BBC NEWS | Technology | Radio mail links Pacific islands: "A internet connection speed of 2Kbps may not sound like much, but it is providing a lifeline for the people of the Solomon Islands.
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But for the past four years, the People's First Network has tried to mend fences by using high frequency radio to send and receive e-mail.
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The two main ways of getting in touch with people are short-wave radios or satellite telephones. But radio offers no privacy, whereas satellite phones are too expensive for most to use regularly."
Not to speak of the other advantage of email over radio/phone: asynchronicity (sender and receiver don't need to be there at the same time).
"At the moment that are 14 e-mail stations in schools or clinics in rural areas. The stations are owned by the community, with decisions taken by a committee of village chiefs and religious leaders.
The stations are a pretty basic affair, consisting of an ageing laptop, radio and modem. The kit is powered by a car battery, which itself runs off a solar panel as in most areas there is no electricity. The total cost of the equipment runs to around $8,000."
You'd think that can be done cheaper. Then again, cheap supplies aren't as plentiful everywhere in the world as they are in the USA.
The project uses WaveMail: "WaveMail is optimized for use over relatively slow links like radio-links (Pactor / Packet radio), Inmarsat and telephone lines. In order to use the slow links in an efficient manner, all messages are compressed and a very efficient protocol is used for message transfer (compression and decompression is done automatically without user intervention)."
Next they'll try to provide internet access. See World's poor to get own search engine: "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing a search engine designed for people with a slow net connection. Someone using the software would e-mail a query to a central server in Boston. The program would search the net, choose the most suitable webpages, compress them and e-mail the results a day later.
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The thinking behind the TEK search engine is that people in poor countries are short of money but have time on their hands, whereas people in the West are cash-rich but time-poor."
Seems like solid thinking.