Some background to and experiences in rural telecommunications in the third world

Describes some of the issues which have to be addressed in planning and executing rural and remote systems and adds some comments on the way things appear to be developing for the future. The preferred approach to telecommunications project is to fully involve the recipients in all aspects of the work. Typically the project is designed so that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) provides the high technology parts of the system together with the necessary technical assistance and training and the recipient undertakes as much of the rest of the project as possible. Undoubtedly this increases the cost of projects but in the long term pays off as there is no finer way to learn how to operate and maintain a system than to have helped build it. The CIDA focus for public rural telephone service has been on point-to-multipoint subscriber radio systems which can provide service to small numbers of subscribers scattered over cells of up to about 800 km