OLE Bolivia/connectivity

Connectivity is bound to be one of the major bottlenecks for any education program in Bolivia that requires or benefits from access to the internet.

The Actors

AXS

Lost a good two weeks trying to get them to provide me with a wifi account and modem in January 2009.

I arrived in La Paz on Jan 20th, even though panting because of the altitude the first thing I did that very morning, since I knew this would take at least a couple days, was to go with a local associate to an AXS office. Bad mistake, always go to a manager or above, and until you find one know all will be unsuccessful. Bottom line is that they might install broadband (1/30 of what I get at home in the US, at almost twice what we pay here) for the SCELinux local group by Monday, February 1^rst.

update - it's the 9th, and nothing yet :-(

The Policies

Full Internet, 24/7

This is the "official" OLPC party line. Followed at enormous expense (monetary and political) in all deployments that fail to see better alternatives. At best it actually allows access to the Internet, which then becomes a goal in itself, rather than getting the benefits of surveying and dealing with actual real educational needs of the deployments. Often it thus creates a dependency in issues quite unrelated to delivery of educational content, and has been proven so far a distraction when not a liability.

Both the enormous cost (especially VSAT) and the local Telco fearing loss of revenue when kids and families enjoy "free" internet are having a broad negative impact in the largest deployments, less so in smaller ones when closeness to the end users might accidentally allow administrators to notice local needs and address them, "off grid".

Asynchronic

"sola XO"

This would be where the XO itself, or with and SD card addition, carries all it is necessary for a given program. Seeing how hard it is to find alternatives, this becomes quite tempting, though it requires to think out of the "standard" OLPC box. Which in itself has proved so far to be quite productive :-)

A certain amount of updates would be possible with a sola XO approach, maybe 2-3 times a year.