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The Maverick Spirit of Broadband Wireless Innovation is Still Alive
A clever Australian gentleman utilizes amateur radio and the Internet to connect people in Australia's remote outback.
Australia's James Cameron is using some not-so-new amateur radio technology and the Internet to link people in Australia's remote Outback where only one-tenth of Australia's population resides. The technology called the Internet Radio Linking project is actually older technology being put to a new use. The technology allows a person to pick up their amateur radio, dial a number and be connected via the Internet for no cost.
Mr. Cameron has turned his expertise more recently to testing the wireless range of laptops built by the $100 One Laptop per Child project. Finding that the remote bush country was an ideal laboratory of hot, dry conditions where he could quietly test the laptops, Cameron ascertained that the range was about 1.6 Km or just about a mile.
"I can put them up trees and test how far they go. Especially because there's not much radio noise around here, being on a farm in the outback, I'm a long way from any other radio source," said Cameron.
The Laptops operate off of a form of wireless mesh designed to allow the laptops to interconnect using multiple connection paths to extend the range of all radios on the system.
Tim Sanders,
TheFinalMile
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