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Macedonia: WiFi mesh enlarges school net coverage

From "Macedonia leads world with wi-fi" by David Reid, BBC's "Click Online" program, 11 November. Click here for a video recording of this programme:

Macedonia "is now on the brink of leading the world in what could be a template for other developing states, becoming the first wireless country. Macedonia is dotted with villages. The mostly ethnic Albanians who live here are poor and rely for their livelihood on working whatever land they have. Their day-to-day lives rarely involve computers, let alone the internet.

"But a project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has brought broadband internet access to hundreds of such remote villages in Macedonia by putting the country's 460 primary and secondary schools online.

"While the computers for the labs came from China, USAID's side of the project, called Macedonia Connects, was to pay for a local company to provide wireless internet access for the nation's schools, and while doing so roll out a wireless communication network across the country... By using what is called mesh technology, Macedonia Connects is creating not wi-fi hot-spots, but hot-zones which stretch 15 kilometres over a city.

Building bridges?

"Opinions are divided on projects like Macedonia Connects. Some question whether many of these people really need broadband connectivity, and others insist the internet should stand alongside roads, water and electricity as essential infrastructure... Could this wireless project really help inter-ethnic relations? In Macedonia, where the spectre of a civil war that was narrowly avoided still remains, there is faith that the internet might ease community tensions.

In schools, for example, ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians are often taught separately. In some schools there are two different principals, two different sets of teachers, and two different names depending on which ethnic group is attending at the time. The hope is that the Macedonia Connects project will bridge some of these divisions...

" What the internet can do, however, is what it has done everywhere else: help businesses make money.

"'We need the internet as a sea,' said Jani Makraduli, MP and president of the Macedonia technology committee. 'Macedonia is not on the sea, so we think that the internet is our sea and an open window for a lot of economic changes and new economic growth in our country.'..."

[Mesh: 14 November 2005]