Video: What is an InfoSpot?

What is an InfoSpot?

Have a look at our video (click on the image below) to learn more about the wireless information spot (InfoSpot) for schools, health stations and Community Learning and Living Labs (CL3) in rural areas. The InfoSpot connects to the mobile network as far as 25 km away, and provides a local WiFi network. Everyone who connects will first see your local web page, located on a local server, prior to search and access to the Internet. In order to guarantee affordable access, the solution incorporates a voucher system, such that full access can be provided for e.g. one hour, a day or a whole month.

The video will also give you an introduction to local content, both as the web page “Yeboo.com” and also a local cloud.

The InfoSpot is an instantiation of the “Digital Public Infrastructure” (DPI), and through the open source implementation a candidate for the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA). As the Gates Foundation points out “DPI is like a road”. We follow the concept of the road, with “Digital Pedestrians and Digital Cyclists have free access to the Digital Road”.

What you need is

1. a pole to fix the directional antenna
2. the directional antenna, and a SIM card to reach out to a mobile tower up to 25 km away
3. a local network control center (LNCC), used for providing a local network
4. a school/community server with local content for your community

And below is how the community is engaged when establishing the InfoSpot

We use standard hardware of the shelf hardware like the Mikrotik directional antenna and the router, and have established a local administration with white lists and voucher creation. The whole solution is open source, and documented on

• http://InfoSpot.BasicInternet.org for configuration of the all components
• https://github.com/Mazinde/hotspot-manager/wiki the hotspot manager for voucher creation and white list handling

While the solution is universally applicable, operators like Vodacom Tanzania Foundation (Tanzania) and Ethio Telecom (Ethiopia) have introduced the “Affordable Access for Education, Health and Empowerment” (AA4EDU) with unlimited data for schools, health stations and non-profit community centres. Read more on AA4EDU in our blog