Where walkie-talkies dare

What happens when a rural farmer needs to arrange transport to get his produce to market? Or a health care worker wants to check the availability of a drug in a nearby clinic? How about a trader who wants to find out the price of a commodity in a nearby store, or a person who needs to get in touch with a nearby family member in an emergency? Right now, in almost all cases, these people would either jump on a bike, run, send someone else to do it, not bother, or reach for their mobile phone.

When we think about rural telecommunication we almost always – by default – think of the mobile phone. And why shouldn’t we? It feels like mobiles are everywhere, and they’re highly regarded, not just among rural communities but also the international development community that sees them as the one tool with the best chance of closing the digital divide. So the focus on mobile technology continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, almost to the point where little other wireless technology is considered. If there isn’t mobile coverage in an area, then little appears possible. WiMax is still a dream, so let’s move on ...

When we think about appropriate technology much has to do with context, in particular that of the users. While mobile technology has the ability to connect remote villages to the outside world, does everything they do need national – or global – connectivity? I’ve been puzzling over this one for quite some time. In almost all of the examples above, the communication need is a local one, from one side of the village to another, from the outskirts of a village to a farm, or from one market to the next. You don’t need a mobile to do that.
Take this example. Imagine, say, 75 percent of a rural community’s communication needs were local, in other words among itself, and most of that community lived in, say, a 10- or 15-square-kilometer area. You could argue that a for-profit mobile network, likely powered by a diesel-driven tower, is an inappropriate and over-the-top technology solution. Other technologies already exist that could do the job, technologies that don’t operate on a pay-per-use basis and don’t need costly infrastructure to work.

Does such a technology exist? Well, yes. It's called the walkie-talkie.

Mobile phones and two-way radios have a lot more in common than you might think. In fact, mobiles are just glorified radios. It was the advent of the cellular system – which broke up larger geographical areas into smaller and more manageable ‘cells’ – which paved the way for the mobile technology adoption boom. All a mobile phone needs to function is to communicate with the nearest tower, which in turn connects with other cells and the wider network. Depending on the landscape and user density, a typical cell tower can cover an area of approximately 20 square kilometers, meaning a low power transmitter in the phone is enough to connect you to anyone anywhere in the world.

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