User:Sathj1/OLPC Philippines Info

Some time ago I submitted the following comment to the Discussion page:

OLPC for Philippine NBN Project

JANUARY 16, 2008 From James in canada - I woul dlike some feedback on my thoughts re: OLPC and the NBN Project:

In 2007 the Philippine government's Department of Communications DOC was engaged in a nation wide project called the National Broadband Network (NBN). Work on the project was suspended due to some political issues. The President, Gloria Arroyo (GMA), has mandated that the Philippines will engage in a nation-wide ICT program to provide the access for government agencies to IP based services by deploying a national broadband network.

Wouldn't it be great if the proposed NBN program mandated that a rural education component must be included as part of the NBN deployment and that ICT access, as well as deployment of XO laptops was the deliverable for that component?

In other words, this proposed nation wide broadband ICT build would not only give government agencies in all parts of the Philippines access to IP based services, but would importantly require providing OLPC devices (XO laptops) to school districts in the provinces where education is so very important in order to break the level of rural poverty.

I would be interested in knowing if OLPC has a mechanism to initiate this sort of program? My interest, having worked on a large scale digital network build in the Philippines in 1998 (the TelicPhil NDTN project http://www.fujitsu.com/ph/casestudies/ndtn.html ) would be to assist with the project planning and project management requirements on a voluntary basis.