NETWORKS
What does a bombed-out war zone really need? A good ISP.
Last year, Paul Meyer, an aid worker with the International Rescue Committee, decided to start up Kosovo's first Internet service provider. Meyer is no stranger to disaster areas; in West Africa in 1999 he set up a database that helped reunite refugee children and their parents. "After a crisis or a war, all these international organizations move in and it's chaos," says Meyer. "All of them need a communications link to the outside world, but there's no coordination." Satellite phones are expensive, leaving balkanized relief groups to make do with what's left of the local infrastructure.
So Meyer and colleague Teresa Crawford launched IPKO.org, a network that connects the area's aid organizations to the Internet via a shared satellite link. "Basically," says Meyer, "I wanted to build the AOL of Kosovo."
Meyer convinced Akron, Ohio-based Aironet and Latvia's MikroTik to donate wireless local routing equipment; InterPacket, a Santa Monica, California-based satellite-communications company, threw in a dish and a year's worth of free downlink time. The UN interim government was harder to deal with - almost "totalitarian," says Meyer - but finally granted regulatory approval. While Meyer, who was trained as a lawyer, took care of the negotiations, Akan Ismaili, a Kosovar Albanian engineer, hacked together a wireless network that sidestepped the local phone system altogether. (Five years ago, Ismaili was the Kosovo sysop for a Balkans BBS called ZaMir - see "Balkans Online,"Wired 3.11.) Meyer's service has been up and running since last September.
So far, IPKO.org has about 70 clients. Relief agencies pony up $1,000 a month for the service, while local organizations receive it free. Most of the fees go toward purchasing and maintaining the antennas needed to build the wireless infrastructure. Kosovo may include online voting in the elections projected for this autumn, though Meyer isn't sure he'll stick around: "Where I'll be depends on where the next crisis is, I guess."
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