Experiences, challenges and lessons from rolling out a rural WiFi mesh network

The computing for development community knows that technology interventions involve consideration of social, techni- cal and environmental factors. Research into WiFi solutions has fallen off as ubiquitous mobile solutions penetrate even the deepest rural communities worldwide. This paper argues that the latest wave of WiFi mesh networks offers ben- efits that traditional top-down WiFi and mobile networks do not. In addition, we propose ethnographic and partici- patory methods to aid the effective rollout of mesh inverse infrastructure with and for a given community. This paper describes and then analyzes a mesh for voice rollout within a situated context. We explain how to conduct informed com- munity co-design and how to factor in local socio-political concerns that can impact on the design, rollout and subse- quent maintenance of community-based wireless mesh net- works. While we have not yet analyzed baseline and initial usage data, we do have new lessons to offer.