Dharamsala meeting on WiFi
AirJaldi Summit - Dharamsala, India
Above is a link to a meeting on license-free WiFi networks, centered on what has been built at Dharmasala, the venerable Dalai Lama’s headquarters (he was denied the opportunity to visit Sri Lanka for the 2550 Buddha Jayanti, despite all the Buddhist rhetoric of our current government: http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=1,2155,0,0,1,0.)
But that is another story.
What they can do in Dharmasala, we cannot do in Sri Lanka. Underlines the need for revision on the obsolete 1991 Act.
Written at 10/14/2006 by samarajiva | Log in
October 14th, 2006 at 12:04 am
[...] Please continue discussion from the thread Dharmashala meeting on Wi-Fi here. This thread is dedicated to ICT infrastructure issues in Sri Lanka that include mesh networks in Mahavilachchiya, backbone infrastructure, Wi-Fi and Wimax licensing etc. Please keep discussion civil. // Used for showing and hiding user information in the comment form function ShowUtils() { document.getElementById(”authorinfo”).style.display = “”; document.getElementById(”showinfo”).style.display = “none”; document.getElementById(”hideinfo”).style.display = “”; } function HideUtils() { document.getElementById(”authorinfo”).style.display = “none”; document.getElementById(”showinfo”).style.display = “”; document.getElementById(”hideinfo”).style.display = “none”; } [...]
October 14th, 2006 at 12:03 am
Please continue the discussion on the following thread:
http://www.lirneasia.net/2006/10/ict-infrastructure-issues-in-sri-lanka-part-2/
October 13th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Folks in Mawilachchiya,
Beware of Dinosorus! You guys are being mentioned repeatedly in ICT week’s proceedings and Dino is not at all happy about this. He will be marking time to devour you all.
October 13th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Revantha,
When you do to Mahavilachchiya take Dino also with you.
Two of you are the ones who said this could never be done.
Now ETPL and Mahavilachchiya kids have proved you and Dino were wrong.
Hope this would have been a good lesson for you and Dino…
October 13th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Hi everyone,
I am here Live and Kicking, was absent on the blog for quite some time but was watching from the distance on progress of the Mesh Project at MV… well my soul agenda was to get the project up and going that all was not after crictsizeing others nor did I have any personal agenda as per the MV mesh project…. I saw a pitential in the project and pursues it thats all..
hope to be in MV soon to see the project status, Thank you ETPL for going that extra mile and makeing this a reality and thank you all the Bloggers for all the compliments and critizisem and personal remarks made……
revantha
October 13th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Thoppi welenda,
You are correct!! Revantha is the supehero of the mesh. Great!!!
He was the one who got the fund for this project. He was the one who designed this mesh. He was the one who fighted with the TRC and finally got approvals for the project. He was the one who imported equipment. He was the one who went to Mahavilachchiya and did all the implementations. He was the one who involved with this project from its inception to the end, faced lot of difficulties and finally completed it successfully.
GREAT WORK REVANTHA!!! WELL DONE!!!
THOPPI WELENDA, YOU ARE A HERO TOO!!!
GREAT WORK GUYS!!!
GO & COLLECT THE MAN OF THE MATCH AWARD!!!
GO AHEAD!!! YOU HAVE A VERY GOOD FUTURE!!!
October 13th, 2006 at 8:09 am
Revatha is the superhero in mesh project. Without him, implementors would have simply forgotten the whole affair as they had done so for years. But when Reantha played an explosive innings on the blog, everyone got startled anc completed the project. Hats off to Revantha for a brave job. Ultimately, Revantha is “the man of the match” in the project.
October 11th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
This is great news. I can imaging how Willachchiya will now transform into a knowledge village thanks to the succes of this proejct.
Eventhough I have not visited MV since I went there 3 years ago, I keep continous relationships with peopel concerned and as per credible sources the MESH is in action live now. I still remember 3 years ago the Horizon Prize giving took place under a tree but was organized in such manner which is simmilar in terms of presentation in Oscars. Everything was handled professionally by the ever hardworking team and all the kids.
Imagine with these technologies in place they can take their innovative ideas, content to their success stories to other parts of the country and also in to the developing world. They can play many roles now in content development to other. Who knows MV will become a BPO destination at least for some internal work in future. And am confident there will be many professionals coming out from MV thanks to all the technological advancements and more than that connectivity to the internet.
I hope the government and other relavant authorities will replicate such technology in other villages. However, in my opinion we need a strong village champion as well to make all this a success and also to face numerous obstacles/critisizm coming from various individuals to organizations.
Also, am sure constructive critisizm is essential rathern than the opposit to take challenging projects forward and make them realities rather than faliures.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Admin,
Since this blog is more on mesh in Mahavilachchiya than Dharamsala, can you change the topic, like you did it with ICT Myths … to Standarsizing Sinhala
October 11th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Not only mesh, even Dialog is going to cover Mahavilachchiya with a base station according to the news. Long live the blog as someone else said. Looks like Mahavilachchiya is going to be a Syllican valley soon with these infrastructure …. …. Hope Sam Sung doesnt get a heart attack by hearing this.
October 11th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Revantha is not the catalyst of this project bro. as we know, he was the person who always criticized this project to ruin it from its inception (criticizing is his main job role; he has nothing do in his company other than criticizing what others do) . This type of people can talk a lot about the failures of the projects implemented by the competitors but they can’t even tell a single word about what they have done useful to our Sri Lankan Society.
Second thing; It’s a big joke that a person who “fails to understand how an Low Gain Omini Directional Antenna mounted on a central site and a Directional Antenna mounted on subscriber could work in tandem” , tries to evaluate a wireless project which he has not involved with at all!!
Anyway, it seems that his “MYTHICAL NON-EXISTING MESH PROJECT” (as revantha call) has become a reality at Mahavilachchiya now.
Thx to the guys whoever actually involved with this project to get it done!! Hope this type of projects will be replicated in the other rural areas as well.
Jehan, my dear Bro,
There are some guys in our society who give only BIIIIG BIG TALKS. What they can do is just talking and writing bla, bla, blaaaa….(not the media ppl!!). They can’t do anything worthwhile to the society and contribute something useful to this wonderful world.
Guys, any more updates about mahavilachchiya mesh??
October 11th, 2006 at 9:03 am
Jehan,
On the contrary I think Revantha too was part of the gang who did not want to see this project see the light of the day, for reasons better known to them.
Being employed in a competitor networking firm, Revantha was not ready to accept that ETPL could do a project like this which his own company could never do. It was professional jealousy, nothing else which made Revantha to bad mouth about this project.
ICTA, ETPL and Mahavilachchiya kids have beaten all of them by successfully implementing the mesh network. Three cheers to them all!!!
October 10th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
May be Rehantha was the catalist of the project. Mesh became a reality due to Rev’s storng comments in this blog. Long live the blog. Long live Samarajiva.
October 10th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Mahavilachchiya mesh network is almost completed now. kids are accessing and enjoying with the internet using their mesh.
Where is this Revantha now? what happend to him?
October 9th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Yes, please. Can somebody update me about the status of the mesh networking project at Mahavilachiya?
It was a great mistake of my father (Dino) to let this project continue. He badly wanted to ruin it at the inception. Perhaps his brain is not properly working these days due to old age. Probably that was why he could not stop this project earlier. Still I don’t think it is too late. If I know its status I can tell him immediately to stop it by bringing some technical or licensing issue.
How can we get the godaya kids of Mahavilachiya use computers and beat us the Royalists? If every Sirisena’s, Kamalawathie’s and Karuppan’s sons and daughters start using computers and learning English how can we Colombo kids find a good job in the future? (For instance like the post of CEO of ICTA) If we let this happen, in another ten years a godaya kid from Mavavilachiya will become ICTA Chairman. My God. How can we let that happen? (There should be a rule that says the posts of Chairman and CEO ICTA are reserved for Royalists – still better the second or third generation Royalists.)
That is why my long sighted father always blocked these godayas learning computers and English. That was his main objective of being the Chairman of CINTEC and Chairman of ICTA. That is why he chased off Dilantha and Manju from ICTA after such a fight. These two were trying to help the godaya kids and my father was very angry about them for that. How dare they do that?
This Wanni guy has so far been very smart and the Mahavilachiya kids are not easy to be discouraged. However, let my father give another try and see.
OK Sam (Son of VK Sam aka Dino)
October 9th, 2006 at 11:30 am
DOn’t we have any more news (official stuff) from this pilot in Mahawilachchiya. we need to see the success.
October 3rd, 2006 at 10:40 am
Few students from Mahavilachchiya communicated with me and they say that the speed of mesh is encouraging.
October 3rd, 2006 at 12:30 am
Unfortunately the automatic spam filter sometimes produces false positives and thus legitimate comments are sometimes incorrectly labeled as spam.
I just checked the log and saw a few comments that were incorrectly labelled as spam. Have reinstated them. Going throug the spam log is not something that we do frequently so we appreciate feedback when a user’s posts dont get published, at which point we will go in and rectify the problem if it has been accidently flagged as spam.
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:17 pm
Prof Samarajiwa,
Some of the comments we make do not appear in this blog. Does this mean a moderator selects only the suitable comments here?
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:04 pm
After much deliberation, it has startedd to work it seems! Hats off to those kids!!!! Hope Donald will allow this thread to be WiFi related. Usually he even barges into tsunami related issues too to promote his Sinhala language solutions.
Can we use mesh in other parts of Sri Lanka? Will ICTA replicate this in other parts of Sri Lanka? We heard that Mahawilachchiya has PCs in most of the households. Do we have this in other parts of Sri Lanka? Mahavilachchiya seems to have a fuly pledged IT culture. Visit http://www.mahavilachchiya.net/ their slogan is IT Happens in Mahavilachchiya!!!!!
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Finally it seems that the mesh network is working in Mahavillachchiya. That is good news. It took a significant time to implement it. However, it is a good milestone and and pilot for Sri Lanka. I hope ICTA will have many lesson learned from this implementation and that it will not stop in Mahavillachchiya. One main vision of ICTA should be to formulate strategies to provide internet access to the whole country. MV mesh project is a start. I bet there are many lessons to learn from that implementation. MV is not the only rural village that needs internet access. I hope with the new CEO of ICTA who will be appointed soon will take correct initiatives away from those OLD school of thoughts and finally get something done to the country.