Revisiting Steve Song & The Village Telco

You may recall that some time ago we had Steve Song appear as a guest on a VUC call. At that time he was working for the Shuttleworth Foundation coordinating the Village Telco project.

The Village Telco project developed a low-cost hardware device intended to help deploy telephony to underserved parts of Africa. This device, called a Mesh Potato, is essentially a wifi access point with a built-in analog terminal adapter. Groups of Mesh Potatoes form a wifi mesh network. This supports the sharing of voice & internet resources at extremely low-cost compared to commercial solutions.

Since his original VUC appearance the Shuttleworth Foundation’s grant to the Village Telco has ended. Steve Song has left the Shuttleworth Foundation, taking up a position as CEO of  the Village Telco. He recently attended an African conference on TV White Spaces where he gave the following interview.

While I am no expert, Steve’s explanation of the significance of TV White Space spectrum is about as clear and concise as any I have heard. This video inspired me to invite Steve to come give us a Village Telco  update on a VUC call in December. He has agreed to the appearance but a date has yet to be decided.