Rhizomática
One of the themes that dominated this year’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was how to address the “connectivity gap”, with over half the world’s population still unconnected and the rate of new connectivity beginning to slow. In particular, remote, rural and indigenous communities face significant barriers to sustainable internet access due to a lack of available infrastructure and low population density, which undermines economic incentives for commercial operators. As these ...
For the second interview in our spectrum series, we had the chance to speak with Peter Bloom, general coordinator and founder of Mexico-based NGO and APC member organisation, Rhizomatica. Peter established Rhizomatica in 2009 with the mission of increasing telecommunications access by helping communities to build, own and manage their own low-cost, open source communications infrastructure. Since then, the organisation has helped to establish local telecommunications cooperatives, deve...
This member story was featured in the 2017 APC Annual Report, as part of our work on access. Thanks to support through an APC subgrant, Rhizomatica was able to support a number of emerging initiatives in Brazil and Colombia regarding community cellular networks. These are basically community-based networks that use 2G cellular technology as a way to facilitate communication between people...
This member story was featured in the 2017 APC Annual Report, as part of our work on access. Between October 2016 and May 2017, the first edition of the Diploma Course for Community Promoters in Telecommunications and Broadcasting was held in Mexico. Two member organisations of APC collaborated in this process: Rhizomatica, who taught the community cellular networks module, and ...
The High-frequency Emergency and Rural Multimedia Exchange System (HERMES) project by APC member Rhizomatica is the winner of this year's Mozilla NSF-WINS Grand Prize for unconnected communities. On 26 September, Mozilla and the National Science Foundation announced the grand prize winners in the Wireless Innovation for a Networked Society (NSF-WINS) Ch...
Indigenous Community Telecommunications (ICT), a civil society association in Mexico, has withstood an important legal battle for the right of indigenous communities to establish and manage their own community networks of mobile phones and internet. ICT, which provides voice and data services at affordable costs in remote areas of southern Mexico, obtained a special legal protection (or amparo,...
How do you connect the unconnected? Mozilla and the National Science Foundation posed this question to find innovative wireless technologies that connect people to the internet and to each other. One of the winners of the first round of the “Off-the-Grid Internet Challenge” is APC member Rhizomatica, who use technology, especially mobile, to facilitate development a...
“So Long, Phone Companies. Mexico’s Indigenous Groups Are Getting Their Own Telecoms” proclaims the headline of a Global Voices report on the work of Rhizomatica, an organisation that supports communities, local entrepreneurs and popular movements that wish to use telecommunications technology to advance their autonomy. APC has followed Rhizomatica’s work for years, and was pleased to w...
