In 2022 and 2023, I spent approximately a month helping build and deploy a small-scale community owned cellular network in the remote Island town of Ulukhaktok, in Canada’s Northwest Territories. This particular network was many, many years in the making, and an incredibly successful and rewarding project. The work actually got a surprising amount of...
Category: CoLTE
Long Overdue Post
I haven’t written anything here in… several years. Still been quite active/busy on a handful of different fronts, but this particular blog fell off the horse pretty hard. Funnily enough, I’ve drafted several entries that are basically 95% complete, everything in place except for simply proofreading and looking up the relevant citations. I suspect it’s...
Page-Load-Time and Page Utility
In the Web business world, it’s well understood that page-load metrics (e.g. time-to-paint, time-to-responsiveness, etc.) drive engagement. Multiple studies (internal and external) show that even slight increases in load-time can turn off a large percent of eyeballs, and contribute to users exiting a page or even just failing to check-out after filling their cart at...
Bokondini Initial Roll-Out
All right! Where I left off last time, we had just built the network, turned it off, and headed back to the States (just in time for another round of pitches and conferences). Once back in Seattle, we expected a relatively quick roll-out, but ended up having to pump the brakes while some regulatory questions...
Our Time In Bokondini
First and foremost: a sincere apology to everyone following along! After we left for Papua, everything picked up a lot of steam and was a bit uncertain, and the pace didn’t let up until the end of the year. It’s really a shame I didn’t live-blog the process, but in the next posts I’ll try...
Guest Post on the Internet Society Blog
My colleague Matt Johnson and I got featured on the Internet Society Blog for our work in Bokondini! Reprinted in full below, but you can access the original copy here: https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2018/09/building-a-community-lte-network-in-bokondini-indonesia/
CoLTE Won Third Place In The Mozilla WINS Challenge!
I’m thrilled to announce that CoLTE received third place in the Mozilla Wireless Innovations for a Networked Society challenge! The finalist competition was a super fun science-fair-esque bake off, full of different projects and working on bridging the digital divide and helping expand connectivity. https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/telecom/wireless/mozilla-and-nsf-hand-out-16-million-to-wireless-challenge-winners
Off To Indonesia
Hi everyone, Today, the rubber hits the road! My partner, Audrey, and I spent all Saturday running last minute errands, sending last-minute email questions (“should I bring a camping stove or not?”) and packing all sorts of equipment into two rubbermaid totes and our personal bags. Packing’s been a comically awkward fusion of my outdoor...
CoLTE Featured In Seattle Magazine!
https://www.seattlemag.com/news-and-features/uw-researchers-big-idea-expanding-cell-phone-service
Money Matters (Part 3)
This post is the third in a three-part series about the financial side of things. In Part 1, talked about the systems we built for us to monitor network usage and for our users to buy and sell credit. In Part 2, we covered our operating expenses, and discussed some of the different considerations and...