village of hope goes wimax with telkom...an end to cable theft?!

red circles don't really exist but show line of sight from
village of hope to hanskop mountain top transmitter

over the last three years we have suffered cable theft of our telephone lines on too many occasions, as you can imagine for a unit that cares for children infected or affected by HIV, AIDS or TB this severely limits our ability to  communicate with the wider health and social services...this is compounded by the fact that most of the organisations that we work with still operate on a phone and fax method of communication so email via a cell phone (mobile phone) isn't even an option.

we also try to provide our volunteers with access to the internet, where contact with 'home' is vital to their sanity, therefore there was great rejoicing last week when telkom confirmed that we were being considered for connection to their wimax (wireless phoneline) technology. all we need to confirm was that we were in line of sight of one of their transmitters and we would be linked up.....as anyone who has visited the village of hope knows the mountain range that surround our town has a famous land mark, hanskop, which hosts a large mix of transmitters, towers and radar, and thankfully as the photo shows we are about as close to that mountain as anyone could be....

once all that was confirmed all that was required to save us ever worrying about the cables being stolen again was an engineer to come and put up a 'satelite' style dish on top of the baby unit and hey presto, telephone and internet connection without wires!!!!......