Wi-Fi Revolution
Dois posts interessantes, vindo da BBC e do Le Figaro sobre o desenvolvimento das redes Wi-Fi e dos telefones celulares na frica e na Frana, respectivamente.
A matria do Le Figaro mostra a evoluo das redes Wi-Fi em Paris e Lyon. Trechos:
“(…) De nombreuses grandes villes franaises ont commenc dployer des rseaux Wi-Fi publics. On retiendra particulirement l’initiative de Paris, qui a fini le dploiement en dcembre 2007 (le service a dbut durant l’t) d’un rseau de 420 bornes dissmines dans les mairies, les bibliothques ou les espaces verts. En accs totalement gratuit mais disponible uniquement de 7 h 23 h et dans la limite des heures d’ouverture des lieux quips ( l’exception du Champ-de-Mars et du parc de Belleville), ce service connat un succs croissant avec 1 500 2 000 connexions par jour, pour 300 600 utilisateurs quotidiens. Les temps de connexions s’allongent pour atteindre une moyenne de 50 minutes par session, contre 30 au mois d’octobre. On note galement la primaut des sites couverts depuis le mois de novembre, temprature oblige. ‘Notre cible numro 1 reste les tudiants, qui largissent ainsi leur lieu de travail, indique Eric Anvar, le chef de projet Wi-Fi la direction des projets techniques de la Mairie de Paris, mais nous touchons galement les touristes et, dans une moindre mesure, les travailleurs nomades.’ Ainsi, les lieux connaissant le plus de succs sont-ils les bibliothques Jean-Pierre-Melville dans le XIIIe, Clignancourt dans le XVIIIe et le centre d’accueil des tudiants Kellermann dans le XIIIe. Vous trouverez une liste des bornes sur www.paris.fr.
Autre formule, l encore gratuite, celle de Lyon qui a dploy un rseau autour de trois zones centrales – la place Bellecour, une portion des berges du Rhne et la place Louis-Pradel devant la mairie. Sur le mme modle, Grenoble quipera plusieurs de ses quartiers dans le courant 2008. Issy-les-Moulineaux, prcurseur des cits numriques, et Nantes proposent, elles, un concept hybride garantissant un accs gratuit au site internet de la ville mais imposant une formule payante, en collaboration avec des oprateurs tels que Orange ou Neuf, pour accder au net. Comptez un minimum de 1,50 euro par heure selon l’oprateur (gratuit chez Neuf pour les abonns de cet oprateur) Issy-les-Moulineaux et 3 euros de l’heure Nantes. N’oublions pas Metz, qui s’est dote d’un rseau dense en centre-ville, mais uniquement en accs payant (3 euros de l’heure).(…)”
Photo courtesy of DataDyne.org
J a matroa da BBC mostra a revoluo dos celulares na frica. Trechos do texto de Joel Selanikio, fsico e co-fundador da organizao “DataDyne”.
“If I had told you ten years ago that by the end of 2007 there would be an international network of wirelessly-connected computers throughout the developing world, you might well have said it wasn’t possible. I would probably have said the same, but as it turns out we would have been wrong: it was possible, and it was created, and it continues to expand, not through Non-Governmental Organisations or charity or development grants but through the market, with much of it financed by some of the poorest people on the planet.I am talking, of course, about the mobile phone network.
(…)
Because those of us based in the developed world are always thinking of computers as things with 15-inch or 17-inch or 24-inch screens, it can be hard to see the potential of something much smaller, even if it’s right in our pocket. I was talking with a software developer friend of mine recently and going on as I do about the potential for cell phone software to revolutionise education, literacy, and public health in the developing world.
And he said to me ‘but can you really create a valuable user experience on such a small screen and with such a slow processor’. So I asked him if he’d heard of the iPhone, or the Gameboy. Neither of those devices seem to have much difficulty in creating a compelling and useful user experience, and how long do you think it will it be before there’s a sub-$100 iPhone or equivalent?
(…) I think it’s time that we recognised that for the majority of the world’s population, and for the foreseeable future, the cell phone is the computer. Meanwhile, this revolution of personally-financed wirelessly-connected computers largely goes unnoticed by the international development community, and because their paradigm revolves around desktops and laptops they spend millions developing specialised laptops for schoolchildren in developing countries, which will surely only ever reach a small fraction of them, while the network of invisible computers continues its exponential penetration into those same regions, below the radar.
(…)In South Africa and Nigeria, for example, a variety of mobile banking initiatives have taken off and been embraced by a population that isn’t going to be getting “online”, in the web sense, anytime soon but who want all the advantages of cashless transactions. And in Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Zambia, with funding from The Vodafone Group Foundation and the UN Foundation, we’ve successfully completed a pilot of our EpiSurveyor mobile data collection software for public health.
(…)
But regardless of where the developer is located, I think it’s time that we recognised that for the majority of the world’s population, and for the foreseeable future, the cell phone is the computer, and it will be the portal to the internet, and the communications tool, and the schoolbook, and the vaccination record, and the family album, and many other things, just as soon as someone, somewhere, sits down and writes the software that allows these functions to be performed.”