Telecoms sans frontiers

Just reading back thru posts in this blog, I see the post about the katrina telecoms crisis. Recently, TSF Telecoms Sans Frontieres have cropped up numerous times in news reports I have read. I am excited to read of their existence and the technology they use in crisis situations, especially the funky satellites they can set up in under 30 mins from arrival.

Sadly, I do not possess the necessary skills to apply as a volunteer, but their existence has highlighted to me the need for a TSF sans crisis. We have managed it once, as far as I know, with huge success with the Wennington project, when a small squad (we called outselves a SWAT team) of wireless, wifi, community etc folk got together to install comms into a rural village where the incumbent feared to tread (for lack of profits). I would dearly love to repeat that experiment, because the financial benefits to that community in Wennington far, far outweighs the £30k put in to build the network. If only other development agencies, councils, communities etc could help to fund wireless community networks, or even better fibre/fiwi (fibre-wireless) networks with some FTTH and smart meters, CCTV etc built in that would assist economic regeneration of areas that BT et al have long neglected.

The lack of FTTH development in the UK remains a complete mystery to me, especially now it is so obvious in other countries, and often it starts in the rural areas I have long campaigned to connect, not the urban areas where competition and cherry picking attracts the telcos. The economics of FTTH are now apparent to all, and well understood by all but the consumers (and probably politicians) it seems, who still fail to pursue the telcos with the enthusiasm and energy that has seen such projects as those in rural Sweden, Denmark, Holland etc succeed. Roll on the End Game, I say, with FTTH starting in the UK in the deeply unconnected rural areas, like my own in Eden in Cumbria, where in 2007, we still don't see more than 512kbps download on a very good sunny day once in a blue moon. (Upload is stil less than on dial up for 90+% of the time) - oh fun!)