Internet Village Motoman Network

The Internet Village Motoman was launched for fifteen solar-powered village schools, telemedicine clinics, and the governor’s office in Ratanakiri, a remote province of Cambodia, using five Honda motorcycles equipped with mobile access points and a satellite uplink. Each of the schools can send and receive email and browse the Internet using a non-real-time search engine. The network was implemented for American Assistance for Cambodia, which operates over 200 rural schools. Telemedicine clinics, held in remote areas of Cambodia by Operation Village Health, give patients access to physicians in Boston, Massachusetts. A visiting nurse from Phnom Penh makes the six-hour trip by truck to each village to interview, examine, and digitally photograph patients, then transmits the information by satellite to physicians in Boston using a solar-powered computer. Within hours, the physicians respond with medical opinions and treatment recommendations.

A nurse from Sihanouk Hospital Center of HOPE exams a chest x-ray film of a patient during a monthly telemedicine consultation at Rovieng District Health Center located in the village of Backdaong, Cambodia. © 2006 Rithy Chau

Network

1. American Assistance for Cambodia, Operation Village Heath, Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School

Mobile access point and antenna

1. Designer/manufacturer: United Villages, Inc., antenna by HyperLink Technologies, Inc.
2. United States, 2002–03
3. Dimensions: 6” h x 12” w x 4” d (box), 15” (antenna)

Solar panel

1. Manufacturer: Kyocera Corporation
2. Japan, 2006
3. Dimensions: 40” h x 25.5” w x 2.5” d

IPSTAR broadband satellite system

1. Manufacturer: Shin Satellite Plc.
2. Dimensions: 33” diameter

Helmet

1. Manufacturer: S.Y.K. Autopart Import-Export Co., Ltd.
2. Thailand
3. ABS plastic
4. Dimensions: 9.5“h x 10.2“w x 23.6“l

Motorcycle

1. Designer/manufacturer: Honda
2. Thailand, 2002
3. Dimensions: 41.3” h x 27.5” w x 73.5” l
4. In use in: Cambodia, Rwanda, India, Costa Rica, Paraguay