Based on the study presented by LACNIC in early 2021 titled “Connectivity in the LAC Region: 2020,” this project will conduct an in-depth study of connectivity in Panama, its latency, and peering agreements between Panamanian providers and autonomous BGP systems, including information on each of the country’s ten provinces.

The study will allow obtaining real-time information on Internet latency and traffic routes across Panama, even in case of events such as fiber line cuts, IP outages, mass regional electricity incidents, submarine fiber cable cuts, and others. This will have a direct impact on the operational and commercial relationships between the different Panamanian ISPs and operators, creating synergies between them and making it possible to raise the need to optimize the country’s internal interconnections and international outbound connections to ensure the proper functioning of low-latency sensitive applications such as Smart Cities, IoT, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Cloud Computing throughout the national territory, and creating the opportunity to extend this synergy to neighboring countries.

The general objective of the project is to implement the proxy feature for the CoAP protocol in the Contiki-NG operating system. This will contribute to the development of the Contiki-NG open-source project, allowing academia, companies, and government agencies to use this feature in embedded devices without the need for additional hardware and robust software libraries such as Californium for Java, CoAP.NET for C#, or CoAPthon for Python.

This development has a global impact, as it offers an interoperable infrastructure for various contexts, mainly agriculture, to establish smart and precise agriculture practices that will allow reducing crop damages and their environmental footprint, thus improving productivity and decision-making.

The objective of this project is to develop repository of information about the Caribbean IXPs. This repository will be the place to share are find information about the IXPs in the Caribbean Region including details such as contact information, location and IXP traffic statistics. This multi- country project seeks to bridge the information deficient gap to ensure that information about the Caribbean IXPs is accurately captured, up to date, and available to network operators, researchers, and policy makers. The project includes a measurement component to monitor the regions IXP traffic, to study the regional IXP traffic trends and present information on the state of interconnection in the region using readily available, open source IXP traffic management and IXP traffic presentation tools.

Soluciones Tecnológicas TW has managed to expand Internet access by deploying its own infrastructure and wireless links in marginalized areas of the southern state of Yucatán, where most of the communities do not have access to mobile telephony, let alone access to Internet services. As a strategic component and for the purpose of optimizing the use of our own resources and benefitting the poorer communities, hotspots were deployed in 20 indigenous communities so that the population would not need to invest in infrastructure but would still be able to access the Internet.

Since 2017, the rural locations that have benefited from this project are the police stations in Peto, Tzucacab, and Chacsinkin. The Internet service that has been provided has helped basic (preschool, primary, secondary) and upper-middle (Telebachiller) schools to have better tools and therefore access to better teaching-learning opportunities.

The goal of the project is to develop a modular system that allows connecting and expanding coverage for the interconnection of communities that do not have access to the Internet. Thus, the project will develop technology and conduct a study to design and build a programmable device that operates as a powerful router, allowing the interconnection of devices to share a single connection, or as a router to connect to the Internet. The device will be developed using open source firmware based on low-cost hardware and new algorithms for achieving greater Internet coverage, as well as an innovative use of programmable radio technology. This technology offers flexibility to modify and optimize the operation of the various systems that make up the proposed device. In turn, this allows expanding the connection to the Internet or increasing intranet coverage, since the fact that it can be programmed using free software means that the device will be adaptable. A key part of the design consists of implementing algorithm variants based on the OFDM modulation method. Together with spatial diversity techniques such as MIMO, these algorithms seek to achieve a broad coverage of data transmission, improved transmission speed and quality of service.

The goal of the project is to connect communities of the Traslasierra Valley in Córdoba, Argentina, that have little or no Internet access using wireless network infrastructure. The project will complete an infrastructure deployment that began years ago with the support of the Internet Society in the departments of San Alberto and San Javier. In this consolidation stage, the project will install a solar station and deploy a mesh network of more than 30 nodes using approximately 20 LibreRouters and 20 home routers. Networks currently reach about twenty families, and this initiative will allow some sixty more families to connect to a network. The project also seeks to complete the link between Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and the towns of the Traslasierra Valley and to interconnect the community networks of the Paravachasca and Traslasierra valleys. The project will attempt to create the conditions necessary for the development of new community networks and, by providing connectivity, to guarantee access to fundamental rights such as health and education.

The goal of this initiative is to bring Internet service to the inhabitants of the Mayor Yunguillo Native Council, located in the Putumayo department in Colombia, by creating a WiFi Internet mesh network for public use with connectivity provided by a third party, all of which will be supported by the Un Litro de Luz ELIoT® technology, which will also provide lighting to the public spaces of the council. ELIoT® is a smart light pole that uses solar energy to provide lighting, power and Internet access. ELIoT® has two USB ports that can be used to charge mobile phones and is completely autonomous thanks to its 100W solar panel and 55A battery that stores the charge for up to 72 hours. The poles have their own MPPT charge controller and the production of the technology is completely automated. WiFi networks are set up using a WiFi router with a 500m range and recycled items such as plastic bottles and PVC parts. The funds provided by FRIDA will be used to install 30 light poles, 10 of them capable of creating an Internet mesh network that will cover a large part of the council’s surface. This intervention will benefit 808 people who live in the council, 60% of which have a prepaid phone they can use to connect to the Internet. Connectivity will be achieved through the satellite service.

The proposal consists of developing low-cost devices for the construction of interconnection infrastructure that will allow connecting people living in remote and unconnected areas of Latin America, such as northwestern Brazil. The goal of the project is to build a device with low installation and maintenance costs and which can be used to provide basic network services to inhabitants of remote areas, either through public and/or private agents. The solution is based on the creation of a mesh network in which each device collaborates with others that are within the reach of a network that uses a physical medium based on wireless LoRa and WiFi (802.11) technologies. Creating the mesh allows enabling the routing of network packets that follow the Internet Protocol (IP), making the infrastructure fully Internet-enabled and guaranteeing the interconnection of different networks. End-users can access the network – and potentially the Internet – through WiFi access points that ensure interoperability with the users’ own devices. The activities planned as part of the project will seek to produce a prototype of the mobile infrastructure device, which will be open source, low-cost, capable and will allows users who live in remote areas to make use of basic Internet services, such as instant messaging applications. The prototype will also be available for use in case of natural disasters that compromise the primary infrastructure.

ComuREDE is an initiative for empowering communities through open and accessible technologies that seeks to promote Internet access and quality of life in peripheral areas. ComuREDE has developed a platform for providing free wireless and community Internet using infrastructure that is also used to address the problem of an irregular and scarce water supply. The project was born in response to two challenges observed in peripheral areas of Brazil: an irregular water supply and the lack of Internet access. The project deploys low-cost sensors to notify residents via SMS when the water supply is available and uses this infrastructure to provide Internet connectivity through the installation of open networks. The first deployment of this solution has managed to provide Internet access to 200 residents and has sent more than a thousand notifications on the availability of water. The funds received from FRIDA will be used to develop new versions of our software and hardware, and to launch an enhanced platform that can be replicated in other communities. The goal is to facilitate the empowerment of peripheral communities through the construction of technically autonomous community networks as well as by the local generation of resources for achieving economic self-sufficiency.

In light of the urgent need to strengthen digital wellbeing and security among the LGBTIQ+ community in Paraguay, considering organized online attacks, hacking, the creation of fake profiles, extortion, information theft and manipulation, and many other actions that violate their right to appear and express themselves in free and safe digital spaces, the purpose of the alliance between TEDIC, Diversxs Paraguay and Cuarto Mundo is to create and develop decentralized content that will not only contribute to the safety of the members of the LGBTIQ+ community, but that will also allow the co-production of materials that elevate the voices and narratives of the community in relation to their digital, sexual and reproductive rights, both in Guarani and in Jopara (a combination of Spanish and Guaraní), thus reflecting the country’s linguistic diversity. The proposal also seeks to generate the active appropriation of digital spaces through access to, and the use of, material in audio format, including stories of diversity and resilience among members of the community; online love and sexuality stories of non-binary persons and persons with functional diversity; information on how fertility tracking and reproductive health applications can be used for surveillance and control purposes; free and safe sexting, and resilience for minorities in digital environments. The aim of the project is to create a web portal that will offer content and training materials that take into account the needs of the members of the LGBTIQ+ community, as well as to create and distribute a toolbox (webcam covers, stickers, kerchiefs and anti-surveillance face paint that can be used for protection during collective actions such as webinars, marches and demonstrations) they can use in their daily lives and which represent small, easy-to-implement changes to their digital habits. In addition, because we acknowledge the power of orality and sound for sharing stories and connecting with people through different formats, we propose establishing a space where people can tell their stories by creating a series of podcast episodes.