6 Minute English: Connecting remote communities

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I’m Neil.

And I’m Sam.

If you’re old enough to remember the early days

of dial-up internet then  you’ll know the unforgettable

sound of the ‘handshake’, the clicks and squeaks

your computer made as it struggled to connect

to the internet through the telephone line.

Yes, I remember that strange noise! Dial-up

internet was slow and websites took forever

to load. And because you couldn’t use both

the internet and the telephone at the same time,

this was usually followed by someone shouting,

“Get off the computer, I’m making a phone call!”

In the thirty years since then, the internet has

changed dramatically. Fibre optics and

broadband have created superfast internet

speeds and an interconnected online world,

where physical distances between people are

no longer a barrier to communication -

a situation expressed in the  phrase, the global village.

But take a closer look and you’ll still find

people around the world with a slow

connection or no internet  at all. In this programme

we’ll be finding out how some communities

are working together to fix their internet

connection problems for the benefit of local

people. And, of course, we’ll be learning some

new vocabulary too.

But before that I have a question for you, Sam.

We’ve been talking about the early days of the

internet, but do you know the name of the first

ever internet browser, the engine for searching

websites? Was it:

a) Ask Jeeves?

b) WorldWideWeb?

c) Yahoo?

I’ll guess it was c) Yahoo.

OK, Sam. We’ll find out the answer later.

You might think its people living in the most

remote and isolated places with the greatest

difficulty getting online, but that’s not always

true. Even here in the UK  people struggle to connect,

including BBC radio listener, Katie, who

explained her problem to BBC World Service

programme, Digital Planet:

Hi, I’m Katie. I live in Dorset in England.

Our internet can be quite spasmodic here,

and I think that that’s due to most of our

underground cabling is very old and somewhat

dodgy, tatty, and needs replacing.

Katie lives in Dorset, a rural part of south-west

England. She describes her internet connection

as spasmodic – suddenly working but only for

a short time and not in a regular way.

She thinks this is because her internet cables

are dodgy, slang for bad or untrustworthy.

A dodgy internet connection might be irritating,

but in other parts of the world the consequences

can be more serious. Aamer Hayat is farmer who

lives in the Pakistani  Punjab, one of the country’s

most fertile regions, but also one of the least

connected. His village is a three-hour drive

from the nearest town, and he can’t make a

phone call, even with 2G.

For Aamer, basic weather information like

knowing when rain is coming can mean the

difference between his  crops succeeding or failing.

Without the internet he doesn’t have a reliable

weather report, so the villagers decided to

build their own fifty-metre-high telephone

transmission tower, linking a network of five

villages to the internet. Here is Aamer talking

to BBC World Service programme, Digital Planet…

We used to do conventional farming like just

getting information from word-of-mouth.

Now, I’m using the latest technologies to have

gadgets available with us and taking information

right from the horse’s mouth through internet

and the technology we have in our hands.

So, this is what I’m doing in my farm practices.

Before the community-built tower brought the

internet to his village, Aamer got his weather

report by word-of-mouth - information passed

on by people telling each other.

Now, there’s stable internet that works thanks

to a tower high enough to pick up a telephone

signal which it then sends into the villages via

solar-powered receivers – a type of gadget,

meaning a small, electronic device which

does something useful.

This means Aamer now gets his weather report

straight from the horse's mouth, an idiom meaning

from a reliable source, or from someone who

knows what they’re talking about. The internet

brings reliable climatic information, which

means a good harvest not just for Aamer and

his family, but for all the families living in the

five connected villages.

It’s a great example of community action, and

of people looking after each other – something

which may have been lost  since the early, idealistic

days of the internet. And speaking of the early

internet, it’s time to answer my question.

Remember, I asked you for the name of the

very first internet browser.

I guessed it was c) Yahoo. So, was I right?

You were… wrong, I’m afraid, Sam. Way back before

Google, the first internet browser was called the

WorldWideWeb - invented by none other than

cyber legend, Tim Berners-Lee, who, I think,

would be pleased to hear about Aamer’s

community internet.

Yes. Right, let’s recap the vocabulary we’ve

learnt about internet connections between

people living at a physical distance in the

modern world, something described as the

global village.

If your internet is spasmodic, it’s irregular,

stopping then suddenly working for a short time.

In other words, it’s dodgy, a slang word meaning

bad or unreliable

If you know something by word-of-mouth, it’s been

passed verbally from person to person. Whereas if

you hear it from the horse’s  mouth, it’s come directly

from a reliable source of information.

And finally, a gadget is  a small, electronic device

with a useful purpose. Once again our six minutes

are up. Bye for now!

Bye!