The Beginning
This story tells in brief in his own words as when Mahabir Pun thought about having Internet connection in his village and how he became able to have it.

It started with a wish. In 1997 I wished to get Internet in my village for the first time after Himanchal High School got four used computers as presents from the students of a school in Australia. Internet and e-mail were quite new terms then.

The computers they had sent were two 386 PCs, one 486 PC, and one laptop (486 PC). With the initiative of Mrs. Janita Keating (a teacher) the students of Billanook College in Melbourne, Australia collected the computers and raised money to ship them to Nepal.

I did not give up, though. I kept on asking people for ideas. I also wrote a very short e-mail to the BBC in 2001, asking if they knew any body who could give me ideas (if there were any) to get a cheaper Internet connection cheaper to my remote village in Nepal .

They took my interview and wrote the articles "Village in the Clouds Embraces Computers" and "Praise for 'Inspirational' Web Pioneer" about my school and and the computers we had built in wooden boxes. That article changed everything: I got many responses with ideas from people all over the world. That was the first time I heard about Wi-fi (802.11b) wireless technology

As a result of the BBC article, we had two volunteers in early 2002 in the village from Belgium (Johan Verrept) and Finland (Jonni Lehtiranta), who had some ideas about the wireless networking. Jonni Lehtiranta brought two Cisco PC Wireless Cards (Aeronet) that were donated by IBM Finland. Johan Verrept did some research on the Internet.

We did several experiments in 2002 with the wireless cards to test the connection between two villages, Nangi and Ramche, which are about one and a half kilometers (about a mile) apart across a river valley. We used ordinary TV dish antennas and some home-built antennas for the testing. Robin Shields from USA was also involved in the testing

The test was successful. Therefore, we decided to write a draft outline of a proposal. Johan wrote the technical aspect of the proposal. Thus, a very rough draft of the networking plan was born.

Later on, many people from around the world helped me to get more ideas about the wireless technology. Among them, David Reid from Newzealand, Stuart Henderson and Lee Hughes from England, Vijay Bollapragada and Sage Radachowsky from the US, Ting Sern Wong from Singapore, Josh Skinner from Canada helped a lot by providing many information regarding the technical information and equipment available in the market