Wireless solutions to Internet Sustainability in Rural Telecentres.






Telecentre managers and Students from Makerere University testing wireless equipment in the lab before installation in Kabale.


For along time there has been a general challenge in all Telecentres to sustain their internet. At the inception of these projects it was believed that Telecentres will manage to sustain their links by paying a monthly rental bill of approximately 250 USD. For 64kpbs of which we are not sure of getting form the IPS. Because most of them don't allow clients to monitor their up link and down link!

Technically this was impossible especially after the pilot project where by aTelecntres had to foot 80% of its operation costs.

In addition to that, the Internet technology services were new in the minds of the rural poor peasants who could not even afford to pay 30/= per minute. The few who had the capacity to pay for the services they could hardly access internet on their own! Therefore, much of the time was spent on trainings and also sensitization campaigns.

A few from the civil society who had some knowledge on how to use the service independently could not access internet regularly due to the distances between them and the Telecentre.

IDRC therefore, found it necessary to create a viable solution to these challenges and CWRC was given the mandate to forge a permanent solution among Telecntres with a wireless link. (VSAT)

The solution was to ensure that Telecentres shares their bandwidth with their neighbors through creating Internet Access Points (IAPs) to bring down the high rental bills and achieve sustainability.

The project is also aimed at build capacities of all the Telecentre managers to maintain and technically trouble shoot and monitor the networks.

Successes have so far been registered in Lira Telecentre under CPAR, Nabweru Telecentre, and Kabale – Kachwekano Telecentre.

Nakaseke Telecentre is also benefiting from a similar project funded by ITU through and it is being executed by the Ministry of ICT – Uganda. So far nine sites have been connected such as

  1. Nakaseke Hospital
  2. Nakaseke Core Primary Teachers' College
  3. Nakaseke Sub-County headquarters
  4. Nakaseke Parents primary School
  5. Nakaseke International College
  6. Mazzoldi College Kiziba
  7. Nakaseke Seventh day Secondary School
  8. Nakasangombe Secondary School
  9. and Nakaseke Telecentre is the main hub for all. Band width is going to be shared among the sites to make internet more affordable.

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