Taking Wi-Fi to New Heights

Dec. 1 -- For the laptop-toter checking e-mail on the run or while sipping a latte at Starbucks, Wi-Fi is a nice convenience. But for some Himalayan villagers in Nepal, a long-range wireless network is the only connection to the rest of the world.

Since late summer, an 802.11b wireless network has enabled a group of rural villages to send and receive POP mail and use a Web cam to teach high school classes over the villages' intranet. No roads span the distances between these villages, but now farmers looking to discuss trades can hold Net meetings rather than spending two days hiking across mountain terrain.

The inspiration for this project is Mahabir Pun, a native Nepali determined to bring better education and technology to his fellow villagers. After spending two years writing three letters a day to American universities, Pun was accepted at the University of Nebraska at Kearney where he received a master's degree in 1992. He then returned to his small home village and, shortly after the village got electricity in 1998, set up its first high school computer lab. The lab's old Pentium systems were assembled from donated parts and ran Windows 95 or 98. But with no phone line, the villagers could not access the Internet.

In mid-August, Pun and a team of volunteers began the three-week process of constructing the wireless network connecting five villages that have populations of from 500 to 1,000. Robin Shields and Sage Radachowsky, who had been volunteer teachers in Pun's village, along with two undergrads from the University of California at Los Angeles, Mark Michalski and James Pearson, helped Pun set up the network.

As if building a wireless network at elevations of more than 7,000 feet weren't difficult enough, each piece of equipment had to be hauled up a vertical mile to the mountain-top villages. Twelve smartBridges air Point Pro Outdoor access points are connected to the dial-up ISP 22 miles away in Pokhara, the nearest city, which has a population of 95,000. Solar panels and wind generators provide power for five access points. The team bought the APs at manufacturer's cost for the project, and three more have since been donated for future use.