As a result of the 2022 selection process, ISIF Asia awarded USD 2.03 million to 22 projects across the Inclusion, Infrastructure and Knowledge program areas, supporting Internet development by organizations based in 17 economies in the APAC region. That includes four projects specifically targeting IPv6 deployment as well as the inaugural support for projects focusing on Internet and the environment.

Infrastructure

  • Samoa district connectivity project. Bluewave Wireless Company Ltd. Samoa. Grant award: USD 150,000.

This impact grant will fund the deployment of satellite connectivity to district sites across Samoa, (mainly rural and village-based communities), who currently have little to no reliable connectivity. These unserved and underserved rural communities will also require redundancy for disaster preparedness.
IN PROGRESS

  • OpenLI for the Pacific Islands. University of Waikato. New Zealand. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This scale-up grant will assist members of the Pacific Islands network operator and law enforcement communities to provide in-person and online training and support for Lawful Intercept deployment and operation. It will use OpenLI the world’s only open source, ETSI-standard Lawful Intercept system. Further development of OpenLI to meet local needs will also be part of the grant.
IN PROGRESS

  • Open-source SOC-as-a-service for small and medium manufacturers. National Electronics and Computer Technology Center. Thailand. USD 30,000.

This small grant will fund the development of a Security Operations Center (SOC) to support small and medium factories in Thailand. This SOC will be implemented with all open-source software to reduce development and operation cost, making this service sustainable and affordable to SMEs. This project will test the prototype SOC services with three small and medium-sized factories.
IN PROGRESS

Infrastructure: IPv6 Deployment Grants

  •  Deploying IPv6 in Yap FSM. Boom! Inc. Federated States of Micronesia. Grant award: USD 250,000.

This IPv6 Deployment Grant has a strong focus on building local expertise and using this deployment experience to empower others in the Pacific to be more self-sufficient in developing and maintaining their network infrastructure.

  •  Ucall in IPv6 World. Tonga Communication Corporation. Tonga. Grant award: USD 250,000.

This IPv6 Deployment Grant will help the Tonga Communication Corporation roll out IPv6 beyond its fixed network to include its mobile network as well. The project will involve backhaul deployments and tests on the dual stack network.

  •  Migrating NITK Surathkal Campus Network to IPv6. National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal. India. Grant award: USD 240,000. 

This IPv6 Deployment Grant will help with IPv6 transition planning and deployment for the NITK Surathkal campus network. This will involve security auditing/planning and mitigating the risks of IPv6 deployment at NITK, converting the web services and applications at NITK to IPv6, and finally testing, validating and monitoring network performance and security aspects after IPv6 is deployed at NITK.

  •  IPv6 anywhere, accelerating IPv6 adoption with multiple models of IPv6 deployments. Yayasan Badan Wakaf Universitas Islam Indonesia. Indonesia. Grant award: USD 60,000. 

This IPv6 Deployment Grant will explore deploying IPv6 with little effort to end-users and enabling IPv6 in organizations that haven't got IPv6 set up. Its main target is IPv6 deployment for schools, higher education institutions, and research organizations, as they are closer to the education sector, however other organizations may be eligible as well.

Inclusion

  • Indigitech PacifiCode. Digital Education Limited. Samoa. Grant award: USD 150,000.

This impact grant will increase digital literacy and bridge the digital divide by increasing the capacity of 10 schools to deliver ICT education. It will improve Internet access, availability to hardware and professional development of key teachers to deliver an empowered in-classroom program that aligns to the Samoan ICT curriculum and gives students confidence in a digital world.
IN PROGRESS

  • Be the A11y. PT Suara Inklusi Semesta. Indonesia. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This scale-up grant will fund the further development and first use case of Ba11y. Ba11y is a crowdsourced accessibility reporting platform designed to gather feedback from people with visual impairment across Indonesia to evaluate the accessibility of various local websites and applications. The use case will seek to influence companies or services to take action to improve their level of digital accessibility.
IN PROGRESS

  • Combating cyberbullying for better Internet inclusivity: An optimized deep learning approach. University Kebangsaan Malaysia. Malaysia. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This small grant will embark on fostering awareness of cyberbullying threats through several promotional activities in Malaysia and Indonesia. The grant also aims to increase Internet inclusivity by reducing the likelihood of cyberbullying caused by religion, gender, race, and age. This project will develop an optimized deep learning-based algorithm that can identify cyberbullying incidences automatically.
IN PROGRESS

  • Empowering women, youth and special needs people in the tech sector. UULEN TYEKHNOLOGI SONIRKHOGCH ZALUU INJYENYERUUDIIN BULGEM TBB. Mongolia. Grant award: USD 30,000.  

This small grant will help address a skills shortage of Internet engineers, while at the same time boosting employment prospects for traditionally underemployed groups like women, youth, and those with special needs. UULEN TYEKHNOLOGI SONIRKHOGCH ZALUU INJYENYERUUDIIN BULGEM TBB (known publicly as The Cloud Academy) teaches relevant, up-to-date cloud skills with an internationally certified curriculum in Mongolian native language, but with professional technical terms in English to help assist participants to connect with their peers globally.
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  • Affordable Internet for the community, by the community. Janata Wifi Ltd. Bangladesh. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This small grant will allow for setting up community Wi-Fi hotspots in low-income areas, where people can use high-quality and affordable broadband Internet with the mobile devices they already own. These community hotspots would comprise Wi-Fi access points, wireless access gateway, broadband backhaul, innovative software, and power backup to ensure high-bandwidth uninterrupted Internet connection without data usage limits.
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  • Assisting natural beekeeping in rural and remote areas using LoRa-based IOT and drones. Sejong University. Republic of Korea. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This small grant will study proof of concept ideas for providing Internet availability by using an Internet of Things (IoT) and drone system for remote beehive management.
IN PROGRESS

Knowledge

  • Building a model for community networks linked to social enterprise and sustainable local economic development. Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia, Inc. Philippines. Grant award: USD 150,000.

This impact grant will kickstart development of a model to understand how community networks can be linked to social enterprise and sustainable local economic development.  The project will explore how these models could contribute to addressing the challenge of sustainability faced by community networks serving poor communities and households that usually do not have the capacity to pay for connectivity services. The project will explore different approaches in Bangladesh, China and The Philippines.
IN PROGRESS

  • Government bug bounty program. SCoRe Lab. Sri Lanka.  Grant award: USD 85,000.

This scale-up grant will help to carry out initial threat modelling for building a threat classification framework for all government and government-affiliated entities, which includes 200+ potential individual government organizations. This will aid in the promotion of bug bounties as an effective tool for government organizations as well as a good economic opportunity for youth.
IN PROGRESS

  • Adversarial machine learning attacks in wireless networks. Griffith University. Australia. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This small grant will implement a Software-Defined Radio (SDR)-based adversarial machine learning attacks in wireless networks and evaluate the impact of these attacks. A good understanding of these adversarial attacks will enable the design of effective countermeasures against them.
IN PROGRESS

  • PumonAI: Multi-institutional collaboration for pneumonia screening. Universitas Prasetiya Mulya. Indonesia. USD 30,000.

This small grant will help develop a system for fast pneumonia detection with high precision and robustness, accessible through various devices, such as smartphone, personal computer as well as the Picture Archiving and Communication (PACS) workstations used in hospitals.
IN PROGRESS

Ian Peter Grants for Internet and the Environment

The Ian Peter Grants for Internet and the Environment are funded under the existing program areas of Infrastructure, Inclusion and Knowledge. See project descriptions for which of the three program areas apply.

  • ISLET Connect. CVISNET Foundation, Inc. Philippines. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This scale-up grant supports the Internet for Safety, Livelihood, e-Education and Tourism for Vulnerable Islands of Cebu Province (ISLET Connect) Project. ISLET Connect focuses on providing identified remote and vulnerable islands a stable broadband Internet solution and a solar powered Locally Accessible Cloud System (LACS) facility for immediate communication and disaster response support which can be used even in the absence of telecommunication and Internet services. This grant is in the Inclusion program.
IN PROGRESS

  • Early warning and communication system for flood risk reduction in Gilgit-Baltistan. Lahore University of Management Sciences. Pakistan. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This scale-up grant will help leverage open-source IoT technologies to deploy cost-effective, off-grid flood early warning systems to build the disaster risk resilience of climate-vulnerable communities in Gilgit- Baltistan, Pakistan. It will also explore Internet technologies, especially the TV White Space devices, and assess their feasibility as a cost-effective broadband pop-up Internet services. This grant is in the Inclusion program.
IN PROGRESS

  • IoT data-driven water management for climate-resilient communities. Similie Timor Lda. Timor Leste. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This scale-up grant will fund and develop Similie’s ability to use data-driven science to monitor conservation and remote water supply activities. Similie’s IoT technology will be deployed and monitor two rural catchment areas, water supply and localized weather activities. The data will then be analyzed and visualized within the Similie online platform. This grant is in the Knowledge program.
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  • EcoInternet Index. DotAsia Foundation Ltd. Hong Kong. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This small grant will fund the continual research on carbon footprints of Internet infrastructures, efficiency of data exchange, use of renewable energy in the country, and development of digital economy. These would all factor into the EcoInternet Index, which would enable meaningful and comprehensive comparisons among different jurisdictions and observe the changes throughout the years. This grant is in the Knowledge program.
IN PROGRESS

  • Tackling Climate Change Misinformation. Faculty of Social and Political Science through the center for Digital Society. Indonesia. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This small grant will help the Center for Digital Society map digital literacy skills, to help counter misinformation related to climate-change and improve digital literacy skills. It will consist of a series of training events dedicated to demographic groups who are most vulnerable. It will also contribute to policy development through research. This grant is in the Knowledge program.
IN PROGRESS