In San Ignacio de Moxos, an area located in the Beni region of northern Bolivia, the only internet connection available was an expensive and intermittent telephone connection. Since March 2006, thanks to the local campesino centre and wireless internet, the main institutions in the area have been interconnected, so that the inhabitants can access the internet at a quarter of the price it used to cost them, connecting them to each other, the rest of the nation and the world.

One hundred institutions in rural areas of Paraguay with access to the internet. Poor indigenous communities experiencing contact with the world beyond their local surroundings for the first time ever. These are just a few snapshots of the outcomes achieved by Oportunet, a project launched in 2007 in Paraguay that has demonstrated the potential of the internet as a door to economic and social development in the poorest communities.

Carlos Afonso, Executive director of APC member Information Network for the Third Sector (RITS), has recently been awarded the ARede 2008 award for digital inclusion. Carlos was named Personality of the Year, for his dedication to promoting social inclusion through the internet.

On 19 November 2008, the Internet Society announced that ESLARED (Fundación Escuela Latinoamericana de Redes) was the 2008 recipient of the prestigious Jonathan B. Postel Service Award.

Last year APC and partners trained local technicians, community leaders and telecentre operators from the Andes on the basic principles of setting up wireless internet access in their communities. Now the participants report on the impact once they went back home.

ITeM has been coordinating IFIwatchnet since 2005.

As part of the TRICALCAR project a set of seven new training modules, which the WILAC network is pleased to share with its African counterpart, has been made available. The modules range from WiMax to energy for telecommunications systems, visiting VoIP, long distance wireless links and community, gender and technology on the way. There are even sustainability strategies and network planning modules.

APC’s new member Sulá Batsu is a cooperative operating in Costa Rica since 2005. It sees itself as a collective workspace for social change. It’s experience spans over the sharing of knowledge, social economy and information and communication technologies. APCNews interviewed Margarita Salas of Sulá Batsú in order to grasp the challenges associated with the cooperative model, the opportunities and challenges that the internet represents in the Costa Rican context, the link between gender and technology and her perspective on what is referred to as social economy.

Mobile phones can be the way into the information society for lower income people and less developed regions. Some structural factors help: mobile phones do not require either electricity or special training and the costs of connectivity are much lower than those of landline telephones.

Through an initiative of the Information Network for Civil Society (RITS), Latin American and Caribbean actors met in Rio de Janeiro in November 2007. Why in Rio and what for? To exchange ideas on the issues that were debated at the second Internet Governance Forum. Read the main pointers.

Journalist Miguel Peirano finds that "Many people think that a laptop for every child is a magic solution and that just giving the children a machine will make them happy," in his well-documented opinion piece about the CEIBAL Plan. This Uruguyan adaptation of the One Laptop Per Child project turns this South American nation into the only country in the world that has adopted, as government policy, the proposal to endow every schoolchild with a low-cost laptop connected to the internet.

Education, collaboration and co-operation marry and merge in the Argentine classroom, through a unique volunteer-driven project called GLEducar. This project was innovative enough to earn a special mention from the jury of the first APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize. In this interview, Gleducar secretary Daniel Osvaldo Cardaci explains their logic and concerns.

“An attack on net neutrality and an act of censorship,” was how Miguel Acosta, editor of a New York-based Paraguayan newspaper referred to the measure taken by the Paraguayan Communication Company to block access to internet telephony or voice over internet protocol (VoIP). Civil society has responded forcefully to this situation.

Emails, text messages and the media spread the word: the Chilean government has signed one of the broadest known-agreements to date with the Microsoft Corporation, covering aspects of education, management of personal data, and support for local governments (municipalities) and the micro enterprise sector.

“This is a technology that works, a proven technology, and what it needs is a bit more promotion,” said Ermanno Pietrosemoli just days after reaching a new wireless connection record of 382 kilometres. The president of Venezuelan APC member EsLaRed spoke with APCNews by conference call about this low-cost solution that is impacting the world’s rural communities.

Applications are now being accepted until May 18 for technical training scholarships that will cover expenses for attending the first workshop of the TRICALCAR project. This community based wireless networks project is initiated by APC-members in South America. The workshop will be held in Huaral, Peru from July 16 to 21, 2007.

“TRICALCAR” is a Spanish abbreviation that stands for Weaving Wireless Community Networks in Latin America and the Caribbean. But much more than an abbreviation, it is in fact a project. It brings together ten partner organisations that are all dedicated to training Latin American computer network administrators in building and administering community wireless networks.

Huaral is a coastal valley in Peru with a desert climate where it never rains. It is also the name of an initiative that CEPES, APC member in Peru, is carrying out in the region. And above all, it is proof that the creative use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) can improve the lives of farmers in an entire region, if not beyond. APCNews spoke to Maicu Alvarado of CEPES in December 2006 at the Latin American APC members’ meeting about the latest news on this rural development work which has now been underway for six years.

APC’s member in Brazil, RITS, set up the OPPI site as a web-based tool for monitoring, analyzing and undertaking projects and policies which contribute to infoinclusion, as well as covering other issues related to democratization of ICTs in Brazil.