DIIRWB has been invited to participate in The European Commission’s conference “Bridging the broadband gap: benefits of broadband for rural areas and less developed regions”. The conference will take place on the 14^th and 15^th of May 2007 in Brussels.

The event will investigate how increasing access to affordable broadband services and the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICT) can support regional and local development, ease infrastructure and geographical handicaps and make these areas more attractive to business and individuals.

Our experience and knowledge from establishing the World’s biggest and cheapest non-commercial rural wireless community network on rural Djursland in Denmark, made us want to share our knowledge and help other rural people around the World bridge the broadband gap in an affordable way. As we are also deeply engaged in building services on top of the broadband wireless infrastructure initiated and build by Djurslands.net, DIIRWBs presence at the conference is obvious.

We will be present at a stand at the exibition, which is part of the event. Our project will be visualized by the headline “Rural Internet at 1/3 of Average City Price”.

More on the conference here.

Contribution from the Danish DjurslandS.net experience

Educational leader Bjarke Nielsen and projectleader Charlotte Holst participated in the VII Infopoverty World Conference in the UN Headquarter in New York, April 19 and 20 2007.

We have collected some relevant documentation for participants and contributors, concerning the teaching of the “Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband”:

• Presentation from DIIRWB by Bjarke Nielsen, in the panel “BROADBAND SATELLITE PLATFORM FOR E-SERVICES AND INTEGRATED TERRESTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURES:
  http://hos.nr-djurs.net/bjarke/DIIRWB-presentation_final-2.pdf
• Indepht report on lessons learned from the DjurslandS.net experience, delivered by Bjarke March 6 2007 to InfoDev, commissioned by the World Bank:
  http://hos.nr-djurs.net/bjarke/In-Depht_Study_of_the_DjurslandS_net_experience.pdf

The In-Depth Case study covering the Djurslands.net experience has now been finalized and submitted to InfoDev at the Worldbank.

This study is one amongst 7 open access network initiatives around  the world, which were asked to make such a Case Study with detailed data and information on their own local open access network. These seven projects have distinct types of PPPs and project finance approaches. 3 of these 7 is networks are established and run purely by volunteers, namely http://www.nepalwireless.net/, http://www.wirelessghana.com/ and http://www.djurslands.net/. Already last autumn reports were published from the first two of these 3 non-commercial networks. As founder of DjurslandS.net and educational leader of the “Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband” Bjarke has written the remaining report on behalf of the Djursland society.

The report was send to InfoDev by the 6th of March 2007. It is called: “Lessons learned from the DjurslandS.net experience - An In-Depth Case Study of the Huge Rural Area Wireless DjurslandS.net in Denmark”.

You can download the report here: http://www.diirwb.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/In-Depht_Study_of_the_DjurslandS_net_experience.pdf 

Bjarke will participiate in the seventh Infopoverty World Conference which is to take place the April 19-20 at different locations around the world, as the locations are linked together in videoconferences.

Bjarke will officially addresss the conference as member of the panel in the fifth and final session under the theme of “Broadband Satellite platforms for e-services and integrated terristical infrastructures”. Bjarke will take part in the conference from the UN headquarter in New York.

The conferences title is “Harnessing the use of ICTs towards the Millennium Development Goals”, indicating the extreme importance of informational technology in fighting poverty and to better the quality of life for people around the globe.

Bjarke will point out how the population in the rural districts of Djursland has been successfull in establish cheap broadband access to only 1/3 of the price which is paid in the big cities. The success has been possibly by the work of hundreds of voluntarys in the communitys, and DIIRWB will pass on the necessary knowledge on how to do this to people in marginalized rural areas in the industrialized world as well as the developing contries.

More on the conference at http://www.infopoverty.net/