[DisasterRadio] Comms as a $ervice?

sam at bristolwireless.net sam at bristolwireless.net
Wed Sep 26 13:56:37 PDT 2018


Hi all

I've been thinking a bit about Disaster radio in contexts where there  
isn't much in the way of existing infrastructure.

In particular, I've been looking at the pay-as-you-go solar model, and  
how that's been effective in an African context at getting hundreds of  
thousands of people connected to solar energy:  
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2018/01/29/when-mobile-meets-modular-pay-as-you-go-solar-energy-in-rural-africa/

I'm wondering if this approach could be applied to comms? If you/ we  
were to fund an initial deployment of say a hundred nodes into a  
medium-sized African city.

One or two Disaster radio nodes in that city network are connected to  
the Mobile phone network. If $X per day has been received in mobile  
micro-payments, then it removes the network-wide obnoxious banner-ad  
soliciting mobile payment? Or maybe it removes the annoying two  
minutes forced a timeout on the wifi networks?

It seems a bit counter-intuitive to look at ways to annoy users, and  
just to be clear I'm not looking to 'monetize' this in a way that  
extracts value.

But if city-wide networks could self-fund further rollout, then you  
could be looking at something that could scale in really interesting,  
potentially transformative ways.

After the capital costs of the network had been paid, and enough  
income raised to roll out to the next city, the ads/ timeout/  
annoyance could be permanently removed, and the residents would  
collectively own their own infrastructure.

Thanks

Sam









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