About the project Edit

The Village Telco is an initiative to build low-cost community telephone network hardware and software that can be set up in minutes anywhere in the world. No mobile phone towers or land lines are required. The Village Telco uses the latest open source telephony software and low cost wireless mesh networking technology to deliver affordable telephony anywhere.

The project consists of two principal elements:

Mesh Potato – A low-cost wireless mesh device you can plug a regular phone into
The Mesh Potato is a combination of a low-cost wireless Access Point (AP) running mesh networking software with an Analog Telephony Adapter (ATA). Mesh Potatoes automatically connect with each other, forming a “cloud” of Mesh Potatoes. Each Mesh Potato relays the phone calls for other Mesh Potatoes, greatly extending the range of the network. Plug an ordinary telephone into one Mesh Potato and you can instantly make a phone call to any other Mesh Potato on the network.

The Village Telco Entrepreneur (VTE) Server
Based on popular open source applications, the Village Telco Entrepreneur (VTE) Server combines network management, upstream voice connectivity, and pay-as-you-go billing management to create a simple system for an entrepreneur or community organization to sustainably deliver voice and Internet services.