivity to the schools for 5 years, we want to ensure the sustainability of our work beyond this project. That means thinking about the business model and its sustainability right away. We’re evaluating options for also using the connection to serve branchless banking, telemedicine or other initiatives that will allow the work done as part of the project to flourish long after we’ve left.
Next up…
Importing the equipment, connecting the school, training the teachers and learning how best to support the schools that come next.
*Frontier Technology Livestreaming follows agile and adaptive methodologies. For our programme, a sprint is defined as the smallest about of work we can do that will result in a useful feedback loop. Typically, this is one cycle of building, measuring and learning.
