Coquitel is about to provide such service to 10 Puerto Rico communities with a potential customer base of 150,000 people. Cooquitel was built with open source software and inexpensive hardware designed by Village Telco, a nonprofit organization in South Africa.
The mesh network will use unlicensed spectrum and is based on Village Telco’s “Mesh Potato," a weatherproof 802.11g wireless access and VoIP connection point designed for unstable electrical power conditions.The design principles are simple enough. The system is designed to support “pay as you go” affordable and simple to bill communications.
The idea is to make the process of setting up service as simple as creating a nw wordpress blog.
The costs are intended to allow a break even point in six months, and should be capable of being used by any business person, without special training.
In fact, it runs on about three watts, and can be powered by solar or battery power. Costing about $80 each, the Mesh Potato Mesh Potato is intended to be mounted outdoors, on a pole or the roof of a house. Users can connect to it with a standard ATA telephone connection or over Wi-Fi.
The unit also is designed to accept direct 240V current or any input between 10 volts and 40 volts DC, meaning the MeshPotato can be powered by a car battery.
The Mesh Potato uses an omnidirectional antenna with a maximum power of 20db (100mW), so it can operate within most countries’ wireless regulations and arguably works best in a local community with multiple user locations.
As always, backhaul is the key issue for the self-organizing network.
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