Smart Regions

The Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband (DIIRWB) was created in order to pass on the experiences and knowledge acquired from building DjurslandS.net, a huge non-commercial wireless landscapenet run by rural people themselves. In a rural area of 300 km², the landscape is now covered by 300 overlapping radio nodes. Due to antenna amplification, each can be reached from settlements at distances up to 5 km.

A germany county council transfers major responsabilities to a remotely located municipality. The new service aims at offering a wider range of better services as well as at saving in driving distances and time. Again, data transmission goes via fibreoptics from city hall to county hall, where data is processed and stored centrally. The new municipal car-registration service started to work in August 2006, the take-up amongst the political committees and the citizens has been very good.

In rural areas, the lack of broadband access results in competitive disadvantages for the business community and enormous educational and informational disadvantages for the people in these areas. Efa shows that it is possible to provide rural areas with broadband internet access using standard technologies, even when the major internet providers on the market show little goodwill in this regard.