Abstract
A large portion of the South African population is still not connected in a productive manner to the Internet, despite the existence of a government plan for public broadband, ‘SA Connect’. One reason for this could be the lack of an appropriate model, through which connectivity can be diffused in a meaningful way through all areas of South Africa. This paper presents the model developed over more than a decade of experimentation in real life settings in the Siyakhula Living Lab, a joint venture between the universities of Rhodes and Fort Hare, South Africa. The model proposes the ‘Broadband Island’ as basic e-infrastructure unit, which clusters nearby points-of-presence hosted in schools. In each Broadband Island is located an applications integration platform, TeleWeaver, which monetizes channels of access to the local community, to support the e-infrastructure while providing useful services to the population and the Government.
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© 2018 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering
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Terzoli, A., Siebörger, I., Tsietsi, M., Gumbo, S. (2018). Digital Inclusion: A Model for e-Infrastructure and e-Services in Developing Countries. In: Odumuyiwa, V., Adegboyega, O., Uwadia, C. (eds) e-Infrastructure and e-Services for Developing Countries. AFRICOMM 2017. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 250. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98827-6_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98827-6_7
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