Telecentre Solution
Start-up Internet Business
The Telecentre is an option for start-up internet business for the all-important internet access in far remote rural areas. This page is devoted to discussing the solution as an option for would-be internet business man in far remote regions of the world.
Telecentres also known as Community Technology Centers (CTC) is actually a multi-purpose communication center or hub where access to communication (voice, fax, internet) and other community-based service such as trainings and e-distance learning (education) are being conducted.
They are popular in remote regions of the world it usually being the best place to go for access to communication. Typically, a centre is equipped with several computers, telephone line, facsimile machines, photo copiers, printers, scanners, decoders, video cams and other important equipments.
Telecentres as multi-purpose centers are not only devoted as communication hub for a local community. Some centres are like community business centers where various kinds of services can be provided such as secretarial, publishing, tourism promotion, agri-business consulting, employment center, local library, computer training and internet business.
Satellite communication and terrestrial wireless radios are linking telecentres to the rest of the world via the internet. Please refer to our topic rural internet and tips on how to bring rural internet access to remote villages.
You too can initiate for the establishment of a centre in your local area.
Below are some tips:
• If possible make it a joint private and government undertaking for it to be sustainable
• Talk to your local community and business leader about the possibility of establishing a telecentre in your area
• Enlist the support of the proper agency tasked for ICT development in your country by writing them a letter or email explaining your desire to obtain technical and funding assistance for the formation of telecentre
• Scout for a place in the community to house the centre facilities
• Conduct a study and identify the potential services your centre can offer to both local and visitors in the area
• Seek funding and grant assistance from national and foreign-institutions for procurement and provision of telecentre equipment such as computers and other relevant equipments needed for its operation
Telecentre Solution and Tips:
• If your centre happen to avail of used-computer donations from other countries, try to assess the specs and computing performance of the units
• Next, determine if the computer is best for its intended use
• Pentium 4 level computers are good enough for a LAN Network and Internet Café operations and other high-speed computer task
• Pentium 3 level computers are still good but should be assigned to simple computing task such as word processing, email and publishing. It’s good also for internet café operation but a little bit slow
• Consider converting Pentium 2 computers as thin client work stations. They still can perform past using a network server.
• The trick to making P2 computer work fast is let it run applications from a network server.
• In thin client technology, all applications are executed on the server while the thin client takes care of the graphical display.
• There is a technique in converting old PC into thin-client and will be discussed later
• You will need a fast, dual-core processor server with very high memory and disk space in order to accommodate as much as 10-20 PC on a single network
• You can use a commercial thin client computer or an old PC for that matter to save cost as oppose to buying new desk stop PC
click to view topic on rural internet
click to view topic on Long-Range WLAN
click to view topic on long-range phone extender
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