This was my paper on the role of telecenters in emerging communities in Latin America as presented at the 4th International Free Knowledge Conference, held in Maturin in 2006.

1. IV Foro Mundial de Conocimiento Libre
Telephonia Libre and Telecenters
David Sugar, GNU Telephony
http://www.gnutelephony.org
dyfet@gnutelephony.org
+1 609 465 5336
23 Olin Drive, Cape May Court House, NJ, 08210
Abstract
GNU Telephony is a meta project of GNU project packages dedicated to the development and
promotion of the use of free software for telephony. These services operate on free operating systems
and interact with users over both the traditional public telephone network using analog and digital
circuits, and over next generation VOIP services. Using commodity PC hardware running under
GNU/Linux, GNU Telephony can be used to create carrier hosted applications like Voice Mail and
calling card systems, as well as enterprise applications such as unified messaging and v­commerce.
GNU Telephony has been used to develop special services for various e­government projects, including
daisy talking book readers for enabling blind accessibility to government documents. In this
presentation, I will be discussing the role and architecture of GNU Telephony and how it relates to the
creation of community access Telecenters. I will also discuss why I say Telecenters are also the public
libraries of the next millennium, and the various social implications of community Telecenters.
Introduction
Telecenters are a recently developed means to deliver Internet and telephone resources to poor
communities. Sometimes they are built as or part of existing neighborhood or rural community centers,
and sometimes they may be designed as mobile labs. What they all generally have in common is
providing communities with a place where they can make and receive phone calls, and access services
over the Internet.
Telecenters can and have been built and deployed using free software in the past. I think Telecenter
concepts are more common in Latin America, but the conditions for their use exist elsewhere, and I
think the idea would be very workable in Africa.
Telecenters can also act as digital public libraries, and be used as local centers for supporting distance
learning programs of or adjuncts for public universities. Other possibilities include community news
and entertainment such as movie distribution, or to enable participatory democracy. Some of these
users have not yet even been explored, and I believe should be, using free software projects involving
distance learning, for which there are a number of different ones to choose from. One area that is
heavily focused on in the technical aspects of this presentation is using Telecenters to deliver shared
basic phone service to a community.

2. The current Conatel (in Venezuela) sponsored Telecenter offers an excellent fundamental starting
point, as it involves bringing Internet and telephone connectivity through mobile community centers
which can be Internet connected, and uses VOIP for offering voice telephone service. These
Telecenters currently use h323 phones and gnomemeeting. I believe the one disadvantage in the
current Conatel Telecenter is that the phone (VOIP) resources of each Telecenter is under the control of
an external carrier, including gatekeepers, management, routing, etc. This means a monopoly control
exists over Telecenters, at least for voice telephone service. Parts of this presentation will address that
issue, while other parts will discuss the social and communal uses of Telecenters for enabling distance
learning, digital libraries, entertainment, participatory democracy, etc. Some of the Telecenter issues,
observations, and ideas that will be presented also will relate to projects which focus on the the popular
distribution of low cost (affordable) computing which some national governments are experimenting
with.
Overview
This presentation will be split into several sections, each of which outlines a specific technical or social
challenge imposed by Telecenters. I will start by introducing some basics; that a Telecenter is
composed of a number of community accessible desktop computers, a number of VOIP telephones for
public use, and an on­site server which may also double as the Telecenter administrator's primary
desktop machine, for economy. As in the Conatel Telecenter, each community desktop is equipped
with basic productivity software (open office, web browsers, etc) and with VOIP capable a/v client
(gnomemeeting or the new ekiga) and camera.
For reasons that will become clear when we talk about distant learning and enrollment, each resident of
the community may also need to have a personal desktop configuration and login, and hence home
directories may need to be nfs mounted within the telecenter. This implies that rather than the Conatel
method of using standard desktop PC's for each community workstation, maybe we should look at
using the thin client computing model such as embodied in the Linux Terminal Server Project. The
concept for profiles and enrollment as proposed does however also allow for the possibility that a
single shared login may also be used.
Naturally all the resources needed for implementing community Telecenters can be done using free
software today, and this proposal will elaborate on specific issues already found in existing Telecenters
today as well as new areas not yet explored.
1. Community Phone Service
The purpose of GNU Telephony is to develop a methodology to support community telephone service
using VOIP telephones, but which enable local administration of the service, and enable delivery of
phone calls to the public telephone network through multiple carrier. This both eliminates the
monopoly position of a single carrier and restores local management over all Telecenter resources.

3. The method we intend to demonstrate uses the SIP protocol, with GNU Bayonne acting as a VOIP
switching bridge between the public Internet and the local network established in the Telecenter. When
a community member accesses a phone to call an external phone number for the first time, the call will
be routed to GNU Bayonne. This will ask the community member for his phone number and PIN id,
which can be published on a card. The Bayonne server will then establish a separate SIP registration
with a given carrier to enable the call to be switched onto the carrier's network through Bayonne, and
keep track of which local phone was used so that inbound calls for that number will goto the same
phone until it is deregistered. The community SIP phones in the Telecenter would register with an on­
premise SIP proxy. This eliminates external management issues and external carrier controlled
gatekeepers that are found in the current Conatel implementation. The fundamentals of this operation
will be demonstrated with GNU Bayonne on a laptop and a VOIP handset on an IPAQ running GNU
Telephony embedded.
Two benefits of this model is that service is both individualized, and portable. The same person can
activate phone service using his national phone number and PIN at any Telecenter. This requires some
improvements in how Bayonne manages SIP registrations. GNU Telephony intends to develop a
complete GNU Bayonne SIP based Telecenter reference application, as well as technical modifications
to GNU Bayonne required to better support these operations.
2. Distance Learning
The basic concept proposed for using a Telecenter as an access point for a distance learning portal is
that a community member can goto an online form (or forms) to register for class or with a university
or other institution. When they complete the registration, they receive an XML desktop file which is an
"enrollment" document. This document can be clicked on and then resets browser, email, and VOIP
client settings for use with the university or for the classes they have enrolled with. This then really is
a presentation of a specific proposal for automating management of distance learning as well as
demonstrating a specific implementation on a free desktop.
If Internet access is available for the presentation, I will demonstrate some of the most basic concepts
behind distance learning portals, like the KEWL project developed by the University of West Cape.
3. Digital Libraries
Telecenters offer the possibility to bring digital data to rural and poor communities. Clearly this
touches upon multi­media and many other things. A digital library is much more than simply giving
someone a way to get to Google.
Digital libraries require works in digital form. Some of this is done by projects like Gutenburg, and
even the project by the BBC to make all their archival content available online. What a Telecenter
needs to be concerned with is being able to provide these things to users. What also needs to be
thought about is how people will be able to know and find these things. In the Library of Alexandria
they only had to deal with scrolls, and they were all in one place. Here we have to deal with data in
many forms and formats. Digital libraries and universal access to knowledge require data that is
available in open standardized forms unencumbered by Digital Restrictions Management.

4. 4. Community and Free Culture
Culture is a fundamental right of all human beings. Community centers can be used both for
production and consumption of entertainment and culture. However, we can do better than having
stacks of DVD's or VCR's as is done today. This can be done using concepts from point­to­point file
sharing networks to enable efficient distribution, both for those producing, and for things being
consumed and shared by others, and I will talk about this aspect of Community Telecenters a little bit.
Can a community center become a community movie theater? A community news center bringing
important news from the larger world directly to a local community? Certainly I believe it can and
should. This has social and cultural implications, at the local level, and the national level.
From the purely technological perspective, all the tools needed to accomplish this using free software
exist today. Some work could be done in polishing how they are used for Telecenter specific
configurations, but nothing new has to be invented, other than thinking more deeply about how people
can and will interact with a Telecenter, and how to best enable these interactions.
5. Participatory Democracy
Certainly, with an infrastructure that is deployed, the community center could be a logical place and
means for enabling voting. However, the nature of participatory democracy need not be limited to just
electoral forms. I am thinking of other broader forms of participatory democracy, such as the
experiments tried in Rio Grand Do Sul with having people vote on procurement projects and local
spending. Telecenters can play a vital role in both enabling public participation in government and as a
force to counter authoritarianism.
However, even when we talk about voting, we have many issues to consider, including registration of
voters, and assuring their votes are counted in a reliable manner, without revealing who they are. There
are some free software projects focused on voting, and these should be reviewed to consider how they
may apply to the context and implementation of a Telecenter.
6. Hub for low cost wireless computing
A final use proposed for Telecenters in this talk is as a hub for low cost computing. Being able to use
mobile Telecenters equipped with wifi or even conventional hubs could make it possible to offer and
quickly interconnect computing resources in schools and other educational institutions where
connectivity does not exist now. Other possibilities include using wi­max, and forming Internet
connection hotspots for low cost computing, like the $100 laptop from MIT, or even the proposed
lower cost system being developed using PPC hardware in Italy that may also be shown for the first
time at the conference.

5. Conclusions
Rather than focusing on the technology we can use to develop next generation community Telecenters
using free software, this presentation will also cover the potential, and the practical and social
consequences, that can come from their widespread use. It is hoped that this presentation will explain
not just how we can do Telecenters to serve poor communities, but what role they can and should have
in society.

6. Conclusions
Rather than focusing on the technology we can use to develop next generation community Telecenters
using free software, this presentation will also cover the potential, and the practical and social
consequences, that can come from their widespread use. It is hoped that this presentation will explain
not just how we can do Telecenters to serve poor communities, but what role they can and should have
in society.