DEF & FORD Foundation partnered for providing Unlicensed Band & Wireless Connectivity to Guna tribals in Madhya Pradesh

DEF has entered into a partnership with Ford foundation for implementing Wireless mesh networking project called ‘Wireless in Unlicensed Band’ and the purpose is empowering communities through open media access. This partnership is about deployment of Wireless mesh network in a tribal area to find how open media access, open internet access, access of information and use of information infrastructure can empower local tribal communities in the long run.

The project has selected Guna dist as its location where the Bhil and Sahariya tribes are in access. The project is trying to seek opportunities to empower the tribal communities, train local communities in the entire process of deployment of wireless mesh networking and also manage wireless mesh networking in the tribal area.

The purpose is to deploy a live project as the matter of hypocrisy to the government and in order to find out how open spectrum can be utilized for last mile connectivity using wireless mesh networking.

This is a two years project of DEF, financially supported by Ford Foundation and in two years time the project will adapt the community in Guna Dist. The connectivity and network outreach will be increased as far as the radius of 20 to 40 kilometers in and around Guna dist; focusing and targeting tribal communities in particular.

The project also envisages what kind of technologies in wireless mesh networking would be the best, in order to do that the project is going to do the workshop where it will be inviting top deployers of wireless technologies of all across the world and learn about the available technologies for wireless mesh networking and also about the necessary information of technology useful in future in terms of terrain, geographical location and in terms of networking various nodes and the content domain. The project is also in the process of keeping track of the content and services to be deployed in the network infrastructure by the communities in future, which allows different kind of applications, services and content involvement in the local communities in Rajasthan.