VoIP on in rural Ghana November 2006 - Wireless Ghana is pleased to announce that we have successfully implemented VoIP onto our flagship network in the Akwapim district of Ghana’s Eastern Region.
The VoIP is available at three locations, and allows communications between two community centers in Akropong and one in Apirede, spanning a 6km distance. An application called SJPhone is running the frontend and doing IP to IP dials across our CuWIN-based WiFi mesh network.
VoIP marks the first service Wireless Ghana has implemented to work solely on its LAN. The service is available at all times that electricity is available, even when our satellite Internet uplink is not. As VoIP technology becomes more mainstream the teams at Wireless Ghana aim to deploy such services with greater scope.
This autumn and the early winter has been rather warm i Denmark. Actually the four months october, november, december and january have each been the warmest ever mesaured. As a sideeffect january have been rather stormy. More that 4 heavy storms have had their impact on the wireless infrastructure around Djursland. The long links are rather sensitive to the directional antennas correct adjustments. Several antennes had come out of focus because of the windpressure.
Some installations were heavily damaged during the storms. One of the more spectaculary events happend just outside DIIRWBs administration. At the summercamp we sat up installations to cover all the Friland with outdoor wireless access. Our main accesspoint was placed on top of an old wooden telephone-mast. The mast simply broke during the storm the night between january 11. and 12. Another mast at Friland also had some damages on the equipment.
It’s a common asumption that climate changes besides a general rise in temperature will also give us heavier storms in Denmark. The netbuilders must be aware of this when setting up the infrastructure. By the way. The board in this broken mikrotik-panel was undamaged, and so was our roundspreading antenna. We had however to move the board to another panel and to move the whole installation to a position on top of our administrationbuilding which is not optimal for neither the feeding link nor for the outdoor covering of Friland. As a temporary solution it works, but trees blocks for optimal linkquality. In the spring when leafing comes, we have to find a better position for the installation.
