N4C (Networking for Communications Challenged Communities - http://www.n4c.eu) is a European Union research project aiming to extend the reach of the Internet to areas of the world that are currenmtly (and may well always be) ‘communications challenged’. The project is particularly concerned to support and nurture the communities that live and work in these areas.
The project involves small enterprises in two areas where the project will deploy and demonstrate technology based on Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) to deliver business and cultural support. The intention is to provide communication facilities that are consistent with the economic and environmental realities of the comunication challenged regions, demonstrated through a pair of repeated field tests in the testbed regions of Sapmi (Arctic Sweden) and Kocevje (Western Slovenia).
The small enterprises (Tannak and MEIS) that are providing user input and interface to the communities in the communications challenged regions will be major contributors to this blog, recording how the project is affecting their community and their ways of life.