Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband (DIIRWB) invited and hosted a regional workshop on development of a common an comprehensive ICT-strategy for Djursland.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a cruzial part of the infrastructures of modern society, and a lot of people are now realizing that the ICT-level of a society and all the resulting competences its inhibitants obtain, already are dictating the quality of life in all spheres of existence. At the same time it is clear that the necessarry ICT-development does not come by itself in rural areas like Djursland, because a small population has to pay the heavy expenses for infrastructure caused by the big rural distances.

DIIRWB had on this background called upon key-individuals in the ICT-development on Djursland for a coordinating strategy-workshop Wednesday 11-06-2008. Based on an introduction from the institute the workshop should seek to develop a common, shared and comprehensive ICT-strategy between public adminisration and -authorities, institutions, businesslife and community initiatives, which can secure a development of Djursland into a exemplary good ICT-countryside-community. The initiative from the institute is based in a comprehensive innovativ preparatory work in the EU-supported BIRD-project (Broadband access for Innovation and Regional Development) with partners in the countryside in all the countries around the North Sea. The workshop actually concluded the Djursland part of the transnational project into a future ICT-strategy for the rural Djursland. 

Many good initiatives has already been carried out on Djursland by different players, but according to the institute more has to be done in the future to create the best framework for the population and to match developments in the big cities. During the meeting the institute therefore proposed to join powers to implement the following supplementing concepts in a shared strategy:

1. Triple-play service - data, telephony & TV - has to be made available all over in the countryside through optimisation of the capcity of the 10 wireless landscapenets on Djursland.
2. A portal for every village has to be established to give the villages a mirror providing all-round news and local  activity-calendar etc., all assambled and easily accessible in the already through many years existing Djursland-portal.
3. Local and regional net-TV has to be developed together with Grenaa- and Ebeltoft city-antenna communities and other players, including the wireless landscapenet oranisations to involve and provide for the rural population.
4. Electronic archives must through digitalization of the 10 district archives, give free access to our history from everywhere, through the Djursland-portal.
5. Fre wireless Internet access, made available through a pattern of hotspots - first in the mid-town of Ebeltoft and Grenaa, and eventually everywher throughout all of Djursland - must make access to and exchange of information possible, whereever you might be all over Djursland.

The participant in the ICT-strategy-workshop agreed that initiatives in these areas of effort, and as conclusion the workshop asked the institute to go on with these visions and prepare an initiative for implementation of a shared and all-comprehensive vision for a good rural ICT-community in the Djursland region, created in a coordinated cooperation between the 10 wireless landscapenets, other ISPs, the 25 Networking Djursland partners from the EU-supported The Baltic Rural Broadband Project, the Local Action Group and all other possible players in the Djursland-community.

DIIRWB (Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband) was established in 2006 to give on to other rural people the lessons learned from establishing the Djurslands.net. DjurslandS.net has made access to broadband on the peninsula Djursland - a rural area of 60 times 50 km - so cheap that everyone can afford to be connected and use the Internet. To day DjurslandS.net is decentralised into 10 local landscapenets, which all together provides each of about 7000 households, firms and institutions with wireless Internet access at 4 to 10 megabit bandwidth for only 1/3 of the average commercial city price - all expenses considered over 4 years. Actually 1/4 of the 82000 inhibetants of Djursland have to day there Internet access and -competances through this initiative, as a household of cause can connect several computers.

More information can be obtained here:
DIIRWB: http://diirwb.net
Bjarke Nielsen
Educational leader
Mobile: 60250001
founder@DjurslandS.net
 

As partner in the EU-supported BIRD-project our educational leader Bjarke Nielsen have created 3 best practices.

• Rural Internet at 1/3 of City Prices - lessons learned from the DjurslandS.net experience 
• Networking Djursland - lessons learned from developing ICT-society on rural Djursland
• DIIRWB - teaching the world the lessons learned creating ICT-society on rural Djursland

These best practices will be part of a collection of best practices from the projects participians, which are all located around the North Sea.

DIIRWB has been invited to participate in The European Commission’s conference “Bridging the broadband gap: benefits of broadband for rural areas and less developed regions”. The conference will take place on the 14^th and 15^th of May 2007 in Brussels.

The event will investigate how increasing access to affordable broadband services and the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICT) can support regional and local development, ease infrastructure and geographical handicaps and make these areas more attractive to business and individuals.

Our experience and knowledge from establishing the World’s biggest and cheapest non-commercial rural wireless community network on rural Djursland in Denmark, made us want to share our knowledge and help other rural people around the World bridge the broadband gap in an affordable way. As we are also deeply engaged in building services on top of the broadband wireless infrastructure initiated and build by Djurslands.net, DIIRWBs presence at the conference is obvious.

We will be present at a stand at the exibition, which is part of the event. Our project will be visualized by the headline “Rural Internet at 1/3 of Average City Price”.

More on the conference here.

Andalucia (Spain) gets EU funds for rural public access broadband.
The European Commission in 2003 contributed EUR 2.9 million to Andalucía, Spain for a regional project…

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Norwich County has launched a pilotproject delivering free WiFi access for the city. DIIRWB had the oppertunity to study this on their own when visiting the city on …. (more…)

Communication from the Commision to the Council 20. mar. 2006 - see the document (pdf)

The European Union considers broadband of essential importance. Below more information on policies etc. (more…)

One of our german partner in the Baltic Rural Broadband project invited to Internationalen Niedersächsischen Breitbandtage May 22-23 in the City Hall of Osterholz-Scharmbeck.

The broadbanddays was launched under the motto “Connections creates the future”, and was organized by our partner Landkreis Osterholz in cooperation with local industrial organisations and the ministery for enterprise, labour and transport in the NiederSaxon.

The Broadband Days was organized as a series of speaches from public sector representatives as well as from enterprises. Also local broadband-initiatives from the partners were represented, from Djursland represented by Bjarke, Charlotte and Ove. Bjarke presented a speach under the headline “Djursland net - internet as a bottom-up process. Report from a voluntarily organized citizen’s network”.

Also at the conference there were steering commitee meetings in the two European Union project, which we are part of. Both of the meetings was presented with a detailed description of the communitynetwork at Djurslands.

Link: http://www.breitbandtage.de/