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IT+46 is an ICT consulting firm which is based in Sweden and has been involved in several projects in Africa.
Website: http://www.it46.se/
Projects include:
During the last couple of years, a number of Community Wireless Networks have been deployed across Africa. They have mainly been established with help of donor funds, with the intention of being self-sustainable after the project\'s end. Many of these networks are facing problems with sustainability caused by low level of scalability, lack of technical skills, limited client base, and lack of entrepreneurship.
The research focus of Wireless Africa is to support community based operators to roll out their networks in ways that are financially sustainable and technically appropriate. The initiative is keen to explore new network approaches based on Open Source Software and Open Hardware plus innovative business models and services.
The main technology focus will be on low cost wireless devices, easy to setup Voice-over-IP systems, bandwidth management and billing systems.
During the kick-off workshop held in Pretoria, 25-27 of June 2008, 15 country partners were invited to present their community networks. Representatives from Morocco, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa, Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola participated in the three day long workshop.
During the workshop, three partners were selected to take part of first phase of research and implementation. The partners were selected based on their readiness in terms of local research capacity, technical skills and entrepreneurial skills. The Wireless Africa initiative is a partnership between the Meraka Institute (CSIR), IT46, Wire.less.dk, Link Centre and Kwantu Media.
The first Village Telco Workshop took place from the 16th-20th of June in Cape Town, South Africa. The workshop was hosted at the Shuttleworth Foundation and brought together 200 years of experience in the areas of open hardware and software, VoIP, business models and entrepreneurship. The goal of the initiative is to design and promote technologies and business models that allow local entrepreneurs to establish a locally owned and operated Village Telco. The first notes of the meeting are available here. A few nice shots of the meeting are available here
The course attracted no less than 20 doctorate students that were willing to put their PhD work aside for a while and switch focus to other challenges.
The course included the following topics:
The examination of the course was done in terms of a project assignment carried out in groups of 2-4 students. The written reports can be downloaded from the course page.
For more information about the course, please see here.
The Stockholm Challenge is a pioneer among ICT awards and networking organisations, dating back to 1994 when the City of Stockholm launched the first competition to challenge the cities in Europe to show their best ICT applications for people and society. Since then there have been six prize ceremonies. So far the Stockholm Challenge has brought together over 5,000 ICT projects from all over the world, many of whom are active in lasting and growing networks (source: www.stockholmchallenge.se)
RSS feed from/de : News
Wireless Africa, Kickoff workshop
How do we make Community Owned Information Networks work for the poor?
The selected partners are the Community Wireless Resource Centre (Uganda), Fantsuam Foundation (Nigeria) and oneVillage Foundation (Ghana).
The project is funded by IDRC.
Village Telco Workshop @ Shuttleworth Foundation
Information Systems support for UNAH, Stockholm Training
The first week of June, IT46 conducted an ICT advanced training to the system group of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras (UNAH). During 2007-08 and thanks to the support of SIDA and the collaboration with the Swedish Program for Information and Communication Technology in Developing Regions (SPIDER), IT46 http://www.it46.se and CICAT had delivered a set of technical trainings in the areas of internetworking and information systems.
The second training in Stockholm, hosted by SPIDER with the support of the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, DSV (Stockholm University/KTH), focused on advanced topics as traffic management, secure web services, cloning workstations and voice over IP. During the one week training the UNAH system group got the opportunity to visit KTH and Stockholm University ICT premises.
ICTs for Social Development at the University of Trento, Italy
In May 2008, IT46 had the opportunity to give a Doctorate course at the University of Trento in Information and Communication Technologies for Social Development.
Fantsuam Foundation, finalist in Stockholm Challenge 2008
Fantsuam Foundation has with Zittnet, Nigeria's first rural community wireless network, been selected as one of the finalists in the Stockholm Challenge Award 2008 in the category of Economic Development.
This report summarizes the findings of a technical feasibility field study for the deployment of a solar-powered repeater for Zittnet in Kagoro Hills. The report is the result of several field visits to Kagoro Hills in Kaduna and the simulation of the radio links. After proving the viability of such technical solution, the report provides a budget for its implementation.
GPS coordinates of all the sites described in the report are available at http://fantsuam.it46.se in the form of a KML file that can be visualize using Google Earth. More than 120 freedom of expression advocates from around the world gathered the 8-12 of September in Montevideo, Uruguay at the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) General Meeting.
As an introduction to the general meeting, an ICT Forum focused on secure communication and Internet censorship was held the 7th of September. IT +46 participated in the ICT Forum with a talk on the topic "Tools to secure your computer and where to find them". The talk focus on how to move from a security policy to an implementation in the organization.
The presentation includes 10 security areas that an organization should focus on. Special emphasis is made in the need of formulating a security policy and a realistic implementation plan accepted by the organization.
During the third global knowledge conference, Alberto Escudero Pascual participated in the panel ET1: ICT for a Multilingual Knowledge Society. The presentation covers three lessons learned during the effort to localize OpenOffice.org to Kiswahili and presents the new PAN African Localization iniative: PAN L10n (Panlion). The VoIP4D-primer is an initiative to provide training material and documentation to those who want to understand and deploy VoIP infrastructure in developing regions.
The Free Telephony project provides free hardware designs for telephone systems. Both the hardware and software are open.
David and Alberto, presented the initiative during the third global knowledge conference GK3 in Kuala Lumpur. This is our presentation that summarizes the vision of both initiatives and focus on a trail of the technology in developing regions
Equitable access to infrastructure requires the combination of policies, technology and human capacity building. This paper focuses on adequate technologies and tools for developing regions to improve Internet access. The technologies are presented in five major areas: This paper provides the necessary background for each of these technology areas and refers to practical strategies including existing initiatives. After reviewing the various issues and practical strategies the paper makes a set of recommendations related to each of the technology areas identified. The suggested interventions cover a range of issues: including public access to radio spectrum, open networks, capacity building, the promotion of local services, the use of open standards and quality control in ICTs. This paper concludes that no matter which time in history we look at, the equitable use of information and communication technologies results from making technology accessible, adequate and relevant to local realities.RSS feed from/de : Papers, Journals and Conferences
Zittnet Wireless Solar Repeater - Viability Study
Tools to secure your computer and where to find them. The role of a security policy
The role of open source in localization in a global knowledge society
VoIP for development - The Free Telephony Project
Tools and technologies for equitable access
As evidence of the strategic importance of the development of the Internet, the European Union has adopted a communication to the Council and the European Parliament focusing on the next generation Internet and the priorities for action in migrating to the new Internet protocol IPv6 and also a new Directive (2002/58/EC) on 'processing of personal data and protection of privacy in the electronic communication sector'. The Data Protection Directive is part of a package of proposals for initiatives which will form the future regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services. The new Directive aims to adapt and update the existing Data Protection Telecommunications Directive (97/66/EC) to take account of technological developments. However, it is not well undersood how this policy and the underlying Internet technology can be brought into alignment.
This dissertation builds upon the results of my earlier licentiate thesis by identifying three specific, timely, and important privacy areas in the next generation Internet: unique identifiers and observability, privacy enhanced location based services, and legal aspects of data traffic.
Each of the three areas identified are explored in the eight published papers that form this dissertation. The papers present recommendations to technical standarization bodies and regulators concerning the next generation Internet so that this technology and its deployment can meet the specific legal obligations of the new European Union data protection directive.
In summary, the eight papers of this dissertation show:
The dissertation concludes by presenting future work identified based on examining these three different areas. The Big Brothers are finally here and anonomyzing techniques are needed to be avail-able for the preservation of a 'civil society'.In this proposal, we discuss the state of the art of anonymity and untraceability research in Internet and include a number of observed problems. With this licenciate we want to study if it is possible to provide an end user with internet communication that provides anonymity, untraceability, and unobservability while still providing good communication performance. We also want to study in which ways laws restrict the use of these technologies and how 'trust' is built when providing anonymous services. Data protection and privacy is rapidly becoming one of the most important issues on the Internet today. Larger number of Internet sites are collecting personal information from users through forms, cookies, online registrations, or surveys than ever before. New commercial services are springing up that can exploit the ability of mobile communication service providers to determine the geographic location of their users. The new wireless technologies offer mobility; at the same time they offer location information that is being used to provide new location-aware services. This licentiate thesis concerns our experience building a new innovative network environment at the IT-University (Royal Institute of Technology). It explains how we present the new security challenges that a wireless network raises together with how we confront and investigate a new form of problem this type of network presents, namely location privacy.
The focus of this work has been on trying to provide unlinkability between the location of wireless users and their activities in the Internet. The thesis includes a protocol extension to a pseudonymous IP network architecture developed by the Canadian company Zero Knowledge Systems Inc. called the Freedom System. The proposed extension to Freedom System permits a mobile client to seamlessly roam among IP subnetworks and media types whilst being untraceable. By untraceable in the context of this thesis we mean the capability of a mobile node to conceal the relation between location and personal identifiable information from third parties whilst the user is on the move.
The thesis is composed of four published papers where the main results are presented.RSS feed from/de : Research
Privacy Incorporated Software Agent (PISA) Demostrator, Communication Security Review
The Privacy Incorporated Software Agent (PISA) is an IST-2000 European Union funded project that aims at developing an intelligent agent representing and protecting the interests of the user while maintaining his or her privacy. The following notes are the result of the 3rd Review of the PISA project celebrated in Delft the past 27th November 2003. The purpose of this document is to examine the PISA Demonstrator\'s basic security mechanisms.
Privacy in the next generation Internet: Data Protection in the context of the European Union Policy, PhD Thesis Presentation
Slides from the PhD Presentation. Picture from the solar eclipse that was taken place that day.
Privacy in the next generation Internet: Data Protection in the context of the European Union Policy, PhD Thesis
With the growth in social, political and economic importance of the Internet, it has been recognized that the underlying technology of the next generation Internet must not only meet the many technical challenges but must also meet the social expectations of such a pervasive technology.
Anonymous and Untraceable Communications - Location privacy in mobile internetworking, Licentiate Thesis Proposal
The protection of privacy is considered as one of the most important issues on the Inter-net
today. Internet users are concerned about privacy protection. More Internet sites are collecting personal information from users through forms, cookies, online registrations, or surveys than never before. With the new wireless technologies mobility will be avail-able and with it 'location information' will be used to provide also new 'location aware services'.
Anonymous and Untraceable Communications - Location privacy in mobile internetworking, Summary Licentiate Thesis
Summary and Conclusions of Alberto Escudero's Licentiate Thesis. (The papers are available to download independently).
As you may know IT46 is working in Kenya in the design of a SMS communication gateway to enable an information system for farmers in rural areas. During the last weeks, we have been following closely the political developments in Kenya via radio and satellite television. Although there are plenty of agencies reporting, detailed information and deep analysis of the situation is missing. Today, I found this testimony from Chris Albin-Lackey (Human Rights Watch) that servers as a good summary what is going on at the moment.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200802080672.html As you may know IT46 is working in Kenya in the design of a SMS communication gateway to enable an information system for farmers in rural areas. During the last weeks, we have been following closely the political developments in Kenya via radio and satellite television. This article from Chris Albin-Lackey (Human Rights Watch) is a good summary what is going on at the moment.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200802080672.html It has been a very long and intensive week. During the 16-21 of July, it took place the first of a set of community wireless trainings in Latin America. I must say that the training was very different from other trainings i have been involved before as the group of participants had strong community connections and it was interesting to learn from their projects and challenges (mostly capacity building and sustainability). No surprises! Although the training was mostly technical the other non-technical components as outcome mapping, ICTs and gender and planning of the wireless network tried to provide a necessary balance of what it takes to make a wireless community project a success. Fine tuning and balancing the technical and non-technical aspects is definitely worth pursuing.
The wireless training also included a VoIP session. Although I have been working for a while now in community wireless networks, I have a strong feeling that in order to see more initiatives we need to focus more and more on capacity building and the development of sustainable business models. My regards to all participants and looking forward to see knowledge put into action.
The official picture of the workshop is available here "Unfortunately, we can not book tickets to Nigeria on the Internet, please contact our support center."
Although this is my second trip of Nigeria, I get a bit surprised. Last time I book the ticket, I was only restricted to pay via bank transfer as no credit cards were allowed for Nigerian destinations. This time, not even that is possible! What\'s next? I need to charter my own plane to Nigeria, or?
Note that the URL in the snapshot includes the tag "blocked country" (click on the image for higher resolution). Wonder who else are included in that list of countries? It was eight years ago when I left Spain and since then I have witness -from the distance- the insane price of real state in the country. I wonder how is it possible that housing in Spain is more expensive than in Sweden... one of the winners of the situation is going to be IKEA, people are left with very little money after paying the monthly mortgages and the ultimate solution is to buy furniture do-it-yourself. This globalization thingy creates situations that deserve reflection and reaction. Spaniards buying furniture from a Swedish multinational company that brands design and quality while keeping most of the production in countries with poor worker rights. The worker of Spain pays the mortage to a bank and imports furniture produced in China, Rumania and Vietnam. Of course with the design and quality of Sweden a country proud of their workers' rights. RSS feed from/de : IT +46 Blog
Kenya: Testimony of Chris Albin-Lackey on Behalf of Human Rights Watch
Kenya: Testimony of Chris Albin-Lackey on Behalf of Human Rights Watch
TRICALCAR workshop, Andes Region
Booking a flight to Nigeria
We are preparing for another trip to Nigeria to work on a Electricity Backup System for Fantsuam Foundation in rural Nigeria. As usual, we do the bookings online, except for the hotel reservation in Kafanchan that requires local assistance since no fix telephony exist (hence no fax), the hotel lacks Internet connection and the GSM network is highly unreliable.
Anyway, I look for a suitable flight to Abuja, that is the capital of Nigeria, with my favorite booking site, Travelpartner. Instead of a list of available flights, the following text is displayed to me:
Living in Spain... the price of a house
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