I have been fascinated by stories popping up around the world of the use of mobile units to bring email and an Internet connection to towns that are off the grid.

This story of ‘motomen’ in Cambodia is just one of them.

I have written about this for an upcoming editorial in LMD, posing the question whether companies may be able to ‘adopt’ villages in remote parts of the country in Sri Lanka, and other Asian countries using mobile Wi-Fi units.

“What if teams of cyclists could be engaged (sponsored, by some corporate benefactor) to ride out to ten small towns a day, spend a few hours circling the community, during which time people without access to cyber café’s connect to the Net?”

An early experiment used a bicycle, as in Yury Gitman’s Magicbike project in the US. So I was really excited to see that a company is actually modelled on this idea. The picture above is off the Web site of First Mile Solutions. As you can see, the mobile internet idea has legs –4 in this case.