AirJaldi develops and builds affordable broadband wireless networks for the benefit of rural communities in developing countries. We develop and integrate the most advanced and appropriate technology solutions for rural networks by using modified hardware and Open Source software; participate and provide professional support for the design, deployment and management of such networks; and share our knowledge and experience through our training and capacity-building center.

We believe that ubiquitous and affordable broadband Internet connectivity is essential for developing and improving the livelihoods of communities in rural areas.

We believe that the key to doing so lies in the use of affordable “best of breed” technological solutions and the immense knowledge of the Open Source community in this field.

We aim to contribute to the effort of narrowing the connectivity gap and unleashing the productive potential of rural communities by developing and sharing ways of building affordable bridges over it – in the form of wireless networks that are tailored to the special conditions of rural areas, operated by members of local communities, and used to further their own development.

AirJaldi’s mission and objectives are therefore to harness wireless network capabilities for the benefit of rural communities in developing countries through:

• Developing technologies that enable simple deployment of affordable, feature-rich wireless networks.
• Building the capacities of network operators and users through the AirJaldi Network Academy – a training and capacity-building center where trainees acquire the skills to establish, maintain and manage networks, and utilize them for the benefit of local communities.
• Participating in the successful deployment of license-free wireless networks through partnerships with public, private and non-profit organizations.

Activities carried out to date include:

Operations/deployments

• Establishment and oversight of the Dharamsala Community Wireless Mesh Network, which caters to a wide variety of users including, among others:
• More than 5,000 students in five school campuses, the furthest of which is 50 Km from Dharamsala.
• Staff of the Tibetan Children’s Villages organization, overseeing 15 TCV schools in India, attended by around 15,000 students.
• 200 Tibetan teachers undergoing teacher training in two teacher training institutions.
• More than 150 Tibetan artists and support staff of the Norbulingka institute for preservation of Tibetan culture.
• More than 100 doctors and students of the Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute (Men-Tse-Khang).
• Various Tibetan monasteries and Buddhist institutions housing more than 2,000 monks and nuns.
• Offices and premises of about 20 small community-based organizations, community leaders, social activists and artists.

In addition to serving its users, the network is used by AirJaldi and affiliated researchers as a unique “living lab” where new technologies and their impact on performance and user experience can be tested.

• Involvement in the planning and establishment of a number of wireless networks in various states in India in cooperation with Indian government agencies.

R&D

• Ongoing development and improvement of our network nodes through integration of new hardware components and locally-tailored support software packages. Re-purposed routers and other network components are widely deployed in our Dharamsala network at present.
• Ongoing development of a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) management system based on open source tools. The Dharamsala network is presently using an Open Source-based Network Operation Center (NOC).
• Partnership with various universities and research organizations (UC Berkeley, USA, Oulu University in Finland) on projects ranging from development of efficient solar chargers to long distance point-to-point wireless links.

Training, Capacity-building and dissemination

• Organizers and conveners of the “AirJaldi: Empowering Communities through Wireless Networks” international conference, held in Dharamsala on October 2006, which brought together some of the leading figures in the field of Open Source and Wireless Networks, leading Open Source developers, community leaders and activists from all over the world (for more details, see http://drupal.airjaldi.com/node/10).
• AirJaldi is acting as an advisor to LinkNet Zambia, an organization focused on providing communications infrastructure and services for special interest groups in rural areas of Zambia.

Ongoing and future activities include:

R&D

• Further improvement of hardware and firmware components and development of a robust and easy to deploy and operate network hardware and software package within a year.
• Development of various specialized solutions such as delayed tolerance networks and “mini ISP” units for small rural network operators.
• Participation in additional joint research projects on areas relevant to our work and mission.

Training

• An additional branch of AirJaldi academy in Bangalore, Karnataka, India and further curriculum development.
• Creating further partnerships with organizations that provide relevant ICT and ICT4D curricula and incorporation of content into our academies’ curriculum. Adapting our training curriculum for wide dissemination including making it available online.

Operations

• Expansion of the Dharamsala Network: short-term plans include connecting around 12 local primary and secondary schools in various locations within our network as well as 10 hospitals and health care centers. In the mid and longer term we will focus on expanding the geographical reach of the network and increasing the number of users, with a focus on local businesses on the one hand and educational/non profit/community-based organizations on the other.
• Establishment of two or three similar “living lab networks” elsewhere in India within the coming year.
• Participation as consultants, advisors or solution providers in a number of planned wireless deployments in India.
• Wider dissemination of our products, technology and know-how through the creation of an outlet/service-provision center in Delhi and possibly other big cities in India.
• Expansion of our work to other regions and countries through partnership with local and international organizations.

ICT is at the core of AirJaldi’s work. In fact the underlying objective of our work is to make IC.T, or rather connectivity, as easily available and affordable in rural areas as it is in urban centers. Our success, and our ability to respond meaningfully to this question, therefore depend on our users’ views on the impact of our work and ICT on achieving their own objectives. Needless to say, we will be happy to put the jury in touch with some such entities.

The creation and operation of a wireless network similar to the ones AirJaldi has designed and is managing could be undertaken by private entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations, government agencies and any combination of the above. The main issue impacting the type of entity that can replicate our networks are legal requirements from operators of such networks, which tend to be somewhat restrictive in many developing countries.

As for the training and capacity building work – we envisage that nonprofit organizations training institutions, and universities will all be able to make use of our materials and curricula for the benefit of their trainees and students.

The main obstacle to building broadband Internet networks in rural areas is the low economic viability of constructing such networks using available, yet expensive, existing commercial technologies to reach dispersed communities with relatively low demand for services and low purchasing power.

The recent deregulation of some wireless technologies, and the resulting widespread introduction of low-cost wireless networking products, offers ways to narrow this “high cost/low demand” gap by integrating these products into economically and technically viable networks.

AirJaldi, a social enterprise whose work centers on harnessing the capabilities of wireless networks for the benefit of rural communities in developing countries, has devised and implemented a particularly successful example of such "sustainable integration" model in Dharamsala, India.

Using local adaptations to widely-used open source software installed on modified low-cost consumer hardware, AirJaldi built a wireless Internet network, which now interconnects over 2,000 computers in a difficult mountainous terrain within a radius of 70 kilometers around Dharamsala, a town located in the Himalayan region of northern India. The network, which is one of the largest of its kind in Asia, offers a wide variety of services to its users, including broadband Internet access, VoIP-based telephone services, video conferencing, web hosting facilities, file sharing and backup. The network nodes, which are small in size, are mounted on low masts, and consume little power, form a network which is unobtrusive and has very small ecological footprint.

Drawing inspiration from the Dharamsala network’s success in providing affordable and reliable connectivity to rural areas, AirJaldi is expanding its work to reach other communities and regions.

We believe that widely-available Internet connectivity is essential to the development of rural areas and that the key to overcoming the present “low demand/high cost” gap lies in the use of affordable “best of breed” technologies that utilize readily-available products and the immense knowledge of the Open Source community.

Our aim is to contribute to this effort by further developing and sharing ways of building and operating robust wireless networks that are suitable for the needs and realities of rural communities, are economically viable and have low ecological footprint.

Objectives and activities

AirJaldi’s mission is to harness wireless network capabilities for the benefit of rural communities in developing countries through:

• Developing technologies that enable simple deployment of affordable, robust and capacity-rich wireless networks.

• Building the capacities of network operators and users through the creation of training and capacity-building centers and development of training programs providing trainees with skills to establish, operate and utilize networks for the benefit of local communities.

• Participating in the successful deployment of license-free wireless networks through partnerships with public, private and non-profit entities.

AirJaldi’s first priority is rural areas not serviced by existing operators. We offer assistance in setting up and operating high speed wireless Internet networks in such areas to government agencies, nonprofit institutions, and local entrepreneurs. While India is our initial country of operation, AirJaldi plans to expand its operations to other countries and regions in the near future.

Our mission and objectives are realized through the following, closely linked, areas of operation:

Our Research and Development (R&D) team identifies, tests and evaluates the latest emerging innovations in hardware. Using the strengths and support of Open-Source development methodologies and partners from around the world, the team is able to quickly adapt our firmware to new hardware and avail it for real-life field testing by our network users. Our networks also serve as unique living laboratories, where these innovations enjoy the benefits of unparalleled reviews and debugging by both peers as network users.

• The training and capacity-building center serves as our main training facility. Courses and workshops are offered to wireless network operators and entrepreneurs, as well as others interested in our technology ICT in general. We also partner with a number of training content providers by hosting courses and workshops at our training facilities, incorporation of relevant course material into our curriculum and by sharing our own curriculum and making it publicly available.

• Our operations division provides support and advice to organizations involved with building and operating networks in rural area. This includes cooperation in the development of complete “turn key” solutions encompassing all aspects of setting up and operating a wireless network, or specific advice and support on network design and deployment, hardware components selection, or network monitoring and management systems.

The three divisions work closely together to develop well-tested “enabling solutions” packages tailored to diverse target groups: using products and solutions developed by our R&D team and tested under demanding real-life conditions through our Dharamsala network and its users, the operations team helps in the design of networks and the deployment of equipment in the field. Integrating information provided by the R&D and operations divisions into its curriculum, the AirJaldi training and capacity-building center focuses on equipping trainees with the skills needed to set up, mange and operate wireless networks.

AirJaldi works in cooperation with government institutions, donor agencies, academic research facilities, non-profit organizations and private entrepreneurs. Our team is supported in its ongoing work by peer researchers, volunteers and advisors from North America, Europe, India and the region, as well a s the work of the Open Source development community as a whole.