Free wireless Internet from PAPI Ştefan Vodă
18.05.2011
| PAPI Ştefan Vodă, in Călăraşi County, has become an Internet provider for people in the local community, through a projected created as part of the Knowledge-Based Economy Project, financed with the support of the City Hall. The total value of the project amounted to 11,000 Lei, lots of inventiveness and many hours of effort. |
RECL manager Bogdan Daniel explained the project was accessed in order to help every home have computer access, a difficult undertaking due to the commune’s location. “The locality is practically isolated, although it’s just 14 kilometres away from Călăraşi, because it is surrounded by arable lands and no other communities. No possible investor would be interested in bringing optic fiber here. However, we did manage to find a provider able to bring broadband access - SC Telecomunicatii CFR SA. The company offers 100 mbsp bandwitdth, which is not the maximum limit”, RECL manager Bogdan Daniel says.
He stated that offering internet to the 90 local users was accomplished through a wireless solution, since the distances between homes are large, and so the yards of the houses – hundreds of square metres. “Classical wired solutions would have involved many switches, very long cable and many other things which would have meant much bigger costs. We bought professional equipment for wireless, created the info points through our won effort and thus created a new public service. The wireless equipment cost some 7,500 Lei; pylons supporting the two access points, each with five sectorial antennae, have been manufactured locally and have been placed on the water pool. Expanding the network from PAPI, the main provider, cost 3,500 Lei”, Bogdan Daniel explained. The investment was finished in 2010.
The PAPI manager has explained that the IT infrastructure in Ştefan Vodă has been expanded, as local APs are connected to the library node, and the uplink to the server at PAPI is ensured through RECL. The 90 users pay a monthly fee of 35 Lei. “In the future we want to create a new cell by creating an AP in the other end of the commune and allow other local homes to connect to the school node”, thre RECL manager explains.
KEP internet access
All the 255 communities in the Knowledge-Based Economy Project have shown interest in providing internet access to locals right from the start and for many of them the dream has come true. The benefits are huge, since Internet access helps people obtain the necessary information for learning and development, to find a job or benefit from other useful professional or personal services. According to data provided by the Ministry of Communications and Information Society, the 255 communities part of KEP, out of which 201 communes and 54 cities with less than 30,000 inhabitants, cover more than 8% of Romania’s population.
Online resources:
KEP brings free internet wireless to Berchişeşti
Church towers, the best location for wireless antennae in villages