TVNZ: Students develop world first technology

Auckland University students have developed a means of sending data between computers using radio waves – something they hope will help bridge the digital divide in the developing world.

The technology would allow educational materials to be sent to people without the need for technologies such as the internet, which can be very difficult to access in the third world.

An excerpt: (read in full here)

“”We thought that education is the foundation to all solutions, because once you educate a country’s population, they are at a level where they can solve their own problems,” says student Vinny Kumar.

“The way it works is simple. A document is sent from one computer to another via an AM/FM frequency. It is then received by a radio which could be on the other side of the room, or the other side of the world. It is then received by a computer as the original document.”