* AMPATH has about 67 different sites spread across Western Kenya. The size of the sites range from clinics at District Hospitals to smaller government Health Centers to even smaller dispensaries.
The original project scope called for connecting 19 sites via long range WiFi networking equipment.* We are working closely with a great group from Inveneo to help us with the technical and installation aspects of the project. In addition, we are partnering with local companies to provide some of the infrastructure for our network backbone (Safaricom, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, and Kenya Power and Lighting) and on the ground support (Alan Dick and Setright Technologies).**
* Along the way one site was transferred to another agency here in Kenya so, there was no need to connect it. And we were simply unable to connect a second site due to geographic limitations.
** My intent is not to provide advertising space for these companies, but I really feel like giving credit for their support.
To make this all happen also requires a bit of regulatory compliance work with a number of Kenya government organization (Communications Commission, Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, National Environmental Management Authority, Ministry of Health Services, Ministry of Finance).
Getting all the agreements, compliance sign offs, arranging work schedules, attending meetings, filling out paperwork, and continually explaining this project has taken a great deal of time and has given me a good sense on how things works in Kenya. It is not that it is overly difficult, in fact the government agencies have been extremely helpful. Rather, it just takes time.
In some instances we find ourselves surprised that we missed some regulatory requirement. It is mostly failure on our part to do the proper home work and simply being naive about things.
In all honesty the project has taken longer than it should have but I am willing to chalk the delays up to this being a great learning experience for all participants. When I sit down to do an after action review on this, I think the lessons learned part will be huge.
So at this point, the few readers out there might be wondering why we are going to all this trouble to construct a private network. Why not simply use in-country capacity and providers to do all this.
Well, if this was the USA, Europe or parts of Asia I would never even think to take up this project. The capacity in those regions is great and it would just be easier to let others provide the capacity. Here in Kenya, we are not yet at a point where there is enough local capacity at an affordable price. This project will probably end up costing AMPATH a bit over $200,000 US. For this money, we will get somewhere between 30-50Mbps of bandwidth between our sites. The local vendors want more than $500,000 US per year to connect the sites at 2-5Mbps. I think for now, we have made the right choice.
Right now, we are aim to start the initial installation of support hardware in December and then aim to get the network installed in mid to late January. I'll provide more detail about aspects of this project and some of the problems we have faced just getting to this point. Looking back over my notes on this, it has been an interesting journey.
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