Proof of Concept: Portable WiFi
graphic by Josh McKibillo
Ubiqutious Internet is something I hope to see within 10 years, but until then this is a proof of concept. In short this backpack gets Internet through a cell phone, beams it out over WiFi, and powers itself using the Sun. The process is detailed in this Popular Science article, which I hear about via Lifehacker. Right now it’s big, hacky, and expensive, but things should get smaller and cheaper. The Internet comes from a 3G network in the states called EV-DO, which Sri Lanka doesn’t have yet. Dialog is doing something, but I dunno how fast it is. You plug the cell card into a Junxion WiFi router and then you have an instant hotspot. The solar power is a bit of a vanity plate, but useful if you want WiFi absolutely anywhere.
EV-DO is about $80/month and really fast, I hope Sri Lanka gets something similar soon.
using BroadbandAccess (EV-DO), you feel as if you’re hooked up to a cable modem, even when you’re sitting on a beach, your deck or a speeding commuter train. When your signal is strong, you get Web pages in a flash, file attachments in no time and video feeds without a hiccup. (New York Times
If you plug an EV-DO card into your laptop or PDA you can get fast Internet all over the States as is. The WiFi backpack here means that you could use one card and provide access to a whole office or classroom. Seeing as the cell-phone network pushes out much faster than land-lines, this is a way to reach rural and poor areas with Internet. People in China and Africa are among the fastest adopters, so it’s a much faster vector for Internet than PCs and landlines. As cheap EV-DO networks get more popular, you could start getting Internet as easily as cellular signal.
A more developed ‘backpack’ might be a solar-powered phone that also transmits WiFi. Of course, it’s unclear that companies want you giving out free Internet – but getting one cell-phone and some cheap Indian laptops would be a faster way to network a classroom in Batticaloa than waiting for a cable rollout.
I started off not really liking General Sarath Fonseka, him being part of the aggressive war effort. I didn’t support the war (largely cause I thought it would fail), and I thought Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Fonseka were gleefully stomping everything. Fonseka even came out and said “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people,” in 2008 (
General Sarath Fonseka was arrested on a bunch of trumped up charges, but mainly for daring to threaten Mahinda in a Presidential election. Despite his poor health, Fonseka was arrested in February 2010 and sentence to three years. Word on the street now, however, is that he’ll be released soon. Like any day now. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has told 
I’ve been testing a lot of apps. A very interesting one is iPlayboy, from Playboy magazine. It’s bad porn but a good magazine, especially since you can read issues from its cultural heyday – the Mad Men era of the 60s.
I’m going to get back to blogging. I buy a shitload of stuff on my iPad. Not that I like spending money, and the exchange rate terrifies me, but it’s just so easy, and so good. For example, I’ve been reading comics again. Spiderman, and 
Looks del.icio.us :)
However, at the moment I’d be more than happy to have a proper internet connection at home. It takes ages to download the lightest of pages on stupid dial-up.
I’ll second that. Then again I don’t even have dialup at home. Meh.
right now I’m in Kandy on some horrible dial-up. I think coolies are actually carrying the packets downhill. As an alternative to watching images load pixel-by-pixel I’m trying this service by a bright guy who’s name I forget – and who it would take another half hour to Google.
http://www.iyhy.com
It lets me view this and any page stripped of any formatting and graphic elements, and loads way faster. It’s meant for mobile devices, but it works pretty good for this dialup
It’s Benjamin Adam (Announcement). Cool tool.
I think the really cool part of this evolving technology is that when you are walking with your backpack into a public WiFi hotspot the EV-DO connection can be seamlessly handed over to the (free) public wifi. In most cities in the US and some countries in Europe, I reckon it would be possible to walk through one neighborhood to the other only using public wifi and relying on telco’s paid broadband connection intermittently. I don’t see any insurmountable reasons why public, neighorhood wifi networks as have evolved in Indonesia cannot be replicated in Colombo at least and may be other cities that have ADSL or other broadband connections. In Indonesia, broadband connections of offices, business establishments etc are connected to a WiFi box effectively creating wireless community broadband networks. If you visit my neighboorhood on 2nd Lane Nawala Road you should be able to enjoy free high speed wifi connection thanks to my wifi access box connected to my ADSL connection. Colombo 7 area is bathed in wifi signals. It would be great if some geeks could get together and map the wifi hotspots in Colombo for starters. That info would have some public utility.
This reply may be a little late, but please check out our service PHONifier, at http://www.phonifier.com. It’s open source, so you can take the source code and install it on you own server to act as your own proxy for mobile or low-bandwith access to the web.
We’ve just this week launched, at would be really happy to hear your comments or feedback!