The low-cost and quick deployment time of wireless technologies give them the potential to connect communities and regions that are currently disconnected. However, governments in many developing countries have not unlicensed the use of spectrum that is necessary to deploy wireless networks like Wi-Fi. In many countries, transmission of data using unlicensed spectrum over public areas is prohibited, which makes connecting villages, for example, impossible. In some countries like the United States, telephone companies are actively lobbying against unlicensed use of the spectrum. These were some of the key issues that came up at the Air Jaldi wireless infrastructure summit held in Dharmasala.
Vic Hayes, Senior Research Fellow at the Delft University of Technology, one of the nodes in the LIRNE network, attended the Summit and also made a keynote presentation. Vic Hayes is considered to be the father of Wi-Fi having chaired the IEEE WLAN working group that developed the Wi-Fi standard. His trip report can be downloaded here [PDF].
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