"Markets, wars and products globalize, as well as the impacts on the environment and the circulation of ideas. Nevertheless, for the great majority of people the sense of their life continues to be what they have around, itï¿½s local reality. ICTï¿½s make more easy to be in contact with the rest of the world, but this only has sense for human development if it turns in concrete results in peopleï¿½s immediate surroundings." [2].

ITDG, established by Schumacher in the United Kingdom, has the mission to investigate and to scatter technologies that directly respond to the necessities of the most isolated and impoverished populations of the world, under the motto. "To learn what people do and to help them to do it better".

Applying the previous statement to our work in information and communication technologies ï¿½ ICT - and specifically to the subject of rural connectivity, would take us to affirm: ï¿½learn how people communicate to help them do it better. ICT and particularly Internet have opened us a new scene of work, where local and global are combined and where we must learn of what has already been done to do it better.

With preoccupation we notice that in universal access national programs there is a proclivity to prioritize the connection towards the global thing and not as much the local one. In words of Emilio, the character of ï¿½Letter to Aunt Ofelia, we would say, "We know many people and organizations that are greatly connected to the virtual world, but they do not know their neighbors or they do not make any activity with other similar organizations in their same city."

This article will focus in proposing ideas to rethink the universal access scheme that is being implemented in Peru and several countries of Latin America; and it is also an invitation to work together on a new paradigm of development of rural telecommunications that prioritize collective interests and local communication needs, and that, fortifying local economies, connects to the world through quality telecommunications services, at reasonable costs in tune with userï¿½s communicational needs, and what is more audacious but liberating, managed by themselves.

Nowadays connectivity

The interest of Governments to provide Universal Access to rural areas and marginal populations has given rise to the appearance of Universal Access national plans that look forward to put within the reach of citizens, a telecommunications service to a reasonable distance from its place of residence, even in its own residence.

The materialization of this concept has progressed in time, so we have that from the simple installation of public telephones in remote areas we have passed to the promotion of Telecentres or Communitarian Multipurposes Centres, as the ITU and UNESCO have agreed to call them[3].

Different connectivity models with different financing mechanisms of connectivity and with different participation of the private and public sector have been developed. Along with technological evolution we have also advanced on the models to manage infrastructure at local level with different level participation of local actors: "containers", LINCOS[4], Mobile Internet Units promoted by the PNUD in Malaysia[5], improved telephone cabins in India[6], or the Communitarian Multipurpose Centers extended everywhere[7].

Different models are formed according to how extensive is understood the concept of "universal access" and according to the financial capacity of the programs that support it. The Venezuelan Infocentres give free access to the Internet[8]; COMPARTEL Centers operate with commercial rates from an initial subsidy for the installation of the infrastructure[9].

Associated to these models of connectivity we find all the business models that we can imagine. From the commercial ones promoted by SIEMENS in Africa[10], mixed initiatives like the one proposed in itï¿½s origins by the Huascaran Plan in Peru[11] where the State provides the infrastructure and users pay for the use of the service, till the already mentioned Venezuelan case of connectivity subsidy through a tax that will also allow investment in science and technology in that country.

All these initiatives understand universal access in half of its conception: they focus on how to connect the global thing to the local one, but it forgets how important it is to promote the connection of the localï¿½ it is in this way where we began to imagine the new scheme of connectivity for rural areas.

The paradigm which supports the present models of connectivity and universal access deduces that each new point connected to the network has a scope of influence that can make use of the facilities installed there. Due to the cost of the infrastructure, parameters are settled down to determine where the infrastructure will be installed: towns with more than 500 inhabitants or only district capitals, etc.

Each point of the network serves a surrounding target population and that must approach the Communitarian Center to use the services that the network offers. In most of cases, in Peru the user will find a satellite telephone with which he will be able to communicate outside his community. Thus, no matter how near the communication is, this one always will first leave to the satellite and will come down to look for its destiny in - very probably - a neighboring town.

On the base of our experience we can affirm that most of people make local calls, this means, inside its own district, province and department. Next are the national calls to near destinies, that is to neighboring departments or with which the rural population has direct contact, and very behind are the more distant national and international communications.

Several projects have tried to move forward in the provision of local content from the infrastructure implanted by the projects that follow the connectivity scheme described before. We have communitarian web projects, services for the creation of Web pages, electronic commerce, etc. The evaluation on the impact of those initiatives is still pending, but we can anticipate that the consumption of those contents/services is made by people from outside of the community.

We do not know examples of farmers accessing to their Web pages to find out the price of the potato in its market, because they already have walked to the town and have found out it directly. Those applications have more relevance for the urban popular or peri-urban scope than for the rural scope, as it is demonstrated in the experience of the Suburban Informative Units at Colombia[12].

We have found success in the rural scope when these initiatives are combined with traditional media like radio, which is intracommunitarian. We are not going to extend in this point; you can visit the Web page of Chilala project or the work of COMMUNICA for greater details[13].

Although it is an improvement to connect rural communities that before were not connected, is insufficient if we evaluate it from the perspective of how much it really contributes to social development.

From our experience in rural telephones[14] the main limitations of this way to design connectivity are:

High costs force to limit the connection points and to establish a scope of influence by connected point that in some cases arrives after the 8 hours of distance on foot. Another thing is the limitation of the bandwidth per point.
High cost of local communication for the operator: a call from point A to point B will have to use the satellite even though they are located in the same district.
Little use of the telephone: because of the established schedule and the required distances of displacement.
High cost of the access to the Internet and limited additional use of this infrastructure by the few inhabitants with permanent access. For most of the settlers the only day of access to the telephone and to the Internet is the market day.
Irrelevance of the contents published in Internet for the inhabitants of the community.
Lack of motivation for the development of contents and its local update.
Specialized technical service external to the community and therefore expensive and slow.
Absence of qualification adapted to local level.

The connectivity that we want

It is necessary a new approach that emphasis in local connectivity, intracommunitarian, this is: a paradigm that answers to the way how people communicates today and to adapt the technological options to that reality.

We refer to the possibility of creating communitarian networks with broadband, in the spirit of the created by Wire.Less in Denmark[15] or what the Benton Foundation[16] has just published in respect to the potential of the broadband to offer better services to everyone, or the model of CDMA Local Wireless Loop that is being developed in India[17].

Would it be possible to combine this with rural radio? Our bet is YES, and as an example is the investigation that ITDG is doing about the work of ALIN and WorldSpace Foundation in Africa for the use of satellite radios to access radial and multimedia information[18].

The communication and conversation logic that a telecommunication and information system must cause and because its nature ICTs has to turn automatically any "connected" into an emitter and receiver, is lost. Also it is necessary to go on the rescue of the human dimension of those who receive and transmit information[19]. Our idea is that telecommunication helps to reinforce the bonds of the community; in addition, that connects it with other communities.

The characteristics of the new approach that we imagine are:

Emphasis in local dialogue.
Facilitates Intracommunitarian communications.
Broadband.
Accessible to all, at any moment.
Technically trustworthy and of low maintenance.
Low cost.
It shares the connectivity with the outside.

What we propose sustains in experiences that are being implemented nowadays in the world: to create communitarian networks of broadband that connect more than one town and that, with a suitable management system, are maintained in time and are interconnected to national networks.

The communitarian network would allow settlers of the same network to communicate between them at very low rates, because it would be a local private network. As it is a broadband it would also allow them to obtain added value services, to go through local Internet or to make immediate queries to the nearer health center sending images or interacting on line with the specialist, without moving the patient.

Nevertheless, it is said that if Governments can only carry out the traditional scheme of connectivity, how they are going to commit themselves to take the next step? The answer is that the new scheme requires of the participation of the community, requires its commitment and its capacity of organization. The community must participate in unfolding the infrastructure and in the management model that assures the viability of the system.

This is not easy and this is perhaps where the greater problem of our proposal is. Without necessarily saying that that is the solution, we think that is important that the experiences of the telecommunications cooperatives in Argentina[20] are studied, and also the experience of National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA)[21] of the United States that groups more than 500 cooperatives and small telecommunication rural companies. We need to learn of these experiences and, added to the experience of the pilot project that FITEL and ITDG in Cajamarca - Peru[22] execute, develop a suitable management model.

If the objection is financial, we must say that the cost of the infrastructure to create the wireless communitarian networks is marginal if we compare with how much each connection point of the traditional system costs. A single LINCOS container can cost up to 150 thousand dollars, and even so it does not provide any network system for the community.

Next we list some advantages of the new proposed model:

prevailing scheme	Communitarian network
ï¿½ High cost per point and limited bandwidth.	ï¿½ A single point per Network could allow increase the bandwidth per point and make a better use of it.
ï¿½ High cost of local communication and little use of the telephone.	ï¿½ Local communication at flat rate established by the administrator according to technical study about costs. ï¿½ Multiple communication points facilitate the bigger use of the service. ï¿½ To communicate off-net all the network shares the connection and can pay under standing rural telephone rate in the prepaid system.
ï¿½ High cost of Internet access and limited use of that service.	ï¿½ Permanent access to Internet using several devices and from different places of the network would low the costs and allow establish rate plans of Internet connection depending on particular needs. ï¿½ Variety of services would improve the possibility of economic sustainability.
ï¿½ Irrelevance of the contents for the inhabitants of the community published in Internet.ï¿½	ï¿½ Possibilities of developing an Intranet to which the settlers can access through different devices. ï¿½ The cost of the update of the Communitarian Intranet can be included in the flat rate for accessing to the Communitarian Network.
ï¿½ Lack of motivation to develop contents and their local updating.	ï¿½ As the level of users and subscribers to the Network becomes massive, the service administrator is motivated to maintain the information up to date.
ï¿½ Specialized technical service from outside the community and for that reason, expensive and slow.	ï¿½ Demand on local technical services for the maintenance of the Network and its access devices is generated.
ï¿½ Absence of adequate Training at local level.	ï¿½ Permanently the administrator trains to increase the use of the local network.

The challenges

In order to make real this new conception of connectivity, several things still must be proven with the community but also with the State and companies from the telecommunications sector.

Technological Challenges

Geography puts obstacles to the development of wireless infrastructure and is necessary to adapt technology to this reality. Also it is necessary to advance towards the development of connectivity devices that can be reached by the families in the countryside and that these devices can be repaired in the localities through technicians trained for it. For this reason it is required for joint operations between the private sector and investigation institutes, Universities, in addition to NGOï¿½s like as ITDG are interested in supporting these technological developments. Another important subject is the development of special devices so that disabled can make effective use of communitarian networks.

Regulatory Challenges

The regulatory frame must adjust according to the new lineaments established by the Ministry of Transports and Communications and forms these communitarian networks. Policies for the promotion of ICT like signing the Agreement on Information Technology, promoted by the WTO since 1996[23]. Also it is necessary to adjust the quality standards of the required services for rural areas and to promote asymmetric interconnection rates.

Financial Challenges

Financing of basic infrastructure will have to continue coming from FITEL, because for that was FITEL conceived, nevertheless, the development of communitarian networks or its expansion will require of greater capital. Part of that financing could directly come from the communities, but when the network requires expanding, perhaps, the administrator will need financing and some scheme of flexible credit would have to be designed, as it was created at its moment and still exists: the Rural Telephone Bank in the USA[24].

Social Challenges

This it is the most difficult challenge due to the existing institutional weakness in Peru and several countries of the Region. A connectivity scheme like that one thought requires, in the base, a solid social organization who, with a private administration, will manage to maintain the service. The building of that social weave is a long term task and is necessary to begin to take the first steps. We are now doing that...

The challenges

Notes y references