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Inveneo innovates
Thursday, November 02, 2006
With cell phones, IM, broadband, and the rise of residential voip internet phone systems, it seems we're always available and there's a strong expectation that everyone else lives that way, too. If you look beyond our 24/7 cult of connectedness long enough, you'll see that there's an enormous world out there and quite a large chunk of the population doesn't have routine access to something as basic as a telephone.
We have family friends in Ghana and every year my in-laws scrape together books for the University's library. Sometimes they even make it across the oceans for a visit. It's different in Ghana. You can't necessarily pick up the phone and find out why that contractor hasn't shown up to the job site for the last week and a half. Instead, you walk or ride or drive over to where he stays and hope like the dickens he'll be there when you show up. If not, you wait. 10 minutes. An hour. 3 days. As long as it takes.
Imagine if every time you needed to know something you had to walk 25 miles to the nearest library. Or two villages over to find out if your sister's child made it through that last bout of croup all right. Inveneo imagined. And then they did something.
Robust, self-contained, low-power consumption WiFi communication networks that are solar powered or, in a pinch, get their electricity from a bicycle-driven generator. Costing about $1800 for a setup that can connect the entire village, Inveneo's voip and internet access points bring the world into the heart of rural areas. Telemedicine, eLearning, business opportunities, and let's not forget just plain-vanilla communication--these sturdy systems are the key to sustainable improvements in rural villagers' quality of life.
