By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
Nepali ISP WorldLink has taken on the challenge of connecting more than 200 villages in perhaps the world’s most inhospitable and remote territory: The North-Western Himalayas bordering Tibet.
CEO and founder of WorldLink Dileep Agrawal says that the company is doing this from a sense of duty to connect rural communities in Nepal that have never had as much as access to a village phone.
USO funds drive affordable connectivity
The Nepali government earlier this year allocated $18 million USD in USO (Universal Service Obligation) funds to affordable connectivity projects in 18 regions of the country. WorldLink bid for part of this project and won funding to build wireless networks in two regions – based on unlicensed 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands – to reach villages that thus far have had no connectivity of any kind.
The target is to provide three 1 Mbps connections to each village, one each for the school, the health office, and the government administrative office. WorldLink is using Cambium Networks as the wireless solution provider for the new Himalayan wireless network.
So how do you get engineers to go to these places to deploy the network? Dileep says that’s no problem. His engineering staff is already excited about the challenge of building wireless networks in high-altitude areas that are covered with deep snow for large parts of the year.
Self-funded: From zero to 140,000 subs
The story of WorldLink and founder Dileep Agrawal is remarkable: Dileep arrived back in his native Nepal in 1993 after studying and working in the US and Germany. He founded WorldLink 1995 ‘with a computer and a modem,’ he says, and the ISP is still fully self-funded.
In the central parts of Kathmandu, WorldLink is today using fibre while unlicensed wireless is deployed mostly in surrounding areas and now also for remote regions, Dileep says.
Today, WorldLink serves 140,000 subscribers with Internet services in Nepal at a cost of $14 USD per month for 25 Mbps of connectivity. During the past year, WorldLink has doubled its subscriber base and is today the largest ISP in the country.
In the pipeline: First Wi-Fi offload service for Nepal
WorldLink is also developing a framework for offering Wi-Fi offload services to mobile operators in Nepal. “Our plan is to offer Wi-Fi offload in all kinds of public spaces, including government offices and outdoor areas. We’re looking forward to becoming the first Wi-Fi offload service in Nepal,” says Dileep.
Meet Dileep Agrawal & WorldLink at Wi-Fi NOW APAC in Bangkok!
For more about WorldLink Nepal click here
/Claus.
