Michel Bauwens wrote:
Hi Roberto,
my question is the following: is low power FM compatible with the internet, i.e. is it possible for local communities to use both interchangeably and with compatibility? (on other lists, we are working with sepp
LPFM basically refers to an FM radio station that goes on the air (not online), with a transmit power of at most 100w (perhaps 500w in some contexts). Typical stations now roughly cost as low as a high-end laptop. Reception is through standard FM radios. US$5 made-in-China FM radios are available in the Philippines. The recurring cost of $1-2 for batteries every few weeks or so is something that even poor farmers can afford; $1/hr in an Internet cafe, they can't afford, and there's usually no Internet cafe in the village. Listeners can respond the usual way -- call-in by phone, text-in by SMS, or by going to the station itself. FM is essentially line-of-sight, and with the low power, we are talking of service to a cluster of villages, a small town, a valley, etc. Community radio stations have a very active international organization, AMARC. The limited coverage makes very logical even necessary the use of local language and focus on local issues. I explored these in the following pieces: http://www.scu.edu/sts/nexus/summer2005/VerzolaArticle.cfm http://rverzola.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/infoeconomy-verzola.pdf (p.169) Nothing prevents the FM station from being on the Internet of course. Then local listeners can phone/text in requests for info, and results can be aired over the station. Internet listeners (presumably familiar with the local language) can then join in too. Local listeners cannot get online themselves through the station, if that's the compatibility one is looking for.
I would be totally opposed to charging per distance, which would again favour the old forces and take away our right to global communication, and free communication belongs to the great rights of humankind, along with free education and free medicine (and hold your horses, we can find ways to do this sustainably, free in this context means, 'as a public service' available to all)
Ok, I'll hold ... :-) ... But I'm curious about your objection: if the cost structure of a technology is distance-dependent ("distance" could mean network instead of physical distance), wouldn't it be fair to charge per distance, reflecting the actual cost of the physical infrastructure? If some cross-subsidy is unavoidable, then wouldn't it be fairer for the richer users to subsidize the poorer ones -- or the global players to subsidize the local ones (as the old telecomms supposedly did) -- instead of the other way around? I agree completely that health services and education should be provided for free as a public service or through some form of commons. But communications services are used by businesses and markets a lot. Should they get that for free too? Perhaps they ought to, but I need to think more about that one ... In the Nexus piece above, I also suggested ways to keep costs low for developing countries deploying modern ICT. In summary: 1. Use an appropriate (i.e., intermediate) technology, which may not be the latest or the most advanced, but still improves significantly on the current ways of doing things and is much more affordable to those who will use it; 2. Use free/open software (e.g., Linux/GNU, OpenOffice, etc.), to drastically reduce the cost of software and to invite deeper knowledge about the technology through the availability of the source code; 3. Where commercial software must be used, encourage the government to apply genuine compulsory licensing; 4. Deploy pay-per-use public access stations which do not require users to pay fixed monthly charges (the public phone booth model); and 5. Explore community/public ownership mechanisms to minimize private rent-seeking. We've actually included most of the above in the Philippine Greens program of action for the information sector (we have separate action programs for the agriculture and industrial sectors). The full text is available here, p.21: http://rverzola.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/set-2006-formatted.pdf Greetings, Roberto