Providing Internet Search for Low-Connectivity Regions

While the Internet has revolutionized information delivery for most of
us, for many communities in the developing world it remains an
economic and technological challenge to access online resources.  For
example, the cost of Internet access in Nigeria is more than twice the
average household income.  However, there is also a cost differential
that does not exist in the United States: email-only accounts are 5x
cheaper than full-fledged Web access.  Unique constraints such as
these represent new opportunities for innovative technical solutions.

We have developed a system called TEK that empowers low-connectivity
communities by providing a full Internet experience using only an
email account.  Using TEK (which stands for "Time Equals Knowledge"),
users interact with a normal Web browser; our system runs as a proxy,
automatically exchanging emails with a server at MIT to retrieve the
information needed.  We maintain server-side state about each client's
page cache, enabling a new class of compression algorithms that
represent text and images in terms of previously downloaded content.

For several years, we have worked with local organizations in India,
the Solomon Islands, and elsewhere to deploy TEK to rural villages.
In some low-connectivity areas, email is the only viable technology
and TEK provides the first portal to the Internet.  Experience has
shown that communities come to value the technology and rely on it for
information that was previously unavailable.