Designing For/With People With Low Bandwidth

Example use cases we're interested or things folks are working on

• Low power, out of date Android phones used in Africa
• Small lower power devices like Raspberry Pis
• Distributed social networks like Scuttlebut
• Mesh networks used in disaster recovery
• Improving widely used website platforms
• Improve online tools that were not built with low bandwidth users in mind
• USSD mobile protocol for simple menus options over a dial pad (used mainly outside the US)
  • Used widely for mobile money/payments
  • Cost is high - 10-20k for each phone company
• Compared to IVR voice menu system used over the phone

Types of solutions

• Mobile - USSD, mobile money/payments
• Bit size and graphics for web sites
• Browser based - Progressive Web Apps
• Offline servers
  • Large content like Wikipedia, Khan Academy, Open Street Maps, etc
  • Tiny server equivalents like Kiwix and the Offline Archive
  • Internet in a box, Rachel, Freedom Box, Bibliotecs that take these applications and bundle them together into local, offline servers
• Local partners like mesh networks, local messaging services, Fediverse, Activity Pub standard

Most of the peer-to-peer technologies don't work in this space because they have a high protocol overhead that takes too much bandwidth

Development tools

• Browser development tools can simulate low bandwidth websites
• netdm simulates network latency

Barriers

• Example of Facebook partnering with mobile providers to have data used to access Facebook be for free, but paid for all other web services

Sidebar: how mobile payments work

• Started as exchanging credit for minutes on a phone plan
• Evolved into sending money
• SIM card acts as a wallet
• Go to a kiosk and purchase credit that goes on your SIM card that can be sent to other users in that phone network
• Being limited to sending and receiving money in a particular network is problematic