Final Technical Report of APTJ3 Pilot Project 2015 “The Establishment of Smart Rural Broadband Network Using a Combination of Unlicensed Wi-Fi, VHF and TV White Space Bands Depending Upon the Geographical Terrains in 16 Villages of Earthquake Affected Gorakha District of Nepal to Connect Community Schools, and Health Clinics and Build Wi-Fi Hotspots, Emergency Communication System and Early Warning System for the Villagers” Report Prepared by: Mahabir Pun, Nepal Rajendra Prasad Poudel, Nepal Girish Adhikari, Nepal Toru Nomura, Japan Takeshi Kawage, Japan Junya Dosaka, Japan Harau Kaneko, Japan Hiroshi Tominaga, Japan Submitted by: E-Networking Research and Development (ENRD) Nepal Wireless Nepal July 14, 2017 Preface Dear Readers, This is the final report of APT J3 project titled “Pilot Project for the Establishment of Smart Rural Broadband Network Using a Combination of Unlicensed Wi-Fi, VHF and TV White Space Bands Depending Upon the Geographical Terrains in 16 Villages of Earthquake Affected Gorakha District of Nepal to Connect Community Schools, and Health Clinics and Build Wi-Fi Hotspots, Emergency Communication System and Early Warning System for the Villagers ”. It was implemented by E-Networking Research and Development t/Nepal Wireless with the financial support of Asia Pacific Telecommunity ( http://www.apt.int ) under APTJ3 program. Nepal Wireless Networking Project was started informally with a dream in 2001. The dream was to connect a small school named Himanchal High School of Nangi village to the Internet. The village is located in the Dhaulagiri and Annapurna Himalaya region of Nepal. Thinking about to bring Internet in a remote village of Nepal in 2001 was like a dream because not a single village in any remote parts of Nepal had telephone and Internet. However, step-by-step we worked with a team of volunteers to achieve that goal. In 2002, we became able to make the first long range Internet connection using Wi-fi technology and connected Nangi village. That was the humble beginning of Nepal Wireless. Now we have come a long ways since 2002. By connecting one village in 2002, now we are in 15 districts of Nepal and have connected around 200 villages. Asia Pacific Telecommunity has been our great supporter since 2009 under APTJ2 and APT J3 project. The services that the project is providing include telemedicine, distance education, communication service, and e- commerce services. Many thanks go to Asia Pacific Telecommunity for the financial support to do pilot project for building a hybrid wireless network using unlicensed 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands and licensed bands using VHF and TVWS frequencies. With the hard work of our technical team we became able to overcome most of the challenges. Even if our goal is to make the Internet as beneficial as possible, we have to do more for finding ways to make it happen for the rural population. E- Networking Research and Development will keep working on upgrading the services in villages and trying to make every rural citizen digitally literate. Thus the next step would be to work on building smarter villages in Nepal. We hope this report will help you to understand our project and see how it can lead to new forms of development in rural Nepal. We appreciate for your interest and welcome your involvement in similar projects in rural Nepal. Thank you. Mahabir Pun Chairman E-Networking Research and Development/Nepal Wireless Date: July 14, 2017 Table of Contents 1. Introduction of E-Networking Research and Development and Nepal Wireless................ 1 2. Introduction and Objectives of the APTJ3 Pilot Project 2015 …………………………... 2 3. What is TV White Space (TVWS) and Why We Proposed to Use It …………………..... 3 4. Partner Organizations and Institutions …………………………………………………... 4 5. Technical Team Members of the Pilot Project ………………. ……………………………4 6. Project Implementation Processes …… ……………………………………………………5 6.1 Meeting with stakeholders and site selection.......................... ………………………..5 6.2. Permission for the VHF and TVWS Frequency Received from the Government…... 5 6.3 How the VHF and TVWS wireless equipment were chosen? ……………………….. 6 6.4 Four wireless relay stations for the pilot project were built………….. ……... ………7 6.5 Landslide warning system installed in Keraunja village of Gorakha …… …………...8 7. Infrastructures Built for the Testing of TVWS Technology and Test Results …:….. …….. 8 8. Infrastructures Built for the Testing of VHF Technology and Test Results …… ………….15 9. Japanese Experts Visited Nepal for the Training and Installation.... ……………………… 16 9.1 Mr. Subash Gurung from Nomura Engineering Company …………………………... 16 9.2 Mr. Takeshi Kawabe from Japan Battery Regeneration Company …………………... 18 9.3 Mr. Junya Dosaka from Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc. ………………………………. 18 9.4 Mr. Haruo Kaneko from Shiojiri City ………………………………………………... 19 9.5 Mr Shamus Jenning from Crlson Wireless Technologies ……………………………. 20 10. Challenges Incurred During the Implementation of the Project …...... ………………….. 20 11. Outcome of the APT J3 Pilot Project: ……………………………………………………. 21 12. Sustainability Plans of the Project……………...... ………………………………………. 22 13. Recommendations to Wireless Communities ……………...... ……………………………23 14. Conclusion ……………...... ……………………………………………………………….24 15. Appendix I, Technical Information of the Radio Equipment Used in TTS ……………...... 25 16. Appendix 2: Specification of VHF Equipment made by Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc ……26 17. Appendix 3: Specification of Equipment Developed by Carlson Wireless Technology.. …. 28 18. Appendix 4: Report on visit to Kathmandu & Chitwan in Nepal in October 2016............................. 29 Final Technical Report of APTJ3 Pilot Project 2015 in Nepal Submitted by: Mahabir Pun, Chairman E-Networking Research and Development 1. Introduction of E-Networking Research and Development and Nepal Wireless This is the final report from E-Networking Research and Development (ENR1D)/Nepal Wireless of the APT J3 2015 project started in Nepal with the financial support from Asia Pacific Telecommunity. The title of the project is “Pilot Project for the Establishment of Smart Rural Broadband Network Using a Combination of Unlicensed Wi-Fi, VHF and TV White Space Bands Depending Upon the Geographical Terrains in 16 Villages of Earthquake Affected Gorakha District of Nepal to Connect Community Schools, and Health Clinics and Build Wi-Fi Hotspots, Emergency Communication System and Early Warning System for the Villagers ”. Details of the installation, visit of Japanese experts to Nepal and the technical details of the project are included in the report. ENRD is a NGO recognized by the government of Nepal and is the affiliate member of APT since 2009. As part of its mission, ENRD has been running Nepal Wireless Networking Project in the Himalayan villages to bring broadband Internet using wireless technologies. The project was informally started in 2002 from Nangi village of Myagdi district of Nepal at grassroots level with the technical support of national and international volunteers. Now ENRD has fulltime engineers and technicians working to build wireless networks and maintain them for bringing Internet related services and helping rural areas of Nepal become smarter villages. In 2002, it was informally planned to connect only 10 mountain villages to the Internet for communication. However, it became very popular among the mountain communities as a result there was a huge demand. Thus ENRD had no choice other than expanding the wireless network to more and more villages. By connecting one village in 2002, the wireless network kept expanding continuously in many more villages in the mountainous region of Nepal. Now the project has built wireless network in fifteen out of seventy five districts of Nepal and has connected around 200 villages. During the initial days, ENRD had implemented the wireless networking project in the mountain villages without getting any license from the government. However, as required by the regulation of Nepal Telecommunication Authority, ENRD registered the Nepal Wireless Networking Project as a not-for-profit Rural Internet Service Provider by the name of Nepal Wireless in 2009. Thus the APT J3 pilot project was implemented by Nepal Wireless. E-Networking Research and Development/Nepal Wireless Page 1 Along with connecting the villages to the Internet, ENRD is also focused on wireless networking training as part of its capacity building program to produce rural wireless technicians. It provides training to the village technicians on wireless installation, computer lab networking and trouble shooting of the network. Moreover, many of the villages in the mountain have no power from grid line and we have to rely on solar power to run the repeater stations and other wireless networking gears. Thus ENRD also provides training to the village technicians on how to install and maintain solar power system. The long-term goal of Nepal Wireless is to help narrowing down the digital gap between rural and urban areas. Therefore Nepal Wireless is working for more than a decade specifically to achieve the following goals: • Education: Increase and improve educational opportunities in rural communities by creating tele-teaching and tele-training programs, and by making e-learning materials in local languages available for students, teachers and villagers through e-libraries. • Health: Connect rural health clinics and health workers to the doctors working in city hospitals in order to provide medical assistance through tele-medicine program