Simputer White Paper

Simputer FAQ

oneVillage Foundation public mailing list

We can get computers and communications into 2 million villages and a number of other places, such as refugee camps, and use them to create sustainable economic growth. It will take years to get even one computer into each community that needs it, years more to put in lots of computers everywhere, and decades to go through the development process. So of course we need to start today.

Here's the plan.

We have the Simputer, designed for poor people. It is a Linux handheld that works in areas without electric power, phones, or money, using solar battery chargers, broadband wireless with Voice over IP, and microcredit. Monochrome Simputers, US$200 each. Color, US$350.

We have cheap broadband wireless, at about US$1,000 per location, with greater than 10km links and local WiFI hotspots that can cover a large city block or a small village. Places that can't be reached by wireless links can have low-cost satellite dishes.

Given the ability to provide broadband Internet and phone functions anywhere, we can offer health, education, community development, e-governance, economic opportunity of several kinds for farmers, local entrepreneurs, producer and consumer cooperatives, and much more, and we can provide immediate Internet access in disaster areas and refugee camps so that people can find family and friends and let others know what services are needed.

Given microcredit, communications, and economic opportunity, the process can become sustainable, with further growth paid for out of increasing local resources. In short, we can end the cycle of dependency on aid agencies and NGO charity, and make formerly poor people self-sustaining and self-reliant. At some point the local economy will support cell phone service or even land lines, and local power generation on a larger scale, or the extension of the electric power grid.

Since the rich countries won't fund health for the poor, we have started planning how the poor can finance it themselves, starting with such major killers as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The cost of HIV/AIDS treatment is now 40 cents a day, or US$150 annually per patient. Our economic development program can generate more than enough new income to cover that in a cooperative village health plan, and train the village health workers, too.

More importantly in the long run, six billon people can all have a voice in the conversation about our future. Some of those new to this opportunity would like to have a word with you. Is there anything you would like to tell them?

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