“Internet postman” Delivers 21st Century to Isolated Villages
An American entrepreneur has introduced an “Internet postman” to rural areas of India, Cambodia, Rwanda, Paraguay and Costa Rica.

The Wi-fi service by United Villages can claim points for its ergonomics: it is inexpensive, breaks down isolation in remote areas and enables some 110,000 people to benefit from 21st Century communications technology for the first time.

The Massachusetts company developed technology to wirelessly connect isolated villages to the Internet. According the company, villagers use pre-paid cards to write emails or record phone messages and save their words at computer kiosks installed in schools and community halls.

 Buses fitted out with short-range Wi-Fi antennas and a hard disk on board pass through villages, automatically picking up stored emails and voice messages as they go. Once a bus reaches a city with Internet connectivity, it relays emails and messages to their destinations via the web. The villagers receive their responses when the bus passes back through the village. In India, where the service is expanding rapidly, this can happen several times a day.

The system makes it easier for villagers to buy essential products such as fertilizers, pesticides, books and medicines for delivery the next day via the bus.

As many people in rural communities cannot read, and because most of the Web is in English, villagers often rely on the kiosk operator to help them.

Amir Hasson, CEO of United Villages, told The Age Newspaper in Australia that he is looking to expand into China, Nigeria and even remote areas of Australia, provided he can find local partners to work with.

"Once we have a critical mass of those kiosk operators on a route, we go to bus owners and we negotiate a deal with them to put our mobile access point on their bus, which is already going back and forward to the village anyway."

"Our mission is to provide 2 billion villagers with a digital identity, which includes an email address, a phone number and a stored value card - basically, the beginning of a bank account, a debit card," he explains on the company web site.