Our home

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Cities is an exception on earth.Most of the land-surface of the earth is rural districts,

and among other things they have in commonthat it seems all too expensive to create a full surface

covering broadband infrastructure that makes everyone living on earth part of the global ICT society.

Thus the divide between life in cities and countryside is further expanded and bear catastrophic perspectives.

Cities and countryside

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In Denmark ”Tele Danmark” (TDC), who owns the copper-line infrastructure, gives 95% of all households opportunity to get up to 2 megabit broadband access through 1600 ADSL centrals.

If TDC should give the remaining 5% the same possibility, TDC would have to make another 4600 ADSL centrals.

The need for almost 3 times extra centrals is due to these facts:1. All the 5% live in the sparsely populated rural areas2. The centrals is placed in or near the cities where 95% is concentrated3. The rural areas covers the major part of the geographical Danmark4. The ADSL centrals can at 2 megabit only reach out to 5 km on the lines

To believe that the economical forces of the market will expand the amount of ADSL centrals from 1600 to 6200, just to reach the last 5% of the households, would be sheer naivety.

Broadband coverage in Denmark

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Broadband coverage on Djursland

On Djursland the consequences of the short range of ADSLwas that 25% of the households in the countryside outside

the cities could not get an ADSL broadband connection.

When it comes to broadband connectivityall rural areas around the globe have

similar handicap to city areas - or worse.That is why it is very interesting what wedid to solve this problem on Djursland.

Here like all over Denmark the average investment at the commercial providers to give 1 rural household connectivity

could provide 55 city households with broadband accessdue to short distances and shared infrastructure in city areas.

Since 2001 hundreds of volunteers have developed the Djursland-model.Negotiations with 35 ISPs - on all kind of connectivity technology - showed that a rural IT-infrastructure, providing access all over Djursland, could not be established on market conditions.

A pilot project showed that the needed com-mercial investment to reach 1 rural household by cable and DSL, which could reach 55 in cities, could actually reach 165 wirelessly, if we did it our selves, so in spring 2003 we did so everywhere !

The action and responsibility of several hundred volunteers have until now given 7000 rural households, -businesses and -institutions comparable broadband access at 1/3 of the average market price in cities.

We learned by experimenting to use an outdoor antenna amplified wireless data radio technique, based on standardized, mass-produced and therefore very cheap Wi-Fi equipment.

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Facts of Djursland:Area in miles: 30 * 40 miles Area in kilometers: 50 * 60 kmTotal area in square miles: 576 Total area in km2: 1491Population of Djursland: 82420Population a square mile: 143 Population a km2: 58

Lessons learned on rural Djursland

. . is run by hundreds of volunteers and

consist today of 10 area nets, with more

than 300 central antenna nodes, which each covers about 10

km in diameter in all directions, and whichin all, up to now, give

wireless access to close to 7000 amplified

APs in rural house-holds, -schools, -insti-

tutions and -firms. Each household etc.

borrows the gear and pays a one time contri-bution of 267 € (363 $)

and also 13 € (18 $)each month for access.

Bandwidth at each place is between 4 and 10 Megabit/sec. The 7000 connectedhouseholds etc. savetogether each year2250000 € (3 Mill. $),compared to the sum they should have paid to the commercial ISPs, – if they could have delivered to everybody in our rural areas at the actual city-market price for similar bandwidth. First year each new household saves 275 € (374 $) and each following year more than 500 € (680 $).

DjurslandS.net

User antennas with 1½ km reach is used in purple areasUser antennas with 3 km reach is used in orange areasUser antennas with 5 km reach is used in yellow areas

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2.4 GHz wireless point to point connections are from an Internet gateway branched out in 3, 2 or 1 directions at each wireless user-access. This forms the backbone of the wireless infra-structure.The four colors represents the four channels 1, 5, 9 and 13 that we can use simultaneously in the same area.

The connection-structure of a landscapenet

Central node for the wireless infrastructure of a community landscapenet.Here for GrenaaS.net on a silo at Grenaa Technical School in Denmark.

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A central village installation:

1. A radio-based connectionlinking to a central radio stationthrough a directional-antenna.

2. And an omni-antennagiving radio-basedaccess for installationsat roofs at householdsand institutions

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User installation box

An outdoor box with:

1. An accesspoint

2. A directional antenna in the lid

3. Ethernet kabel for the house

4. An lengthened powercord

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1 mile connection 2 mile connection 3 mile connection

Cheap mass produced user antennas for wireless connections,all of which can be produced locally and so also can create jobs

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Comparison of all expenses in € for a household- over 4 years - for comparable broadband access

ISP Speed 1. year 2. year 3. year 4. year In all Expense factor

Djursnet (non-commercial) 4096/4096 Kbit/s 423 156 156 156 891 1,00

Cybercity 4096/256 Kbit/s 590 564 564 564    

tele2 4096/256 Kbit/s 600 600 600 600    

Stofanet 4096/512 Kbit/s 732 732 732 732    

TDC 4096/512 Kbit/s 835 756 756 756    

DanskKabelTV 4096/256 Kbit/s 731 638 638 638    

Market average a year for 4096/256 (512) Kbit/s: 697,6 658 658 658 2671,6 3,00

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Comparison of all expenses in € for a household - over 4 years - for comparable rural WiMAX broadband in Denmark

ISP Speed 1. year 2. year 3. year 4. year In all Expense factor

Djursnet (non-commercial) 4096/4096 Kbit/s 423 156 156 156 891 1

Danish regional WiMAX 4096/4096 Kbit/s 5481 5148 5148 5148 20985 23

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WiMAX is marketed very aggressively at the moment, and without insight into the technicalities and the economics people have started to “believe” that WiMAX is the answer to the need for a rural broadband infrastructure.But really, when a household has to pay 23 times more for the necessary synchronous bandwidth, and in no way gets more services than delivered by a landscapenet build on expanded Wi-Fi technology, it is clearly not so. Moreover the upcoming n-standard in Wi-Fi will in practice deliver services which will do better than WiMAX and can be compared to fiber to the home!

What about WiMAX then ?

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The economy needed intowns to give service for 55householdscan in rural areas only giveservice 1 household

Totally unprofitable for TDC

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180TDC rentability in towns

TDC in rural areas

Wireless landscapenet

The wireless landscapenet has a world-beating economy

As seen here, a wireless landscapenet - which is

established and driven by volunteers - has an economical

cost effectiveness and sustainability which over 4 years is (55*3=) 165 times bigger than

when a surface covering IT infrastructure is created in a rural area in a rich country,

through establishment of extra DSL centrals and access lines.

Landscapenet has 165 times better economy than ADSL rural centrals

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Global Connection and Access to and from the Terrestrial Landscapenets

Sharing one high-speed gateway for a whole infrastructure of a landscapenet makes access most cheap for each user. - This is true whether the gateway is terrestrial glass fibre net or based on satellite systems of different kind or both, etc.

If the community – or the people together - owns the landscapenet it becomes even more cheap when the amount of internal use gradually develops, as internal routing of such traffic keeps down the load and expense on the Internet gateway to the global ICT-society.

The Networking Djursland projectsto develop all walks of life by ICT in a rural area in Denmark

1. Access on fiber to Internet from rural districts2. Wireless backbone – rural links to fiber3. Wireless link to rural business area4. Cheapen radio-, antenna- and net gear5. Nesting facilities for new IT-businesses6. Regional Community news- and service portal7. Hundreds of village portals integrated in regional portal8. Web platform for small businesses9. Portal linking all homepages on Djursland10. E-learning portal via the community nets11. Free VoIP + video via the community nets12. Local net-TV service over the wireless infrastructure13. Local IT-, support- and self help workshops14. Pass on renovated recycled hardware15. Internet corners in homes for elderly people16. Local training in use of PC and Internet17. Education in how to build and run the nets18. Digital access to regional archives from all over19. The virtual Djursland - free outdoor access everywhere20. Rural Wireless Broadband Institute - DIIRWB

These 20 EU, regional and municipal supported projects

are simultaneous and synergistically implemented

by DIIRWB in partnership with 25 of the top-level

institutions on Djursland, to develop Djursland into a

good rural ICT-society.Achieving this, it is also

meant to showcase that this can be done in a rural area, to inspire other rural areas

around the World, as the practical basis of the

teaching from DIIRWB in building and running

community landscapenet etc.

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DIIRWB’s training- and teaching-disciplines

1) Organization

2) Campaign

3) Administration

4) Equipment and tools

5) Net-planning- and building

6) Web-portal building and running

7) User-support and running net

8) Handling of routers and servers

9) Documentation and evaluation

Normally we will train groups from the same areawith about 9 participants. They will be specialized so thata sharing of work can take place.

Share of responsibility among volunteers makes non-commercial establishing and running of community network realistic.

http://DIIRWB.net * Contact@DIIRWB.net * (+45) 60250001 or 60250015

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Winneba in Ghana gets wireless infrastructure

In August 2007, after having send lots of equipment and antennabuilding tools, DIIRWB taught remotely, over the Internet, a workshop in Winneba, Ghana, how to build their own wireless infrastructure.

The local volunteers continues to teach others how to make cheap wireless landscapenets, at similar workshops this spring, and they can for free draw on the experience in the DIIRWB-staff in online video communication over the Internet.

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DIIRWB-staff is at the

moment in Laos

connecting several rural schools via satellite and

wireless infrastructures.

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You can get much more information at:

1. http://Boevl.dk Danish2. http://DjurslandS.net Danish3. http://Networking-Djursland.dk English4. http://DIIRWB.net English5. http://Landscapenet.org English

The crew at DIIRWB will be pleased to share our experiencewith people in areas of poverty, to help empowering their lives.

To facilitate the communication we can provide common English-training over the Internet for free in 32 native languages by now.

Or you can read the 52 pages illustrated in-depth case study, which was commissioned by infoDev at The World Bank, - the Information for Development Program (www.infoDev.org) - , as an input into their Report on Local Open Access Networks for

Communities and Municipalities. The study is called: “Lessons learned from the DjurslandS.net experience - An In-Depth Case Study of the Huge Rural Area Wireless DjurslandS.net in Denmark.” Reported the 6th of March 2007 By Bjarke Nielsen, founder of DjurslandS.net and educational leader at “Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband”, (Teaching@DIIRWB.net):

http://hos.nr-djurs.net/bjarke/In-Depht_Study_of_the_DjurslandS_net_experience.pdf

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