Relevant to WSIS, Indonesian efforts to webify are short, but working. Even with 1,000 new nodes being installed each month, there is not enough web access for the nation's 255 M people. Government committee-approved school networks could be the foundation on which access for the greater public is built, says Onno W. Purbo, author and teacher.
Speaking at U of T's Munk Centre Wednesday, May 29, he related some anecdotes of homegrown web construction and legal plights in Indonesia. He showed odd-angled photos of home-made antennas and a cable running through his ceiling to connect a server.
Construction of radio-based modems connecting to the web via short wave radio and walkie-talkie signals is common in Indonesia. Circles of web users employ tin cans and cooking woks for receiving antennas as well. Networks have been created by housing 10/100 router hubs in outdoor electrical boxes every 100 metres and running cables through plumbing pipe, which itself runs inside open ditches and public drainageways.
As demand for web services has grown, manufacturing has begun. Onno's web-education workshops sometimes have queues one hour-long for waiting attendees. A cyber cafe group Onno knows has sometimes asked for used computers from banks to share with homeless young people, teaching them about the Internet.
Internet enthusiasts in Indonesia sometimes meet with trouble, as police confiscate illegally-connected hardware, charging 10 times its worth for return. Onno says Canadians do not know how lucky they are as there are no unlicensed radio frequency bands in Indonesia. Although cooperation with Telkom Indonesia is growing, users are still looking for ways to bypass their systems. The popular 2.4 gigahertz band was liberated just this January, and talks for 5.2 and 5.8 GHz bandwidths are ongoing.
Onno's 10-year plan includes goals of connecting 220,000 schools and 38 million students to the web. His WiFi guide can be found online at http://onno.vlsm.org/onno/the-guide/wifi/.