A project to connect 30 students' houses to the internet is being completed at Mahavilachchiya. Enterprise Technology Pvt. Ltd. (ETPL) is doing the implementation of the mesh boxes to provide internet access to 30 students' houses in the village. Read more info about the project at this link. Below is a story written by a 12th Grader at Horizon Lanka Academy in Mahavilachchiya after being inspired by the new technology coming into his doorstep.
Ranuka Udayanga ranuka@horizonlanka.org
We, Horizon Lanka are doing many projects like Microscholarships, Horizon Lanka Academy, Digital Butterflies, Digital Ambassadors and Model eVillage to develop our village. Now Mahavilachchiya is developing up through ICT. There are about more than 50 computers in the village. Not only computers but there are also a lot of people with computer literacy. It seems that Mahavilachchiya is becoming an e-village. We are proud to say that during last few years we were able to bring ICT to village under the guidance of Mr. Nandasiri Wanninayaka, the founder of Horizon Lanka Foundation.
Mahavilachchiya is a rural village surrounded by Vilpaththu National Park from three sides. But what I am going to say will make you surprised. We have twenty four hour internet connection here. I think this is the only village with such a facility. Actually that is what should happen: we should serve where the needs are great rather than where the means are great.
We, Horizon Lanka did not stop with that. We are going to distribute Internet connection to students’ houses freely. That was one of our dreams. Most of Horizon dreams came true as we worked hard. In 2004 we started this project with Enterprise Technology (Pvt) Ltd. This system is called mesh. This project was successfully tested during the last few months by Enterprise Technology. They are doing this for the first time in Sri Lanka. I am proud to say that, we are going to create history with it. Mahavilachchiya is already ‘meshed up.’ 30 students’ households including a public school have got the internet access at their places.
Now the project is nearing completion. It is the trouble shooting period now. Now the personnel from Enterprise Technology are trouble shooting. In the near future it will be completed. Then students can use internet from their houses. It will help students to improve their talents of computing. Our students will be empowered with better ICT skills shortly. They will be using Internet for a variety of activities including their education.
This Mesh system is a kind of wireless internet distribution system. For this project we had to build six, sixty feet towers in the village. Every tower has an access point. Main Internet connection is transmitted by the Horizon Lanka tower to the nearest access point.
Then it distributes connection to the next nearest access point and it keeps on distributing the connection from tower to tower till the last access point. The houses which are situated very closed to the tower can have internet from a wireless card directly. Others in the close proximity have to build up an antenna and the antenna is connected to the wireless card of the computer. This is how the system runs.
This internet connection can effectively be given to Pentium II and III PCs and higher capacities only. But there are some students who own Pentium Is. Therefore, it is difficult for these students to access internet with those PCs. Therefore we are trying to find some good computers. We are looking for the support of donors who would like to donate us some decent PCs.
This is the first step. We hope to extend this to cover the whole village in the future. Therefore we want everyone’s support in doing this, specially, in the form of computers. If you have a better PC to donate, please contact us at info@horizonlanka.org
We thank all the donor agencies involved in this project. We also thank ICT Agency of Sri Lanka and the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) for making this project a reality with their kind cooperation.