Onno build bridges across the digital divide

Onno build bridges across the digital divide

Vishnu K. Mahmud, Contributor, Jakarta

When Onno Purbo walks into a room, it immediately lightens up.
Relaxed, easy going and gregarious, strangers might assume he is
a grad student meeting old friends.

In reality, he is a former university professor who is
fighting to bridge this country's increasing digital divide.

It has been said that more and more people are being left
behind in the Information Technology revolution. The reasons are
many -- lack of funds for purchasing the latest computer
hardware, inefficient telecommunications infrastructure, and
costly Internet connections.

But what happens if you can bypass all that?

Onno Purbo believes there are alternative, reasonably priced
solutions to access the World Wide Web and the wealth of
knowledge it holds.

"People's education is very vital for Indonesia in bridging
the digital divide," he said via e-mail. In one of his many
articles, he wrote that it would be pointless to give everyone
computers if they do not know how to use them.

As such, the jovial former Bandung Institute of Technology
(ITB) professor and his colleagues travel around the country,
sharing their knowledge on how to use affordable conventional
solutions such as the Linux operating system, secondhand
computers and accessing the Internet with the help of the latest
wireless technology.

Last Sunday, when we met, he was invited to take a look at the
school of street children at Taman Ismail Marzuki arts center
complex in Central Jakarta, where there was a first meeting to
expand its IT lab.

Born on Aug. 17, 1941, Onno Widodo Purbo is the eldest of four
children of Hasan Poerbo, an architect who was said to be one of
the first Indonesian students to Liverpool, England, on a
scholarship, and Tini, a former school teacher. With all this
education floating around the house, it's no wonder that academia
and teaching became his career.

After completing his bachelor's degree at ITB, Onno went to
Canada for his master's at McMaster University and a doctorate at
the University of Waterloo. Upon his return, he became a teacher
for seven years until finally leaving after trying to educate the
Indonesian government on the concept of community-based
infrastructure.

A concept on an Indonesian National Information Infrastructure
model was developed and sold to the World Bank for a loan in
November 1997, but he said that it resulted in nothing but mostly
impractical policy regulatory papers. There was instead a lack of
funding for most implementations.

Now, as "an independent IT writer", Onno can transfer his
knowledge to a wider audience.

"At ITB, I normally teach about 100-200 students/semester.
Sometimes students are chasing after grades or certificates,"
Onno said. "As a free man, I can teach over a thousand people per
day who look for knowledge over various (Internet) mailing
lists."

His dedication to building a knowledge-based society in
Indonesia is so high that he practically gives away his
teachings, using "copyleft" -- a concept that goes against the
more known "copyright" by allowing for the free flow of
knowledge.

Many of the more than 30 books he has authored are available
to be freely downloaded at websites like www.bebas.vlsm.org.

Onno is also a strong believer in a "bottoms up" solution to
bridging the digital divide. During the Indonesian Internet boom
of the late 1990's, Onno notes that most of the infrastructure
and market was created by the private sector. Small and medium
enterprises would create businesses and began to build an
Internet community within the country. They include Internet
Service Providers, web portals (such as Detik.com and
Astaga.com), web cafes (known as warnet) and the like.

"Successive Indonesian governments have actually been a
stumbling block for Internet development," he said. "These
governments have stifled creativity, as they require everything
to be registered and licensed. Government policy lags behind
developments and fails to provide the industry with a competitive
safeguard."

A case in point is the 2.4 GHz controversy. In Indonesia,
radio frequencies are regulated, compared to other countries
which have set aside certain radio bands for Industrial,
Scientific and Medical (ISM) purposes, as well as for Unlicensed
National Information Infrastructure (UNII) located on the 2.4,
5.2 and 5.8 GHz frequencies, as recommended by the International
Telecommunications Union (www.itu.int).

These frequencies are useful for cheap Internet connectivity,
with the help of the latest Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) technology.

"It is a much better situation for both the government and the
Indonesian people to free up the band," argues Onno. "A simple
calculation will show that freeing 2.4GHz and 5GHz will increase
the number of WiFi nodes from 5000 nodes to about 130.000 nodes!"

Petitioning the government to relax its licensing policies
over the two bands, Onno calculates that this could lead to an
increase in the number of Internet users to about 17.8 million
(from about 4 million today), an increase in service taxes to Rp
128 billion/year (from Rp 22 billion/year using current licensed
frequencies) and the government could receive about Rp 600
billion from value added tax based on IT hardware investment.

"Having a broadband local access is important to generate
local Indonesian content and to remove our dependence on
international content providers. My mission is to increase local
content and local knowledge."

So far, Onno and his team have taught hundreds of people on
how to make a neighborhood network using WiFi, sharing Internet
connections with an Internet provider, and setting up community-
based IT infrastructure. They have even set up a Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP) system for making phone calls over the
Internet. Many warnet (Internet kiosks) and neighborhood (RT/RW)
networks have been set up with the help of Onno and co.

Onno has also spoken in various seminars and countries, with
many parties and governments interested in implementing their own
community-based IT program. Hopefully, the government will also
jump onto the bandwagon and reap the rewards of Onno's hard work,
thereby sharing them with other Indonesians.