At Wireless World Research Forum meeting currently held in Chennai, there were two presentations on Mesh Networking. While Chanuka Wattegama of LIRNEasia spoke about the Sri Lankan experience, Sharad Jaiswal of Bell Labs, India presented a similar initiative in Bangalore. There were many similarities between the two on the approach. VillageNet, the Bangalore initiative, is a low cost IEEE 802.11 WiFi based mesh network designed for connecting villages in rural India, providing low-cost broadband Internet access for wide regions.
Paper titled ‘Wireless Mesh Networking as a means of connecting rural communities: advantages, constrains and challenges – an analysis based on a case study from rural Sri Lanka’ co-authored by Chanuka Wattegama (LIRNEasia) and Rehana Wijesinghe (Enterprise Technology) has been accepted to be presented at the Wireless World Research Forum Meeting to be held 5-7 November, Chennai, India. The objectives of this paper are to discuss the appropriateness of Wireless Mesh Networking in a rural environment in empowering the community, the design and implementation challenges and how they were addressed, related policy issues including the unlicensing of 2.4 GHz and 5.1 GHz bands and explore the possibilities of replicating the Mahavilachchiya model. WWRF (http://www.