A Nepalese educator who transformed the way of life in more than 150 remote Himalayan villages by connecting them to the Internet was Tuesday inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. Mahabir Pun spent more than a decade providing wireless Internet services to villages which had lacked even a telephone service, opening up access to education, commerce and health care.
"I am a strong advocate of a free Internet, I want the Internet to be available to people living under the poverty line," Pun told AFP in an interview in Hong Kong, where the Internet Hall of Fame held its annual awards ceremony Tuesday. Pun was inspired by the Internet in the US, where he studied for university in the early 1990s, and was able to connect his native village of Nangi using television dishes and home-made antennas in 2002.
He has since built a network connecting 175 villages to free wireless Internet services, and plans to continue providing the service to other remote villages in the country. "I want to try my best to breach the physical divide that is there between rural areas and urban areas, rich countries and poor countries," Pun said. The 59-year-old said villagers had no concept of the Internet when he introduced the network, but were still very curious and eager to use it. They now use it for communication, education and trade.