Lack of high-speed networking infrastructure remains one of the biggest roadblock in bringing the revolution of IT to rural areas. Applications like rural telemedicine and distance-education have been limited to research prototypes in labs equipped with available pre-requisite bandwidth. While most rural areas in developing regions lack high-speed networking infrastructure, cellular wireless networks have grown at an exponential rate. Bandwidth limitations imposed by cellular networking traditionally restrict their use to only low-bandwidth voice connections.

Our goal is to build and deploy a system for aggregating bandwidth from several cell-phones to define high-speed network links. Our system will use inverse multiplexing on GPRS links to assemble network connections of hundreds of kilobits/sec in rural areas in Pakistan. Villagers meeting in a common area can combine their GSM or GPRS bandwidths to enable broadband applications such as telemedicine and distance education.

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