Dabba is a South African company that is pioneering the establishment of village telcos. It uses wireless technology to provide voice and data services to under-serviced areas. Dabba has developed a distributed community based ownership model that encourages local entrepreneurs to provide

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

services not served by fixed line telcos at affordable prices. Dabba was founded by Rael Lissoos & Manish Anant in 2004. He uses reprogrammed

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

routers as base stations, and

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

to build the components of a

telecommunications network A telecommunications network is a group of nodes interconnected by telecommunications links that are used to exchange messages between the nodes. The links may use a variety of technologies based on the methodologies of circuit switching, message ...

. Cheap Wi-Fi handsets are used to make calls. Dabba offers free calls in the area covered by the local network, and calls to 'phones on the national networks using pay-as-you-go cards. The first pilot network is in operation in

Orange Farm, Gauteng Orange Farm ("Farma") is a township located approximately from Johannesburg in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. It is the southernmost township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. Its name, a misnomer given that oranges ...

, a township near

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...

. In July 2008, Rael was recognised as the Social Entrepreneur of the Year at the Berlin Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. He says "Wireless networks have traditionally been created top-down; we want to do it bottom-up".Economist article, July 17 2008
/ref>

Notes and references

The name of the company "Dabba" is given on person name called "Manish Anant"

External links

Dabba website
Telecommunications companies of South Africa {{SouthAfrica-telecom-company-stub