Our objective is to provide a seed communications infrastructure for the three billion people living in rural areas with no connectivity. Our network software enables rural communities to send and receive email, perform cached Web searches, and enable integration with numerous store-andforward applications such as voicemail, telemedicine, eGovernment, and remote learning.

Now, for about $0.04 per user, rural communities that have never seen a newspaper can do things like email, browse the Web, and have their own voicemail box using our unique technology. We extend any Internet connection and wireless LAN into a Village Area Network by mounting WiFienabled Mobile Access Points on vehicles that provide “drive-by” connectivity to terminals in villages. As the Mobile Access Points pass by each village they collect and distribute data just as they pick up and drop off passengers or goods. Then when they come back within range of a wLAN with an Internet connection, they upload/ download the cached data. This technology leverages two major trends that are rapidly driving costs down: WiFi (802.11x wireless) and digital storage. Essentially, we develop WiFi-based cached network intelligence.

Our mission is to help public and private organizations in developing nations to bridge the digital divide by providing affordable, scalable communications infrastructure and by building internal capacity in wireless networking. We are working towards a world much like Allen Hammond and C.K. Prahalad have envisioned in their paper “Serving the World's Poor, Profitably”: „Driven by private investment and widespread entrepreneurial activity, the economies of developing regions grow vigorously, creating jobs and wealth and bringing hundreds of millions of new consumers into the global marketplace. China, India, Brazil, and, gradually, South Africa become new engines of global economic growth, promoting prosperity around the world. The resulting decrease in poverty produces a range of social benefits, helping to stabilize many developing regions and reduce civil and cross-border conflicts. The threat of terrorism and war recedes. Multinational companies expand rapidly in an era of intense innovation and competition. (Harvard Business Review, Sept. 2002)” We are based in Cambridge, MA and the project has been spun-out from research and development performed by the founders at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).


Links: www.firstmilesolutions.com

DakNet emerged out of a class called “Developmental Entrepreneurship” co-taught by professors from the MIT Media Lab and MIT Sloan School of Management. Through this class the founders came up with the core idea of combining transportation infrastructure with mobile WiFi access points to create a network for rural areas. After the class, Amir A. Hasson then took this on as his thesis project and demonstrated the technology in India through Media Lab Asia. The project was then spun-out from the research environment into First Mile Solutions in order to be developed in a scalable fashion. The founders of the project are Amir Alexander Hasson, Rich Fletcher, Olufemi Omojola, Victor Grau-Serrat, Alex Sandy Pentland.