The Fog

“Devices travel faster than internet  infrastructure”, In Colombia it’s very common to see robust network infrastructure without internet, for example a public school with a network for 1.900 tablets and internet bandwidth of 20 Megabytes for all devices to “surf the web”, but when more than 40 devices try to navigate simultaneously, it crash the internet bandwidth and no one can navigate. 

We increase the number of users through an “Internet Fog” similar to “Fog Computing”, dividing users into: Normal internet and “internet fog”, this way we lighten the load of the internet bandwidth. Fog users can navigate web pages and applications that gets live internet actualizations and doesn’t rely on the internet bandwidth, if there's the smallest bit of internet our fog will communicate with the world and update, we could install open source applications: World or Local messenger, W/L virtual store, educational platform, newspaper, etc.

We can mitigate the consequences of internet bandwidth funnel, between companies bringing internet, and places with a internet bandwidth, user saturated network. For places with conglomeration of people with devices, and low Internet like the majority of Colombian Schools, Universities, Libraries, Buses, the network of an entire town and even cities.  

By putting a layer(The Fog) that can support the difference between offer and demand, on the one hand, the offer size  of internet bandwidth and on the other hand, the size of the demand of the users, in the local network. This is one of the main reasons, what makes internet bandwidth crash and be too slow to navigate. It is a problem that affects different industries in networks worldwide. 

If a School have problems with low internet or the lack of it, needs an educational layer. With this layer, students and teachers can take advantage of information through devices on the schools, giving them access, and take  near them, to their local network, the best, high quality multimedia educational content, available on the internet. 

We strongly believe that students that lack of information are relegated to underdevelopment.

We develop an educational “wifi web server” and travel all around Colombia,  offering to public schools, where a program of the Government gift hundreds of tablets, we make several pilots in different schools, and the solution was very well accepted, but they don't have the money to buy our servers and least the government, because a powerful computer is expensive, they love the applications but didn't like the free content we could offer them, such as all wikimedia content, khan academy contents, etc. Teachers most like the possibilities that the servers give them to interact with the students. 

After a year offering the servers we ran out of money, and decide to pivot the idea with the experience, so we design the software those schools really need. In the design process we realized we could scale it to an entire town and we make a pilot with local government of Chia and we prove that was possible to take advantage of installed capacity of an entire town. We think that all places around the world with a saturated internet network could take advantage of our software to deliver information more efficiently. We are serving students and teachers.

We design a software based on our experience with teachers and students in different public school around Colombia, our solution is a pre-internet and post-internet infrastructure downloadable software, that works until the internet bandwidth is adequate or enough  to the number of devices connected, it is a local infrastructure that divide users between live internet and the “internet fog”, The fog can work without internet (Pre-internet) in any remote place, creating a local web server with one or multiple computers, because the majority of schools don't have the resources to buy a server or a powerful computer, we design the software to function as a mesh server, this way the schools can repurpose some of their computers to construct by themselves a server with the storage capacity they want, without spending more.

The Fog creates a navigable web intranet with applications fed with live internet if existing,  to take advantage of the installed network capacity, routers, antennas, computers, tablets, etc. The server could be loaded with open source applications specially designed to work under conditions of low internet(Post-internet), and to enhance the interaction between the participants of the network, we design applications for two different environments schools and towns, applications of information, communication, virtual store, educational platform,  virtual library, etc. This applications can function locally, or globally if linked to our internet platform. 

The best analogy to understand our fog is: Imagine you take an iphone with internet to a school and with other devices you give access to the students, to all information served in the iphone. You can install all kinds of applications into the iphone for other devices to interact. The iphone is our fog.

We want to make a platform to create channels to shorten the gap between the ones who have good access to internet and the ones who doesn’t, the fog is our first channel for this goal, our second channel and complementary, is a “Downloadable Market” where developers and content creators can monetize their work for places offline or off the grid with applications and content. Because the internet is not meant to be downloadable and have local storage, but that's the channel we are opening with this market and is the way to get to the places that lack of internet infrastructure. We can create channels and  distribute information to all places where is need it!!

It doesn’t exist a solution like ours, for teachers or schools, there are  hardware that tries to help teachers to share content with students via wifi, but is expensive and every teacher has to buy the hardware. 

Our solution is much better because a teacher could buy one licence of our software to transform his laptop in a web server without buying more hardware. 

With just one licence of our software, an entire school can cover all their necessities. 

The price of our solution is 1/10 compared with the price of only one hardware of them. 

Companies are trying to construct solutions to take internet to remote places such as satelital internet or project loon, but those projects will have the same connectivity problems down earth as cable at least in the medium term. With “The fog” We minimize the impact that produce the funnel between  the companies that try to bring internet and internet bandwidth, user saturated networks

Our prototype is made with programming languages that are used for common servers such as: PHP, HTML, Javascript. We also use Apache and Mysql. Our first venture was to sell tailor made servers to schools, and we were going to produce each one of them, and send them to schools via mail. 

The new idea, much more sustainable, is to produce a low cost software that any one can download and can take away in a USB where is need it, and construct their server with a mesh topology this way they can repurpose some of their computers to construct the server as they need. To accomplish this we are going to use others programming language to finish the software, such as C++ and C#. to make the installer for windows and linux.

For the Downloadable Market we are going to use languages for web development  and negotiate with developers and content creators to upload their creations and profit on the market when users download any apps or content.  

The internet is the more efficient way to distribute information, and we don’t have alternative channels to distribute all these information to the people that lack of internet infrastructure. We are waiting for programs like loon from google and governments of different countries of the world to construct the internet infrastructure for everyone to navigate freely on the internet, but this could take years, and have the same problems of bandwidth as cable, Our project complements those internet initiatives making possible to take advantage of more devices regardless of the internet bandwidth, it can be implemented in the short term, taking near the students high quality multimedia educational content and make it accessible for them, also becomes easy to interact with other people and is a low cost solution. The most important thing for students is the content, not the internet itself.

We are creating channels to take information to different places that lack of internet infrastructure, making all our software and content downloadable and ready to take away, making it easy to construct an information infrastructure for remote places different from internet. 

If we can implement our solution and take the best part of internet to public schools and disconnected towns in Colombia, we can open new possibilities for all, this way we can try to achieve a high educational standard.

We currently have a pilot in a school in Cajica, Cundinamarca, Colombia. And we are serving 800 students. We have it, as a lab to prove usability and to make experiments, before we construct our installable software, After we construct our software, the first year, we want to be on 10% of public school in Colombia, this is 1.200 schools with 1.020.300 students on average, in five years we hope to cover the 100% of public schools in Colombia with 10.020.300 Millions of students and be in other countries of South America with a similar number of students.

In the present we have to construct each server one by one, but when we have the software ready we can scale it and get much more impact.  

In one year we hope to have finished the software and be running the marketing plan to get to 12.000 public schools in Colombia. At the same time we want to open our Downloadable Market channel. 

Also we hope to find some partners that can mentor us in marketing and business strategy. 

In the medium term as we can be connected to several “Fogs” we can recopilate data about the usage and with that data make a better software. We want to integrate more technologies to the fog, to make it more robust and for example, with more of the internet of things we could integrate the administrative management of the school to The Fog,  we could identify every student to make manage of  the security systems more efficient.

We think fog servers are the perfect complement of the internet.

We have a lot of barriers that we can’t see right now, but we think the major barriers that we have to tackle are to finish the development of our software, we need an expert programmer in windows and linux, to make our installer and finish the software. 

Other barrier is going to be the mentality of the ones that see the internet as the only information infrastructure possible.

The obvious financials barriers to breakeven in expensive while the venture is  financially sustainable.

For the first big barrier, we are looking to associate a programmer to the project or get the money to hire the adequate person or persons. 

To tackle the second big barrier, we are going to rely a lot in video, because the only way to change the mentality of our solution is when people see by themselves how it works, because we know is not an easy concept to understand.

The last barrier we can think of right now is the money that the project needs to accomplish their goals, and we want to try to raise as littles capital as posible, so we are going to think on innovative ways to sell and to operate.  

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In the present we are two persons working full time in the solution. We receive a big help from a lot of people, from the entrepreneur ecosystem in Colombia to individual persons that have been crucial to the selling efforts we have made. a help without which we could not have all the experience to make a better solution.

We are the best to make this solution work, because we have the experience and long term commitment, to creating channels for the people that are left relegated, because they can’t get the adequate information infrastructure, 

we are committed with the problem and not the solution and we will find the best way to address the problem. 

We are two professionals, one Engineer Designer, and a Business grad with specialization in design and management of technology and self taught programmer.

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Our business model is to sell license of our Software to public and private schools through our internet platform, the software is like an operating system where you can customize your own “Mesh Internet Fog” with all applications and content you like. In our Downloadable Market you can find all sorts of applications, games and content, free or  paid (If we are not the developers, we charge a fee) to install it and share it with all the users of the fog. It is like an internet of things OS, for schools or towns.

In the future we want to explore applications for other sectors such as towns or cities as I have been mentioning, but is difficult in Colombia because of the politics, but to construct a Fog for the city would have a lot of benefits. We want also in the future, to incursionate in the automotive industry.

1. Investment round or a developer association  
2. Finish the first version of our software, and our internet platform.
3. Investment round for sales founding, if we had assosiate with a developer to finish the first version of the software.
4. Execute the sales plan.  
5. Get 10% of our potential clients.
6. Be very profitable
7. Be Financially sustaintable  

Just to be selected into the finalist to tell the pitch, will validate our way of thinking, It also will give us  the necessary spotlight to open doors for potential investors and clients. 

If we get selected to the next stage we will tackle at once all our barriers, we could have technological support and hopefully partnership, that we wish to improve our software. The 12 months program will be a dream come true. We hope to win all the prices! this way we wouldn’t need to raise more money.

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We have been seeking to partner with Learning Equality foundation, because they have a lot of free content and a very good technology, also we are looking to partner with content creators to grow the Downloadable Market, giving them a way to monetize. For example we try to partner with TED talks.

Also and looking for founding we want to partner with smart capital that can help in the solution of the problem, maybe from a Social Venture Capital Fund or an Internet company.

GM should give our solution the prize, because in the future, every car will have his own internet fog(local server with internet), maybe is the present for GM, I’m not sure, but certain is the present for the last Boeing 747, because every part of the plane  send data to a local server inside the plane, just one reaction motor of the 747 produce half terabyte in a single flight, now imagine how much data is produced by all the parts of the plane, we can’t upload that amount of data to the internet before the flight is over, It needs a local servers and fog computing to process all the data. that's way fog servers and fog computing is the present and the future.

For intelligent cars is the perfect place for AI to be served and to deploy all kind of sensors and gadgets for the cars, It is also used to bring entertainment for the passengers with a wifi network, that's fog computing because all the content is stored in a computer inside the car. We want to research solutions for cars, so if you give us the prize is like giving money to a research lab for internet of things for cars, and we promise that GM will be the first one to see our solutions, that is circular economy!. If we won the prize of the challenge, that would be the necessary amount of money to cover almost all the cost of the venture.

We want to help students, teachers and people from remote communities to access information, we want for example an Amazonic community to construct an information infrastructure, this way create a channel of information which can benefit all the members of the community, or a child in school on a rural area within EEUU that have a lot of devices but can’t access a high quality educational information because of a bad internet connection. We are trying to create opportunities through information for individuals and entire communities that doesn’t count with information infrastructure besides the internet and had been relegated to underdevelopment.