Rural Computing: Models of Telecentres for Development of Rural Nepal
25 April, 2009.2:30 pm
This is the third session of "Rural Computing
track" chaired by Nilambar Acharya( CA Member). The co-chairperson, Binod
Dhakal, General Secretary of CAN shared his experience of establishing
telecenter 4 years ago at Silgudi, Doti which became unsuccessful.
First
speaker of this session was Frans Neuman, Executive Secretary of Global Mountain Forum; present his
presentation on “Models of Telecentres”. He present in the conference about the
local access, ICT and sustainable mountain development of telecentres.
He says,
“What is probably the world's highest
altitude cybercafé has opened near the Mount Everest base camp in north-eastern
Nepal, reports said on Wednesday. The internet cafe, located at 5180 metres
above sea level at Gorakse in Khumjung district, about 200km northeast of the
Nepalese capital Kathmandu, is to provide internet access to tourists visiting
the area, which is good example of telecenter in rural area.”
He basically focused on the role of telecentres,
examples of telecenter programs, the connectivity and technologies used in the
current telecentres are different including the dialup, wireless, fibre-optic,
and VSAT link, but the major issues to considered are management,
privatization, cooperative with different committee and project-controlled.
He focused on to development of capacity, hardware
maintenance and update as well as the software and applications usage can
changes the status of rural computing.
Er. Sudip Aryal from NRITS also presented about different
telecentres in practice but he mainly focused Community information center on
which NRTIS is working with. He also described about different models of telecentres
like, NGO-sponsored telecentres, public sector/local government telecentres,
commercial telecentres, school-based telecentres, and university related telecentres.
According to Mr. Aryal,”if the telecentres are started
with the clear vision to provide the services to the peoples, more and more telecentres
are opened day by day, but there is no clear vision, model of the telecentres
so that the telecentres can give the effective services to the rural people.
The last word of Mr. Aryal is that “Dreams come true for
those who work while they dream!”
(DN,GK,AP)