Digital technology may seem unpredictable, but it follows some basic patterns. Innovations quickly become commodities, enable arbitrage and lead to more distributed systems. Combining all three is the recipe for Dabba, a South African wireless start-up, which has pioneered an idea called the "village telco". It could make phone calls much more affordable for many people.rnFirst, Rael Lissoos, Dabba's founder and a socially minded entrepreneur, uses the cheapest technology he can find to build a wireless network. Repro-grammed Wi-Fi routers serve as base-stations. Open-source software weaves them into a network. Cheap Wi-Fi handsets can then make calls. Dabba offers free local calls to the people of Orange Farm, a township near Johannesburg where it has built its first network.
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