Lion Guardians is a conservation organization that promotes cultural sustainability and coexistence between lions and people across Kenya and Tanzania. Their main camp, Naharbala Camp, is located right in the middle of Amboseli and isolated from the comfortable amenities that you find in urban areas.

A beautiful view of Mt. Kilimanjaro that motivated us to keep on working.

Our four-hour trip from Nairobi led us to a camp that relies on solar power to generate electricity for the camp’s infrastructure operations. Amboseli, a landscape of wonder, filled with a dry and sprawling grassland, scattered trees, and diverse wildlife. This was our destination on Valentine’s day this year, a team of three BRCK employees consisting of Robert (our driver), Jimmy (an electrical engineer), and me. Foregoing the day of love to solve a long-term connectivity issue, we set out early that Tuesday morning.

Upon arrival, we were welcomed by Dr. Leela Hazzah, the organization’s Executive Director, she explained to us the issue that had been plaguing them: for the past one year, the camp has experienced poor internet connectivity and has been on a satellite backhaul that has proved to be inefficient in terms of slow speeds and intermittent connectivity. Internet is an important tool for Lion Guardians when it comes to communicating with international partners and performing research work. The existing internet connectivity setup included a satellite antenna, modem, WiFi extender (Ubiquiti UniFi AP Outdoor), and solar charged batteries that powered the whole camp apart from the equipment.

The author pretending to be working while admiring the Lion doll. 

With the advent of 3G network in Kenya 10 years ago, a majority of areas in Kenya, including rural towns and remote areas, have access to fast mobile internet speeds. The Naharbala Camp has four Safaricom cell towers surrounding it and include Kinama, Imbirkana, Lengsime, and Amboseli Serena. The availability of adequate mobile network infrastructure provided BRCK with an opportunity to test out the BRCK at the camp. We installed the BRCK device with a GSM antenna and tested which cell tower to point to. The cell tower at Kinama provided the best Safaricom reception signal. In addition to this simple setup, we connected the existing WiFi extender to provide wide coverage across the camp.

Jimmy (BRCK) and Jeremiah (Lion Guardians) contemplating the best direction to point the GSM antenna.

With the setup in place, Dr. Leela and the rest of the camp were able to access 7Mbps internet and even make a Skype call, something we urbanites take for granted. The installation was a success and the BRCK team of three departed in the late afternoon, satisfied with a well done job.

However, two weeks later, the internet connectivity stopped operating and this prompted two more trips to Naharbala camp to identify the issue. We suspected that the issue was the mobile network signal and frequency. So we installed a GSM/3G signal booster but even this did not solve the problem. We came to the conclusion that the towers were transmitting on EDGE frequency (900MHz) and this would fluctuate to 3G (1200MHz) after a while and internet connectivity would resume. To our relief, Dr. Leela informed us that another conservation camp (focusing on baboons) within Amboseli was experiencing the same problem and that Safaricom engineers were scheduled to do repairs and maintenance at the Kinama cell tower.

At the time of publishing this blog, the internet connectivity remained intermittent due to the mobile network signal issue. BRCK’s goal is to connect Africa, but it’s also important for the backhaul infrastructure such as mobile or satellite to be stable and efficient.

Our new product, the SupaBRCK, ready to connect the rest of Africa and the world. 

(Note: I’ll do another post later on the challenges, constraints and opportunities of designing in Africa, but here’s a real case study for why it’s important.)

Reg and Philip spent a day last week at Amboseli working with a group of conservationist called Lion Guardians, who have a permanent camp about 10km from the edge of the Amboseli National Park. They went at their request to see if BRCK could solve their current connectivity challenges before they invested in satellite equipment.

A Problem of Too Many GSM Towers

The situation is that Lion Guardians can get decent signal from one operator (Airtel) but very slow data connections. They can also receive signal from another mobile operator (Safaricom) in certain physical locations within the camp but it requires standing in one spot and holding their phone in a certain way. One of the workers is able to send/receive data by holding his laptop in one of these spots to get a decent data connection.

Reg and Philip spent a couple of hours surveying the signals with a combination of the OpenSignal Android phone app and the Wilson boost equipment. They found a very strong Airtel signal but it only provided edge data. They found more than one Safaricom signals, one of them provided no data – even with strong signal – and another provided reasonable edge performance. However, when locating in the exact spot identified, they were able to get 3G signal and faster data.

After attempting to secure a reliable signal from the identified 3G tower (they were tracking tower IDs) they stumbled upon a hypothesis for this type of situation, which isn’t an uncommon issue.

The hypothesis is that the 3G tower is the tower that is furthest from camp and therefore has the weakest signal. From most locations in camp, one of the stronger signals from the other towers is given preference and no/poor data connections are the result. However, when standing in a location that blocks the stronger towers (due to a building and a tree), the weaker signal take precedent and a solid 3G connection is possible. As we understand it, the device will usually “hear” several towers and then has to make a decision about which one it’s actually going to talk to. Signal strength, not quality, tends to be the easiest metric to engineer for.

A BRCK GSM Lock-on Solution

The opportunity is to create a means of forcing the selection of a specific tower ID even if other towers have stronger signals. In order to achieve this improved result we are going to need to address two principal issues:

• The first is that we have to develop a means of indicating to the BRCK which tower IDs are acceptable and which should be rejected.
• The second is to develop a means of doing effective site surveys that will allow anyone to identify the best carrier/tower combination for a given location.

If we can do this then we should be able to offer a very competitive performance improvement in locations with mixed/limited coverage. You can imagine being out with your BRCK in a new environment and getting a list of possible connections, and choosing the best one – not the strongest one, in the future.

This observation further reinforces our “engineered in Africa” position since we would likely not encounter this scenario in the West. The fact that Safaricom has multiple towers but only some of them have good data connections is a very unique problem for the emerging markets.

With respect to Lion Guardians, they have been told that a new Safaricom tower is coming that will be close to camp. This will likely provide them with the performance they are looking for. However, they will still need a BRCK since they want to have a single, reliable, self-powered connection that is shared using an outdoor Ubiquity WiFi AP.