e進印度鄉間 科技沒有距離
策劃、編譯■成怡夏
India bypasses the wires to bring Wi-Fi to its remote residents
摘要
3年前，若你在印度南部的葩拉寇德村，想要繳交電費帳單得花上一
天的工夫，由於當地的郵政服務並不可靠，付賬單還是得自己跑一趟
，不過這得付出幾十英哩的腳程，以及冗長的排隊等候時間。
今日，葩拉寇德村的村民不用跑那麼遠了，他們可以去穆罕默德．哈
倫先生家裡。哈倫先生並不是在電力公司上班──他，負責該村阿卡
莎亞中心運作，那是一間有5台電腦的房間，裡面提供無線上網的設
備，當地居民可以在那裡搜尋網站、上電腦課程，當然也可以上網付
帳單。
透過該地區中心一座信號塔，葩拉寇德村努力將無線網路的涵蓋範圍
到村里最遠的地方。
由於無線網路科技的發展，網路普遍化成為幾個開發中國家可以達成
的目標，印度也包括在內。印度的目標是把像葩啦寇德村那樣的「村
莊知識中心」，在兩年內擴展到全國60萬個村莊。
「世界上大部分的鄉間地區，從未有過線路──至少沒有處理頻寬的
線路。」世界資源組織數位贊助計劃（World Resources Institute's
Digital Divi-dends program）執行長艾倫‧漢蒙德說：「在美國鄉間如
此，印度鄉間、非洲鄉間以及東歐鄉間也是如此。」
這裡運用的技術絕大部分與美國餐館、大學和住家所使用的Wi-Fi網
路只有少許不同，最大的不同就是它的範圍──許多依賴無線電台的
信號塔和天線傳遞信號，可傳送距離最遠可達20英哩──而其得面
臨的惡劣狀況通常包括了不穩定的電力供給，以及荒涼的地形。不過
，隨著相關的設備價格快速滑落，無線網路就像行動電話一樣，在解
決開發中國家城鄉數位落差問題上，扮演了大有可為的角色。
「每一天，打開報紙，你會看到關於資訊科技的新聞。」非營利組織
「任務2007」的執行長貝詩海莫德‧沙達奇表示：「所以，印度鄉間
不能自外於資訊社會，這樣才會進步，並且受惠於資訊發展。」
沙達奇和「任務2007」其他領袖都希望，民眾可以透過與政府官員
的e化電信會議，向政府陳情，也可以在網路上設計一些行銷工具，
讓農夫取得買賣穀物較佳價格的相關資訊。印度科技大學阿壽克．君
皇瓦拉教授領導的一個研究團隊，則在開發鄉間提款機，與一種醫生
身在遠處卻可以透過聽診器或是心電圖，接收到資料的低價醫療診斷
配備。
在n-Logue通信公司的案例中，君皇瓦拉團隊設計出一種收費的公共
涼亭接線生服務，每一個涼亭連結站需要投資1千2百美元──不只
電腦和軟體的費用，還包括數位相機、印表機、電力和無線上網連結
費用。目前，大部分n-Logue的涼亭連結速度與在美國的電話撥接速
度差不多。而麥德司通訊專門為鄉間地區設計的無線上網儀器設備，
速度為撥接的4倍。
儘管n-Logue和幾個通信公司都想證明把網路延伸到鄉間地區是有利
可圖的，但是「任務2007」的工作則是要讓印度從目前大約一萬個
鄉間網路中心，在兩年內擴展到幾十萬個。不過，即使是沙達奇也明
白，2007年8月前60萬個村莊無法全數完成無線上網的工程──雖
然他還是說，在23萬7千個較大的村莊設置通訊中心是可能的。
不過，最大的挑戰可能還不是在技術層面，而是語言層面的問題，這
樣的服務也必須提供社區動機去使用網路。舉例來說，在馬拉普蘭，
一項由加州柏克萊大學教授所做的研究發現，由阿卡莎亞中心發出的
連結訊息只有5％是連結到e化電子政務和教育部門。某些鄉間科技
專家，如阿莫達貝德印度管理學院教授阿尼爾‧顧沛塔就質問，假如
人們不會說英文，網路是否應當放在第一順位發展？
「我們發現網路並不是未來5年我們可以探觸到印度村莊的途徑，用
當地語言搜尋Google並閱讀內容，除非是這樣才可行，我們在做法
上必須有所調整。」他說。
（資料來源／基督教科學箴言報）
原文
PALAKKODE, INDIA - Three years ago, paying the electric bill in the
south Indian village of Palakkode was a day-long task. With unreliable
postal service, bills are paid in person. That means a trip of several miles,
per-haps on foot, and a wait in line.
Today, the citizens of Palakkode go to Muhammed Harroon. Mr. Harroon
does not work for the electric company - he runs the village's Akshaya
center, a room with five computers hooked wirelessly to the Internet,
where local citizens can surf the Web, take comput-er-literacy courses, and
pay their bills electronically.
Relying on a signal transmitted from a tower in the center of the district,
Palakkode is at the forefront of ef-forts to use wireless technology to cover
the last mile - or in many cases, the last several miles - separating rural
villages from landline networks.
The technology is making universal Internet access an attainable goal in
several developing countries, in-cluding India. The country aims to spread
"village knowledge centers" like the one in Palakkode to the country's
600,000 villages within two years.
"For most of the rural parts of the world, they are nev-er going to run a
wire - at least not one that's going to handle a significant bandwidth," says
Allen Hammond, the director of the World Resources Institute's Digital
Dividends program. "That's true in the rural US ... as it's true in rural
India, rural Africa, and rural Eastern Eu-rope."
The technology being used is, for the most part, little different from the
Wi-Fi networks that have become popular in US cafes, universities, and
homes. The biggest difference is their range - many rely on radio towers
and antennas to extend signals as far as 20 miles at a time - and the
conditions under which they are de-ployed, which often include unreliable
power supplies or inhospitable terrain. But with the cost of equipment
falling quickly, wireless Internet, like mobile phones, is increasingly
earning attention as a promising solution to close the technology gap
between urban and rural areas in the developing world by removing the
need for ex-pensive investments in new cables.
"Every day, you open the newspaper, and you see something about
?information technology," says Basheerhamad Shadrach, the executive
director of Mis-sion 2007, the consortium of business, NGO, and gov-
ernment leaders behind the village hook-up drive. "Ru-ral India should be
participating in an information soci-ety in order to benefit itself."
Mr. Shadrach and the other leaders of Mission 2007 hope those benefits
will range from e-governance - tele-conferencing with government
officials to submit grievances, for example - to marketing tools that allow
farmers to receive better prices for their crops. A group headed by Ashok
Jhunjhunwala, a professor at the Indi-an Institute of Technology-Madras,
is experimenting with products like a rural ATM and a low-cost medi-cal-
diagnostics kit that allows a doctor to receive data remotely from a
stethoscope or an electrocardiograph.
In the case of n-Logue, a for-profit kiosk operator spun off from Dr.
Jhunjhunwala's group, setting up a connection requires an investment of
about $1,200 per kiosk - which includes not only the computer and its
software, but a digital camera, a printer, a back-up source of power, and a
connection to a wireless net-work. So far, most n-Logue kiosks operate at
a speed e-quivalent to a dial-up connections in the US. But Midas
Communications is now selling equipment designed for rural areas that
can link kiosks to broadband wireless at speeds more than four times faster
than dial-up.
Yet while n-Logue and several other efforts have shown that connecting
rural villages to the Internet can be affordable and even profitable, Mission
2007's task is to demonstrate whether India can go from an estimated
10,000 rural Internet centers to a few hundred thousand in two years. Even
Shadrach acknowledges that not all 600,000 villages will be wired by the
targeted date of August 2007 - although he maintains that setting up
centers in the 237,000 villages large enough to have an official village
council, is realistic.
The biggest challenge may not be technological, but linguistic, and
developing services that give rural com-munities reasons to use the
Internet. In Malappuram, for example, a study by professors at the
University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley, found that just 5 percent of the traffic
from the Akshaya centers related to e-governance or ed-ucation. Some
experts on rural technology, like Anil Gupta, a professor at the Indian
Institute of Manage-ment, Ahmedabad, question whether the Internet
should be a priority, if people don't speak English.
"We find that the Internet is not the technology through which we will
reach villages in the country in the next five years," Dr. Gupta says. "Look
up Google and find the content we have in local languages.... Un-less that
happens, how can we justify what we are do-ing?"
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