Monthly Archive for April, 2008

Dabba and Village Telco: Getting to Alpha

Published
by
Steve Song
on 29 April 2008
in All Things Open and Village Telco
. 3 Comments

Here is a short note on where things stand with Dabba and the Village Telco. The Shuttleworth Foundation is planning to fund the hacking/adaptation/development, to at least alpha version, of an Open Source “Village Telco” integrated suite of applications. This will be developed based on the business model established by Dabba in Orange Farm and aimed at facilitating the replication of that model.

Dabba brainstorming with Internet SolutionsA lot of the detail written below came out of a half-day brainstorming session that I participated in earlier this month. Rael hosted myself and a three very cool business development / technical / entrepreneur folk from Internet Solutions. Internet Solutions have informally supported Dabba in exploring low-cost telephony and data business models from the very early days. They have an interest since businesses like Dabba are a potentially natural complement to Internet Solutions. I hope in my meeting with them that I also convinced them that there was a useful and important place for an Open Source VillageTelco project which could speed the replication of Dabba-clients and Dabba-like enterprises.

So, as currently planned, the first iteration of the Village Telco will include:

  • mesh network provisioning and management
  • pay-as-you-go billing and management
  • wireless access / captive portal setup and management
  • SIP/VOIP server and client management
  • least cost routing solutions

subsequent iterations will include:

  • an integrated web-based management interface to the Village Telco
  • content server
  • customer relationship management (CRM)
  • caching proxy for web content
  • multicast streaming video

So here is a little more detail on what is required to get each of those components off the ground.

Mesh Network Provisioning & Management

open-mesh.netOpen-mesh.com and Meraki have the slickest mesh network provisioning and management interfaces going. Both are based on the deployment of Meraki wireless routers which run a version of the B.A.T.M.A.N. mesh protocol called RO.B.IN (ROuting Batman INside). Both Open-Mesh and Meraki have very similar interfaces which is not surprising as Open-Mesh was developed as a reaction to Meraki’s decision to close the change to their End User Licence Agreement to preclude anyone from changing any of the software that they install on their units. So now you can buy a Meraki mini router, flash it with Open-Mesh’s more open firmware and connect up your mesh without being locked into Meraki. Pretty cool although you still have to use the OpenMesh site for network management. It would be much better for a Village Telco to have its own network management software that was as cool as Open-Mesh. Happily a group of students at UNC Chapel Hill are developing an Open Source mesh deployment server called OrangeMesh that is compatible with Open-Mesh. This would be a great place to start developing a provisioning interface for a Village Telco, one that would ideally handle both OpenWRT/LinksysWRT54Gx routers running B.A.T.M.A.N. and Meraki Mini or similar devices running RO.B.IN.

Pay-as-you-go Billing and Management

A2Billing appear to have the most robust Open Source voice billing solution for Asterisk that supports pay-as-you-go billing. The goal here would be to create a customised A2Billing configuration particularly geared to the Village Telco environment.

Wireless Access / Captive Portal Setup and Management

Image from CoovaChilli siteThere are a few great Open Source captive portal applications. Coova, ChilliSpot, and WiFiDog are probably the best known although Chillispot ceased development some time in 2007 and has morphed into CoovaChilli and there are other hybrids such as CoovaAAAwithWiFiDog. WiFiDog has a great captive portal and customised/localised content for users but relies on a standard password file for authentication which probably means that it will not scale well. Both Coova and WiFiDog have versions of their captive portal software that are designed to run on wireless access points (APs) such as the Linksys WRT54G series. While the Village Telco will use Linksys APs, because the APs will be meshed together, there is no need to run authentication on the local AP. It can be handled at the server. Something like CoovaChilli makes more sense because it authenticates with Radius but it would be nice to also have some of WiFiDog’s captive portal features as well. It sounds like CoovaAAAwithWifiDog should do that but CoovaAAA is a service not a software provided by Coova. For anyone who read my earlier post, you will note that authenticating from the server versus the AP represents a change of strategy.

SIP/VOIP server and client management

AsteriskThe two big applications for SIP authenticating and managing VoIP traffic are OpenSER and Asterisk. In my earlier post, I wrote about running OpenSER on a Linksys AP. Once again, in a mesh environment, it seems that this is not necessary either. OpenSER’s chief advantage over Asterisk in this domain is that it is comparatively very efficient and would be able to route calls within the AP’s coverage area without leaving the AP to authenticate at the server. There are even some very cool OpenSER distributions designed for the Linksys AP such as Milkfish. However, the downside of this is that those calls would not get tracked or would at least be much more work to track. Having a central authentication for calls makes sense as tracking usage patterns will be quite important to managing service delivery and growth. In the end, it probably makes more sense to have a single Asterisk implementation that handles authentication. Once again, because the network is meshed, this should be relatively seamless across APs.

Least Cost Routing Solutions

Least Cost Routing (LCR) refers to the set of tables, software, appliances that ensure that a call is made for the least possible cost. So, for a Village Telco, you would first want to make sure that calls within the WiFi mesh were routed directly to another user within the mesh. Next, if the call were leaving the VillageTelco coverage area, then you would want to have direct connections to all the major networks in order to avoid paying additional interconnect charges. This means having the SIM cards and hardware to route calls to the GSM networks and having the facility to interconnect with the Publicly Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) e.g. Telkom. There is a host of hardware and software for achieving this and part of the challenge will be choosing the right technology. Equally if not more important will be deciding where in the connectivity chain to break out to other networks. In some cases, an isolated Village Telco would have to solve all of these problems by themselves. However in the case of Dabba in South Africa, Dabba can solve many of these problems for local Village Telcos by offering LCR services (among other services) to Village Telco operators. This is particularly important in a place like South Africa where Telkom insists on having carrier-grade interconnection equipment which is typically very expensive.

Customer Relationship Management

Vtiger The above covers most of the basics of the Village Telco but thinking further forward, it would be great for the Village Telco operator to have the tools to manage relationships with his/her customers. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools like Vtiger could offer marketing and support functions to a Village Telco operator that would help them expand their range of services, provide better support, and generally understand their customers better. However, one step at a time and much will depend on how easy it is to integrate something like Vtiger with the other elements of the Village Telco.

That’s a start. Obviously much more to come. Please feel free to post comments, observations, suggestions on the above as this is definitely a work in progress. Also, I’m learning in this space as well so if I have misrepresented issues, forgotten issues, or left out an amazing piece of Open Source software, let me know!

For more software and hardware possibilities, check out the list compiled by Sebastian Beuttrich for the CSIR’s Wireless Africa initiative.

Building the Demand in Print-On-Demand

Published
by
Steve Song
on 25 April 2008
in All Things Open
. 0 Comments

In an earlier post, I wrote about a very cool publishing model used by a bible publishing company in the U.S. in which they were able to aggregate user demand by laying out the pricing curve for developing an electronic version of a book. This made me think about Siyavula, the Foundation’s project to develop free, curriculum-aligned, education materials for South African students. A big challenge for the project is how to get actual print copies of the free textbooks into the hands of teachers once they are available. If there were a way of aggregating demand from potential purchasers in a dynamic, effective manner, then one might be able to significantly drive down the cost of printing.

PoD Demand Aggregation BrainstormingThis thought led to a brainstorming session with Mark Horner, project manager for Siyavula, in which we thrashed out a model for online aggregation of demand for publishing. The image at right was the result. I’ll try and give a narrative description of what we came up with. We imagined an online space with an individual graph for each book in the demand aggregator. Each graph would map the number of books on the Y axis and the unit cost of the book on the X axis. A curve would then be plotted on the graph representing estimated printing costs based on book dimensions, quality, number of pages, etc. Obviously greater numbers of books ordered translates into a lower unit price per book.

Users can login to the system, view the price curve for a particular book and make a conditional bid for a book, entering a price, a quantity, and an expiry date for the bid. The bid would then appears as a column on the graph and all other users of the system would be able to see the bid on the book graph. As more bids are entered, the system aggregates the total quantity of books represented by all of the conditional bids and maps that quantity against the original price curve. This appears on the graph as a line intersecting the curve at the price required for all bidders to get their orders fulfilled.

Mockup GUI for PoD aggregationThe idea is a little clearer on the mockup of the graph at the left. On it you can see that there are three bids for 400, 200, and 100 books, making an aggregate demand of 700 books. This translates to a price of $4 dollars on the price curve. You can see that this is represented by the vertical yellow bar on the graph. At this point a user should be able to experiment visually with their bid seeing what they effect of increasing/decreasing the quantity of books and/or unit price of their conditional bid. Each time a user adds or changes a bid, every bidder would be informed of the addition/change so that they can decide whether to change their bid accordingly. Users should also be able to issue “challenges” to other bidders to compromise on price or perhaps simply propose that everyone buy into the current optimum price. Also, if any existing bid is due to expire, other bidders would be alerted to the possible opportunity loss.

Once sufficient bids have been received to make a viable print run, the price is locked in. At this point, all users on the system would be alerted and offered the opportunity to buy into the print run at the set price. Additional aggregation of demand at this point could further drive down the cost of the book at that savings could be passed on to the original bidders only (to encourage bidding) or kept by the operator of the system to cover overheads. There are many possibilities.

Siyavula would make a perfect test case for this kind of interface but there is no reason why it couldn’t be expanded to any publication with an open license. For example, if I were prepared to pay $10 dollars for a print copy of Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, I should be able to point to the print-ready PDF and create my own bid. If I wasn’t in a hurry, I could allow demand to accumulate over months.

Thinking much further ahead, on the back end of this, you could create an equivalent system for printers to bid on print runs for books, creating perhaps multiple curves on the graph that were optimal at different quantities based on different printing technologies or approaches. But that is getting ahead of things. Initiallly, simply putting bids out for quotes would work just fine. As things stand the Shuttleworth Foundation is going to prototype this idea and see where it goes. Stand by for more.

This is an OpenConcept

Operators Response to SA Government’s Proposed Rapid Deployment Guidelines

Published
by
Steve Song
on 24 April 2008
in Telecom Policy
. 0 Comments

On the 27th of February 2008, the Department of Communications published a notice inviting comments on Proposed Guidelines For Rapid Deployment of Electronic Communications Facilities in Terms of the Electronic Communications ACT, 2005 (ACT NO. 36 of 2005). Among other things the guidelines propose the mandatory minimum 51% “African or South African” (is it just me who feels jarred by that phrase?) ownership of all submarine cables landing in South Africa (SAT3 excepted).

In a heretofore unprecedented move, Telkom, Vodacom, MTN, Neotel, and Cell-C have made a joint submission in response to the proposed guidelines. Previous industry submissions have often been complementary but this is the first time every major telecom operator has spoken with a single voice. One could argue that this is a sign of widespread collusion among incumbent telecom operators in South Africa or perhaps simply a sign of collective industry indignation at the counterproductive steps being taken by the Ministry of Communications.

The submission makes a number of arguments.

51% African or South African Ownership

The operators argue that insisting on 51% “African or South African” ownership doesn’t make a lot of sense as it may inhibit the spread of competition in undersea cable access (the IWTGC cable comes to mind) and South African companies already comply with BEE requirements. The submission goes further to argue that the Minister has exceeded her authority in using Section 21 of the Electronic Communications Act to require majority African or South African ownership of undersea cables. It is hard to deny this argument and indeed to understand why the DoC is sticking to its guns on this issue.

Rapid Deployment

The submission also argues that the proposed guidelines, rather then facilitating “rapid deployment”, actually introduce an additional approval stage which will only increase the amount of red tape. The guidelines also do not “provide procedures and processes for obtaining any necessary permit, authorisation, approval or other governmental authority” as is indicated in Section 21 of the Electronic Communications Act. The operators argue that the guidelines would be better described as “Submarine Cable Authorisations”. Again, it is pretty hard to argue with their case. It seems evident that the “rapid deployment” guidelines, as they are currently described, are going to result in slower deployment .

Trampling on ICASA

The operators also point out that much of what is covered within the proposed guidelines, is already covered by the authority of the Electronic Communications Act and ICASA. They have declared their intention to ignore the guidelines as they believe they have “no legal standing.”

The Economics of Undersea Cables

I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised by this submission at least until I came to Chapter 7 entitled “The Economics of Undersea Cables” in which:

“the operators noted that although they support the principle of open access there still needs to be incentives for operators to invest in cables; and thus the operators support the concept of justifiable price discrimination between investors and non investors”

they say that:

“If a consortium, by virtue of an ‘open access principle’ was forced to sell bandwidth to investors and non investors at the same price – there would simply be no incentive to invest.”

This is what I dislike about the term “open access“. People seem to lay claim to it under almost any circumstances, so much so that it has lost some of its weight as a strategic approach. Surely it is not hard for the operators to see that if they are an investor in the cable and they are forced to buy bandwidth at the same price as non-investors, that they would still enjoy a de facto discount as a result of the profits from their overall cable investment. Investing in undersea cables is a profit-making enterprise on its own, as Seacom (with no telco operator investment) provides evidence of. Open Access proposes structural separation of communication infrastructure to increase consumer choice at every level of communications infrastructure from cables to data to services. This poorly argued and manifestly incorrect explanation of the “economics of undersea cables” mars what is otherwise an important message to the Department of Communications.

Open Patents, Open Concepts

Published
by
Steve Song
on 17 April 2008
in All Things Open
. 1 Comment

So why isn’t there a commons for ideas? Why isn’t there a trust system, a social contract for sharing ideas in the same way that Open Source creates a safe environment for sharing code? For example, if I came up with a useful workshop facilitation methodology, I would share it. However, if I knew that I was likely to be given credit anytime anyone used it, I would probably share more enthusiastically and maybe even put more effort into polishing the methodology for use by others.

Why can’t we open license ideas in the same way that we license software, photos, or blog entries under a Creative Commons or GPL license? I don’t need to get paid and I am only too happy when people use my ideas (rare as they are) but it would add an extra incentive if I knew I was likely to get credit for thinking them up.

Is it not conceivable to create a social mechanism to achieve this? I titled the blog “Open Patents” but perhaps it would be even better to call it an “Open Concept”. And while the idea is inspired by the Creative Commons license, it might be better to call it a “social contract” in order to avoid the sense that there may be a litigious aspect to the idea. (Thanks to Mark Surman for pointing out the wrong flavour of the word “license” in this context). There could be an informal wikipedia-like resource for registering an Open Concept in a shared, public space but it needn’t even be that formal. A blog post or web page might be sufficient. You could use the Way Back Machine to establish prior art.

Naturally there would be disputes and in the “standing on the shoulders of giants” nature of knowledge there would be a lot of cross-linking of Open Concepts but if the debates were over who gets intellectual credit not who gets paid, then hopefully dispute resolution might be handled in a relatively non-litigious manne

Facilitating Innovation

A perfect candidate for OpenConcept is Allen (Gunner) Gunn’s SpeedGeek facilitation process. A great concept that he and Aspiration have shared widely. That is largely because of the Open Source kind of guy that Gunner is. Others in a similar position might be tempted but worried that they might not get credit if they share. An Open Concept License could tip them over the edge. I think this would encourage people to “release early and release often” their ideas.

Also, if one were to introduce a kind of genealogy of Open Concepts, one might increase the likelihood of tinkering that leads to innovation. If there were a place where you could see Gunner’s SpeedGeek concept but also see how he tinkered with the concept of SpeedDating to get there, you double the opportunities for tinkering innovation. Someone might riff on Gunner’s idea or they might see a different direction to take the original SpeedDating concept. Seeing how innovation evolves leads to more innovation

Which leads me to my next point.

How to represent and store Open Concepts

It may be that the software already exists for managing an ecology of Open Concepts. Genealogy software. Genealogy software could provide the notion of inheritance, siblings, and offspring which would ideally suit a representation of Open Concepts. Of course you would need to adapt the software to have just one or in fact many parents but perhaps modern life has already made genealogy software adapt to these possibilities. You would have to make it wiki-like to facilitate an open and consensus driven approach. You could allow for people to “vouch” for the originality of others ideas and have an Ebay-style rating of authenticity/reliability.

Finally, if this were really successful and well-established, could it not provide a resource of “prior art” that might help to inoculate patent systems against bad patents?

So, is this a dumb idea? Unworkable? Am I missing something? Set me straight somebody.

This blog post represents an OpenConcept, Attribution, Share-alike :-)

The Wisdom of Knowledge Management

Published
by
Steve Song
on 17 April 2008
in What I'm Reading and World View
. 1 Comment

I lurk on one of the more interesting mailinglists in the world. act-KM, originally an Australian but now global community of practice on Knowledge Management or since I abhor the term Knowledge Management, let’s say on the nature of knowledge in general and how to make it grow and flow in and across organisations. It is a high traffic list and not a very peaceful one. The debate rages (I choose the adjective carefully) between academics, practitioners, corporate hacks, and grass-roots types. It is not always kind and at times I find some of the sniping simply unpleasant. However, that is substantially outweighed by the calibre of discussion. It is a privilege to hear the likes of Dave Snowden, Steve Denning, Patrick Lambe (to name just a few) hashing issues out in a community space.

actKM has also a testament to the power of blogs as synthesisers and aggregators of community knowledge generated in Communities of Practice. Many have debated how to abstract the knowledge generated in CoPs and certainly FAQs were an early attempt to do so in the early world of newsgroups and technical mailing lists. Blogs are so much better however in that they take advantage of the self-interest of community members of moving their own praxis forward.

A very effective example of this happened around a recent debate on actKM on whether the term “wisdom” or even (I shudder to write) “wisdom management” should be admitted as legitimate terms of discussion within the actKM community. This provoked a fierce and lengthy debate on the topic with points scored on both sides. Out of that oyster popped these pearls:

Patrick Lambe
http://www.greenchameleon.com/gc/blog_detail/wisdom_management/

Luke Naismith
http://knowledgefutures.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/wisdom-management-and-wisdom-leadership/

Matt Moore
http://engineerswithoutfears.blogspot.com/2008/04/word-to-wise.html

Read these and feel that thanks to the actKM CoP and these knowledge synthesisers (bloggers) the stock ticker for the sum total of human knowledge (or wisdom) has had a good day. :-)