Mpumalanga Mesh:Project Chapter

FMFI Peebles Valley Mesh Network, White River, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa

Researchers:	Dwayne Bailey (dwayne[@]translate.org.za)
	David Johnson (djohnson[@]csir.co.za)

Background

ACTS Clinic, a non-government HIV/AIDS clinic in the Masoyi Village near the Kruger National Park in South Africa, is also at the hub of an information and communication project supported by the IDRC. The clinic (green roof in pictures above) has an expensive VSAT connection but through developing a least-cost wifi mesh-network this signal is being shared enabling communication with their hospice nearby (middle picture), the village school, the home of one of the care givers and surrounding farmers.

Not only has the clinic brought hope to many, who have literally risen from their death beds (like Benjamin in the right hand corner) thanks to the ART drugs, but Portia Ndluli, 19 years old, has a new life as well because with access to the internet at her home, this school leaver has developed a new interest in life. She would otherwise be unemployed in this rural enclave. But through connectivity she has become self taught and now has a computer club of 6 youths, who come to her house to learn about the internet and online research and communication.

The tin can “cantennae” used to cover the wireless antennae erected onto of the Ndluli’s house is rusted, but the connection still works very well and Portia, together with the school, hospice, farmers and others are sharing the network at least cost with the clinic. The hospice now has a voice over internet phone connection to the clinic nearby, and will save the staff and clinic thousands of rands in cellular phone bills.

This Clinic, which is mainly funded by a pharmaceutical company social grant, has brought hope to over 700 patients in the area. The clinic hopes to extend its influence to 32 other public clinics in the area so that the more than 5000 patients can have access to ART. One way to scale up is through improving communications between the clinics.

Strategies for influence

The project team put the infrastructure in place to cover the Peebles Valley with connectivity, with the clinic as the central hub for the initiative. The focus is therefore on the ACTS clinic and the strategies to enhance the use of the network in this situation, before dealing with the expansion to other clinics and the community at large. The initial technical part of the project saw a lot of difficulty and experimenting before the optimum configuration was arrived at and some stability was achieved in the network. The planned components of the project have been enhanced by some unexpected results to create a situation where they now had a far more robust true mesh network with built-in redundancy. The scalability and replicability is apparent. This created the framework for the possibility of organic growth of the network and a range of new users connecting.

The support and maintenances issues then had be dealt with, the main emphasis being that the clinic and its staff should be persuaded to take ownership of the network, maintain it and even improve its functionality. This was combined with promoting the development of a business model for utilisation in which the clinic would be able to recover some of the connectivity costs, by charging selected users, invoicing them and collecting the money. The onus was put on the clinic manager to start selling connectivity into the community, specifically targeting those they were able to pay, like the farmers in the valley.

To make the connectivity component of the network sustainable, attempts were made to build awareness of connectivity costs, to influence the users to be frugal in their use of the resource, but also to post a warning that somewhere down the line, users will be paying for access. Some users may have responded to this information, but usage monitoring was done and a bandwidth and download management system had to be put in place to limit some users to try and remain within the capped download of the satellite connection.

The research objectives of the project was to use the results as the basis for writing case study which supports policy changes with a particular focus on package the experiences for use as a use case study for DoC.

Main contributions

A community-owned mesh network with built-in redundancy has been created in a deep rural setting with a number of topographical constraints. It has been possible to spread the applications over a range of users, from the clinic to a hospice, to framers, to the school and individual users.

The demonstration of the benefits of using mesh networking caught the attention of a local computer shop owner in White River. He now plans to build a similar mesh network to connect outlying farms around White River. This mesh network will eventually connect to the Peebles mesh network and connectivity will then be supplied from a cheaper ADSL link in White River. He will also be responsible for maintaining and growing the mesh network in the area and will run the network as a business with some bandwidth concessions for places like clinics and schools.

Main challenges

The main challenge is the exit strategy that needs to be put in place for the researchers to be able to withdraw and leave behind a workable and viable ICT network in its current setting. There are however currently strong indications that a local computer shop owner in White River will be taking over the maintenance and running of the mesh network.