OLPC Pacific rollout links

OLPC Oceania
starting point, overview ... 8 Pacific countries listed for trial deployment of OLPC ...Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Kiribati, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Niue, Tuvalu

RICS - Rural Internet Connectivity System
RICS is designed to provide 2-way Internet connectivity to all Pacific Island Countries. It uses 1.20m Satellite Antennas and provides average speeds between 128 to 512 kbits per second

OLPC Solomon Islands
This page provides a comprehensive overview of the Pacific trial process, more so than any other Oceania page on the OLPC wiki.

Ian Thomson

"Mr Ian Thomson has been appointed by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) to coordinate its work on the Pacific Rural Internet Connectivity System (Pacific RICS) and Oceania One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) projects ...

The Pacific RICS aims to provide Internet access to rural and remote Pacific communities that are currently not serviced by commercial operators. The technology uses small 1.2 or 1.8 metre satellite dishes and therefore requires low power to operate, which means it can be solar powered. A ‘network-in-a-box’ server provides the networking capability that allows Internet connectivity, a laser printer, WIFI wireless access and computers networked via cables.

Ian will be establishing the 16 RICS pilot sites across the region. The first site was launched a month ago in Gaire, a rural community located an hour’s drive southeast drive of Port Moresby. The other pilot site in Papua New Guinea is in Bougainville, with the remaining sites in Cook Islands, Kiribati (2), Federated States of Micronesia, French Polynesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Samoa, Solomon Islands (2), Tokelau, Tuvalu, Tonga and Vanuatu"

David Leeming
has been developing infrastructure in the Solomon Islands (Solomons PFnet pdf) for some years. He stresses the need for a bottom up approach.