WiFi town cuts gap b/w rich and poor

By Rodrigo Martinez

SALAMANCA, Chile:Seated on a bench outside his home in a small town in central Chile, 16-year-old Juan Barraza clicks on a Web browser and watches as an Internet page appears on the screen of his laptop.

No cables connect his computer to a phone line and neither Barraza nor his family subscribe to a wireless Internet service.

But the teenager is one of 12,500 people living in Salamanca, Chile's first WiFi town. As such, he has free access to cyberspace 24 hours a day, whether sitting at home, in the town square or enjoying the sunshine in a park.

"It's great, because now I can do my school homework much more quickly," he says, moving his cursor around the screen.

Salamanca, 200 miles (316 km) north of the capital Santiago, became Chile's first WiFi town in September.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet hailed the project as the first of its kind in South America and as a major step toward "cutting the gap between rich and poor, between the capital and the regions, between the large and small cities."

Amid the dry, brown hills surrounding this unassuming farming town, 10 telecommunications antennae have been erected, providing Internet coverage for 88 per cent of its people.

The project was partly financed by the owners of a local copper mine, Los Pelambres, which provided $56,000 for the antennae. The mine is one of Chile's biggest and is a major source of employment for the area.

The WiFi project was led by the town's mayor Gerardo Rojas, who wants to increase coverage to 100 per cent by reaching rural pockets on the edge of town.

"We want the whole of Salamanca to be lit up (with computers), and if there are areas that aren't lit up, it will be because not even NASA could reach them," he told Reuters, referring to the U.S. space agency.

JUDGE, POLICE AND TAXI DRIVER

The project has grown in stages, he explained.

"Initially we had basic capacity for just 500 people and the profile we were working with was someone who knew nothing about computers. Everyone, from the judge to the local policeman to the taxi driver took part."

The project has sent computer sales through the roof in an area which has traditionally made its money from producing grapes used to make Pisco, a local brandy.

A new computer shop has opened in Salamanca and President Bachelet has promised to donate 90 computers.

"Computer sales have gone up rapidly, to double the usual," said Gonzalo Basoalto, business manager of DIN, an electronics retail chain. "People are only buying those with WiFi capacity."

"We've also seen a rise in sales of associated digital products, like MP3 and MP4 players," he added. Cell phones and some digital music players can also use WiFi to connect to the Internet.

The local government does not know how many people in the town have computers but says it plans to conduct a survey soon to find out.

The government has vowed to help fund the project as it develops and says it hopes to replicate it elsewhere in Chile, which prides itself as being on the cutting edge of South America's technological development.

Chile already has the highest percentage of mobile phone users on the continent -- about 12 million of the country's 16 million residents -- and around 6.5 million Chileans use the Internet, according to government figures.

Mayor Rojas said at least six towns had expressed an interest in following Salamanca's example, including one in Brazil.

"Our challenge is to make the Internet a basic service of the present century," Bachelet said during the launch in September.

"Some people think that access to this type of technology is for affluent people only," she said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."