ICTworks by Inveneo

I am FJ Cava, and as the Business Support Manager at Inveneo I spend a lot of time communicating with Inveneo business partners throughout Africa and Asia. We’ve tried a lot of communication channels, VoIP Phones, cell-to-cell calls, Yahoo/MSN chat, and the best real-time communication tool I have found is Skype.

Inveneo relies on email a lot. However, the problem with email is that it often is not in real-time which, is fine for many situations but not all. There are times that I need to communicate directly with a business partner in Africa that I find Skype to be the most stable, cheapest and reliable tool available.

Skype is simple, easy, cheap

Benefits

First Skype is free to download and install on both Mac & PC platforms. This is important as I use a Mac but most Inveneo Partners use PC. This then allows me to communicate for free to our partners on the ground using what is called a Skype-to-Skype call.

It’s really easy to call from Skype. first you have to locate the person you want to call in your contact list and click their name. Then to make a call simply click the green button with the phone on it. This starts the call. It is that simple.

Two Challenges

One drawback of this communication channel is that both parties need a microphone and earphones. Mac comes with this built-in but PC doesn’t so partners need a headset.

The other issue with Skype is the Internet speed on both ends. Sometimes calls get dropped or don’t connect at all because of extremely poor bandwidth, often on the partner’s side. For these occasions there is something called Skype-Out which is calling a cell phone or landline from Skype on your computer.

Still, Dead Simple

All that is needed is to enter a phone number and hit the big, green call button. This will connect you and your computer with the cell phone you’re calling. This method, Skype-Out, costs money but far less than a regular cell-to-cell call from the USA to Africa. I also find this to have the best sound quality and connectivity of any connection, bar none.

I don’t know how they do it but for whatever reason USA Internet connection to a cell phone tower in Democratic Republic of Congo is far better than, landline-to-cell or any other means of communicating for that matter.

The other nice features of Skype are they have video included if you want to see the person you are talking to, as well as a chat feature that rivals such clients as Yahoo and MSN.

So if you’re interested in talking with Africa or Asia in real-time, that doesn’t break the bank and is consistently reliable, I would use Skype.

Mobile phones seem to be ubiquitous in the developing world, until you leave the main population centers. Then service drops off fast, and rural residents are left to walk miles to get a signal. But it doesn't have to be that way. There should be a strong business model for the right entrepreneur to deploy a local phone system cheaply, and with a good investment return.

Back in April, the Technology salon studied this issue and we found that micro mobile telco business models are essential, yet elusive. That's before I learned about the Village Telco initiative.

This project aims to assemble and develop the cheapest, easiest to setup, manage, and scale, local telephone company toolkit in the world. Even better, the Village Telco focuses creating a sustainable business model for entrepreneurs as much as the technology.

In awe of such a ambitious goal, I interviewed Steve Song about the Village Telco project, with an aim to understand its business models.

ICTworks:
You say that any entrepreneur with modest resources and technical ability should be able to deploy a Village Telco. What might be the business model that you anticipate them using? And in that model, what are the start up costs? Revenue model? Break even projection?

Steve Song:
We've discussed this a lot within the community. Initially we picked the figure of USD $5,000 and asked whether it was possible to start a Village Telco with that sum of money and could you break even in six months.

The answer is yes but it really depends on your priorities. The above assumes that every user will pay for their own Mesh Potato. Any telco really begins to deliver value when it begins to experience the network effects when the network reaches a certain critical size.

Accordingly, you might want to discount the Mesh Potatoes in order to stimulate roll-out, just as the mobile operators do. In this case you would need more upfront money for roll-out on the assumption that a larger network is going to generate significantly more income because it is delivering higher value to customers.

Here's a fairly simple spreadsheet at which you are welcome to play around with. Don't take any of the existing data in there too seriously as it is really intended as a sandbox to play around with different scenarios e.g. discounted Mesh Potatoes, monthly subscriptions, no monthly subscriptions, free local calls, more or less Internet use, etc, etc.

There are a host of variables and it is not clear until we get some more examples in the field which model is going to suit the market best. This is likely to vary from country to country and from urban to rural areas.

One key selling point of the Village Telco is free local calls. In Johannesburg, Dabba who operate a Village Telco-like operation in Hillbrow in Johannesburg, they have found that 70% of the calls are local on the network.

Configuring the Linksys PAP2T is a relatively simple task.  Here are the steps to get you up and running.

Physical Connections

1. Connect the ATA to power making sure to use a 5V power adapter.  Connecting 12V to the ATA will damage the equipment.
2. Connect the ATA port labeled Internet to your network with an ethernet cable. Make sure the ethernet cable has been tested and that a computer can acces the internet using the same cable and switch port to be used for the ATA.
3. Connect a telephone to the port labeled Phone 1 on the ATA

Using the ATA's Voice Menu

We find it's best to configure ATAs with static IP addresses, even in DHCP networks so it's easy to find their configuration pages if you need to make changes later. The Linksys ATA, though, comes configured to look for DHCP out of the box. You'll need to use the phone's voice menu to turn off DHCP and set an address. If you will have multiple ATAs, it can be convenient to group all the ATAs together in a similar address range, for example between 192.168.100.50 and 192.168.100.60.

1. Pick an IP address on your network that you know is unused.
2. Pick up the phone and dial **** to access the ATA's voice menu
3. Dial 100# to check the status of DHCP on the ATA, it will probably say "Enabled"
4. Dial 101# to change the DHCP setting, the ATA will say "Enter value..."
5. Dial 0# to set DCHP to disabled, the phone will say "Press 1 to Save..."
6. Dial 1 to save the setting
7. The ATA should return to the main voice menu.  If it did not, hang up, pick up the phone, and dial **** again.
8. Dial 111# to set a static IP address.
9. Dial the IP address chosen in step 1, using * for dots and ending with a #.  For example, if the IP address was 192.168.100.51, dial 192*168*100*51#
10. Dial 1 to save the IP address.
11. At the ATA main voice menu, dial 110# to check that the IP address was properly stored.  The ATA should read back the IP address.  (Note,
    the ATA must be physically connected to a network with an ethernet cable...if no ethernet
    cable is connected to the ATA, it will always read 0.0.0.0 for the IP
    address
12. Hang up the phone.
13. Try to ping the ATA's IP address from another computer on the same network.  If the ATA is pingable, continue to the next step.  If the ATA is not pingable, repeat steps 2-12 to check settings until the ATA is reachable by ping.

Basic Browser Configuration

Now that the phone has an IP address, the rest of the configuration can be done from a browser on a computer on the same network.  Inveneo recommends Firefox.

1. Open your web browser and connect to the IP address set for the ATA above. The browser should display the Linksys PAP2 configuration screen.
The Linksys PAP2T Configuration Interface
2. In the upper right corner, click "Admin Login"
3. Click the "System" tab near the top of the screen
4. Fill in the same settings for the ATA that you would use when configuring any other computer for the network.  The gateway, net mask, primary DNS, and (if necessary) secondary DNS field should be completed.
Linksys PAP2T basic network settings
5. Click "Save settings" Near the bottom of the page
6. The text "Please wait while the PAP2 updates its settings..." will display for a few seconds, and then the browser should return to the info page of the Linksys configuration.
7. Click the "Line 1" tab
8. For proxy, enter the IP address of the Inveneo IHL server or other VOIP server being used to provide VOIP service.
9. Make sure register is set to yes
10. To continue beyond this step, a VOIP extension with username and password must have been created on the VOIP server providing service to this ATA.  One VOIP account must be created for each ATA or VOIP device in the network 
11. Set both display name and username to the VOIP username for this ATA.  If configuring for an Inveneo IHL server or other Asterisk server, the username and display name will be the extension number (not the extension name) created for this ATA.
    
12. For password, enter the password for the VOIP account for this ATA.
13. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Settings
14. The browser should again return to the main page of the Linksys configuration screen
15. In the "Line 1 Status" section of the status screen the
    "Registration State" field should read Online. If the ATA shows its status as online it has successfully connected to the VOIP server.  If it shows "Registration state: offline" repeat steps 1-14 and check settings.
Linksys PAP2T Registration Status
16. Pick up the phone, a dial tone should now be present on the line.
17. Dial one of the extensions in the network, test that the phone rings, and check the voice quality
18. Hang up the phone.

The ATA is now configured. Depending on network bandwidth, it may be necessary to adjust VOIP codec settings.The default u711 voice codec is high quality, high bandwidth, and works well over high bandwidth, long range wifi links. If connecting over the internet, higher compression codecs will be required.

Advanced Configuration Options: Ring Voltage

ATA configuration is complete, but there are a few additional settings that may be necessary depending on equipment and deployment specifics. In particular, if the VOIP works properly when dialing but the ringer does not ring when the ATA receives incoming calls, the following steps will be necessary. Analog telephones ring by sensing a voltage sent down the phone line. Phones from different countries require different settings in this area to function properly.

1. Near the top of the configuration screen, click "Switch to Advanced View"
2. Click the "Regional" tab of the configuration screen
3. Scroll most of the way down the page to the "Ring and Call Waiting Tone Spec" settings.
Linksys PAP2T Ring Voltage Settings
4. Two common settings are displayed below. Choose the one that matches your equipment, or adjust as necessary.

	Ring Waveform	Ring Frequency	Ring Voltage
United States	Trapezoid	25 Hz	80 V
United Kingdom	Sinusoid	20 Hz	85 V

5. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click "Save Settings"

Inveneo has found that the Trapezoid waveform setting works better with newer, digital compatible phones, while the sinusoid setting works better with the older equipment often found in developing regions.  The default US settings will work in most cases, particularly across Africa.  The UK settings may be particularly useful in South Asian countries like Nepal and India.

Advanced Configuration: Dial Plan

It is always possible to tell the ATA to dial a number immediately by dialing a # after the last digit. However, most users will want the ATA to dial automatically once a complete number is received For this to happen, the ATA must be told a series of rules to use to recognize complete phone numbers for dialing. This set of rules is called a dial plan.

1. Scroll to the bottom of the page and find the "Dial Plan" section
2. Enter a dial plan that matches the dial plan on the VOIP server in use:
   • Separate different match patterns with |
   • Use the wildcard x to match any single digit
   • Use the wildcard . to represent a group of digits of any length.
   • Specify digit ranges from m to n using [m-n]

   The example dialplan ([2-8]xxx|9xxxxx.)is designed to expect any 4 digit extension beginning with any number between 2 and 8 or any number longer than 6 digits beginning with 9.

3. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click "Save Settings"

There is no denying the usefulness of Skype in facilitating communication across Africa. In fact, at Inveneo, we've found Skype to offer the best connection to African phones - beating USA cellphones, landlines, and commercial VoIP services in call quality and ability to connect to any phone in Africa, anytime.

But its not always the first choice for African offices.

Registering a pilgrim for haijj

With the poor infrastructure of Nigeria, where power and phone lines go out constantly, and Internet connectivity is slow an expensive, Skype has serious limitations.

Yet as we learned from the Niger State Pilgrims Welfare Board in Nigeria, a private, battery powered intranet with custom VoIP functionality can be an always-on solution allowing for free intra-office communication.

Each year, Nigeria sponsors devout citizen's travel to the Haijj in Saudi Arabia, through state-level Pilgrims Welfare Boards. In Niger State, the Pilgrims Welfare Board is housed in a large building, with the pilgrim intake on the ground floor by the main entrance, and the administrative offices in the back, top floor of the building.

Aurora Wireless, a Inveneo Certified ICT Partner, installed a custom VoIP solution that allows the administrative offices to speak directly to the intake office for free.

This intra-office telephone saves the Pilgrim Welfare Board countless hours of lost time walking from one end of the building to the other, and increases the psychological connection between the Board's administration and intake personnel.

So the next time you're praising Skype, remember that custom VoIP still has viable use cases, especially where power and Internet connectivity are rare, unreliable, or expensive.

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