The high cost of rural Internet connectivity in Africa is a major challenge. In nearly every case, the only option is to use a Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) to access the Internet via satellite. The subscription costs are $300 a month on average - prohibitively expensive for rural African communities.

Since early 2006, IESC Geekcorps has pioneered the use of INMARSAT Regional Broadband Global Area Network (R-BGAN) satellite modem as an affordable alternative to a VSAT connection.

The R-BGAN offers numerous financial advantages in that a terminal needed to create an access point only costs $500 with a base subscription fee of $36 per month versus $300-400 subscription fee for a VSAT in addition to a $1,000+ terminal. The challenge with the R-BGAN is that it uses a pay per bandwidth model and the bandwidth is expensive - $6 per megabyte. If not restricted, a typical day of web browsing could amount to hundreds of dollars bandwidth consumed.

After implementing an initial R-BGAN pilot system at Radio Beeray in Bourem Inaly in conjunction with i-linx, Geekcorps realized that its previous efforts to reduce bandwidth by limiting Internet usage to text only browsing was not enough. Geekcorps engineered an improved system that limited total bandwidth consumed to a mere 200K per day - a serious challenge when simply accessing the Yahoo! Home page uses 250K!

Using the following strategies, Geekcorps created a solution to provide a connection that is both useful and affordable:

1. Cache web pages on the client computer at the radio station.
2. Force the client computer to communicate only with a central server.
3. Have the server strip images and ads from web pages.
4. Have the server email news summaries to the client.
5. Transfer email between client and server just once per day.
6. Strip attachments from email messages.
7. Compress all communication between client and server.
8. Disable web access when the daily quota is exceeded.
9. Provide continuous feedback of daily network usage to help users learn to efficiently use the Internet.

Geekcorps successfully installed this system at both USAID partner radio stations in Bourem Inaly and Bourem Foghas. Over the past six months the system has proven to be very effective at budgeting the bandwidth consumed by these radio stations.

The radio stations have profited from using the connection primarily to send email and access the news. Bourem Inaly sees so much value in the current setup that they are requesting to pay for their connection themselves to ensure future connectivity.

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