Andres Malaga | Open-Source Access Point: The first step towards bridging the digital divide.

 
The digital divide is the unequal access to technology and connectivity between different groups of people. In rural and remote areas, the digital divide is widening, as a subpar internet infrastructure and expensive internet service provided by internet service providers (ISPs) poses a barrier to communities in these areas accessing the internet and devices that can be used to connect to it. It has thus become clear that ISPs have failed to provide a reliable internet connection of a minimally acceptable quality and as such new solutions are needed that take the ISP out of the equation as much as possible. Community-led internet connectivity initiatives have been successfully implemented in countries like South Africa (where the Zenzeleni network was shown to be sustainable and even profitable) and Thailand (where the initiative has already been replicated in at least ten more towns after it was a success in the first community it was installed in), and show that these kind of initiatives are the way to start to bridge this gap in this kind of regions. This project’s objective is to be the first step towards a realistic solution to bridge the digital divide that is not made specifically for one community, but rather can be replicated, scaled and adapted to the community it may be deployed at. To do so, four key aspects were kept in mind (in no particular order): sustainability, scalability, ease to install and maintain, and affordability; and an access point was designed using open-source technology and software.
In this case a Raspberry Pi was used to power an access point housed inside a 3-D printed casing, modified off of a Raspberry Pi case available online to be able to hold a power bank, an OLED display, and to insert and remove the Raspberry Pi with ease. A github repository was set up with the necessary files and instructions for anyone to build and program a device like this, and users that make this device may also improve the project by contributing to the repository, thus bringing the device to its ultimate objective, which is to be one of the solutions that bridge the digital divide between rural and urban areas.