IT for Developing Regions Prof. Eric A. Brewer UC Berkeley NEST Retreat June 17, 2003

Hypothesis 1  Current IT projects “trickle down” first- world technology:  Too expensive  Assumes infrastructure, power  Assumes IT knowledge and support  Assumes literacy  We can directly attack these issues  Motes are a better starting point!

Hypothesis 2  Thousands of IT projects, but  Focus on devices not infrastructure  No single project can afford to build infrastructure, but all of them would benefit.  We can enable low-cost infrastructure  Enhance all of the existing projects  Enable new projects that were previously intractable

Population (in millions) >$20,000 $2,000–20,000 <$2,000 Purchasing power parity (in U.S. dollars) There is a market, too… 100 4,000 emerging ‘mass’ markets adjacent markets 2,000 source: Harvard Business Review © 2002

Big Picture  Enhance and enable IT projects:  Novel technology (direct attack)  Novel deployment/support  Support for semi- and illiterate users  Two real-world deployments (validate)  Great partners

Novel Technology  Device cost: times reduction  Infrastructure cost: times reduction  Device power: times lower  Speech recognition for obscure languages and dialects

Three Layer Architecture  Devices  1-70 users each, $1-10  Short range wireless  Proxies (basestations)  users, $200, < $1/user  Mixed wired, wireless, satellite  Transient storage  Data Centers  >1M users, < $0.10 / user  Full power, networking, persistent storage

Devices  Co-Design Devices/Infrastructure  => 20-40x lower cost  Enables more functionality  Storage, processing, human analysis  Longer battery life  Novel low-cost flexible displays  10-50x cheaper, more robust  Printed using an inkjet process  System on a chip => $1-5 per device  Looking at 1mW per device (with radio!)

Low-cost Infrastructure  Goal: lower cost  Key idea: intermittent networking  Most apps do not need real-time continuous communication  Asynchronous is times cheaper?  Feel: some spots are interactive, most are more like  Novel protocols, app support  Exploit both [ab] and mote networks

Summary  New approach for IT in developing regions  Novel technology, infrastructure  “direct attack” on the key challenges  Real deployments  Enable and enhance 1000s of projects worldwide  Long term: IT for self-sufficiency, stability (not financial aid)

Exploiting  Driver: coming of $5 chipsets  Mix of local coverage and long-distance links (50km)  Multiple baseband channels?  Illegal in US, but fine for India  Novel MAC layer? Antennas?  Summer goal: low-power low-cost relay  Current IT: $150, 30W

Real Deployments  First one is in India (2005-6)  IIT Delhi, HP Labs India  Second outside of Asia (2006-7)  Probably Africa, Mexico or US

Intermittent Networking  Key overall questions:  How much cheaper? …than continuous real-time connectivity  Savings from less coverage?  Savings from BW efficiency?  Savings from simplicity?  How much less power?  Multiple physical networks  LEO, , short-range wireless (10m)

Novel Deployment & Support  Micro-franchise model for long term  Grameen Phone  Remote management for most things  Self-contained wireless proxies with ad hoc networking  No keyboard, monitor, etc. on proxies.  Data Centers are widely shared

Literacy  Novel speech recognition:  Easy to train  Speaker independent  Any language or dialect  Small vocabulary (order 100 words)  A non-IT person can train the speech for her dialect  Also speech output (canned)  May do recognition on the device, or on proxy

Adlai Stevenson, July 1965 We travel together, passengers on a little space ship … all committed for our safety to its security and peace; We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave … half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.

Five Application Areas  Commerce  Health  Education  Government  Location-based services  Team includes social scientists:  Stephen Weber, Isha Ray

Data is in the Infrastructure  Manage persistent state in the infrastructure  Can lose/rent the device  Enables social science research (with privacy)  Enables group state  group calendars and news

Decouple Apps & Devices  Remote reprogramming over the network (authenticated)  Can upgrade/add services without changing the device!  Devices last longer  Devices increase in usefulness  Enables flexibility and research

Reduced overall cost  Functionality moved to the infrastructure costs far less!  Device utilization = 4%  Infrastructure servers = 80%  Ex: ISPs have times less modems than there customers, even though every connection takes one from each...  Admin & support costs also decrease

Transformation Examples  Tailor content for each user & device  Noticeably faster than home PC + modem 1.2 The Remote Queue Model We introduce Remote Queues (RQ), …. 1.2 The Remote Queue Model We introduce Remote Queues (RQ), …. 65x 6.8x 10x

Refinement  Retrieve part of distilled object at higher quality Distilled image (by 60X) Zoom in to original resolution

Grameen Phone Lady  Micro-franchisee  Usually with a micro- loan ($200)  Buy and manages the cell phone  Rents it out to her village (10-70 users)  Income goes up 2-3x  Pays back loan (98% !)

Grameen Phone Lady  Micro-franchisee  Usually with a micro- loan ($200)  Buy and manages the cell phone  Rents it out to her village (10-70 users)  Income goes up 2-3x  Pays back loan (98% !) Uganda

Great Partners  HP  Intel  Grameen Bank  UNDP  Markle  IIT Delhi More welcome!!!

Other questions  Avoid full routing?  Alternative is tree routing  Route up and down a tree  Forest of trees connected via normal IP  Power/BW tradeoffs  Duty cycle  BW depends on signal strength (and thus power)  Separate low-bandwidth channel?  Think 2-way paging, emergency channel  Connected all the time at very low bandwidth  Used for meta data and control (not surfing)