The less fortunate ?
What about the less developed countries ?
Case LionNet Uganda: a Finn helps a Ugandan leo to build LN Uganda in California; Service can be anywhere
Basic connectivity is needed. Where you have a decent phone line you got it. - cases: East Russia, Kenya, Palestine...
Text, no video, no fancy pictures, no background music...
Public Web kiosks, public web computers in libraries etc.
Notes:
People have fears that we should not be using this modern technology because our lions fellows in less developed countries could not do the same. Mostly these fears are completely unfounded. Almost all countries on earth have Internet connectivity. Where there is a decent telephone line you can get it and the price does not have to be terrible, not even in rural areas.
Internet services of the less developed countries do not have to reside in those countries themselves. It’s enough when the people are who create the pages. LionNet Uganda was built by one Finn and one Californian helping a young Ugandan leo whose father is on the lions cabinet. The pages come to the readers from California. But nobody will have to know that.
In areas where decent phone lines do not exist there are other alternatives. In Palestine cordless local networks have been extensively used. GSM phones can carry written static text but are mainly only suitable for cities. Cable TV networks can be used and even sending modulated signal on regular power outlet networks is used. In Kenya the biggest problem is how to get electricity, so people use bulletin boards and radio transmission. These ways are more expensive butit is also tremendously expensive to build telecommunications infrastructure in areas where it didn’t exist. Some years back my group was involved in helping the Petrozavodsk university in Russia to get online. 9600 bps speed was all we could do, same as the speed of just one GSM phone for a large university.