Lee Felsenstein, Jhai Remote IT Project

To San Franciscans who witnessed the technical trials in January, a bicycle-powered phone may seem cartoonish or like something out of “Gilligan's Island.” But to villagers in the Hin Hieup district of central Laos, it holds the promise of an actual rescue.

Some villages among the hills of this war-torn Southeast Asian nation have no phones or electricity. Consequently, villagers often sell goods at prices below cost because they have no way to find out what competitors are charging for the rice, vegetables and textiles they sell locally to sustain themselves.

Lee Felsenstein wants to change that. Together with the nonprofit Jhai Foundation, Felsenstein is equipping five Laotian villages with a Wi-Fi system for Internet telephony. Using a hilltop hospital a few miles away as a hub, the foundation will link the villages in a star formation, with parabolic antennas and transceivers supplied by Cisco Systems at the points. For power at the edges, users will have to charge a battery by pedaling a stationary bike. (Fifteen minutes of pedaling should yield roughly 30 minutes of phone time.)

Felsenstein, whose distinguished career includes the 1980 invention of Osbourne-1, the first portable computer (which is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution), is moonlighting from his IT consulting gig with Pemstar Pacific Consultants. He's still searching for $15,000 of the $25,000 he needs to build the Jhai Wi-Fi network before monsoon season starts in May. But he predicts worldwide demand will be torrential, creating opportunities for philanthropists and private enterprise to work together, linking Third World populations with their emigrated relatives.

“The key to making this go is a nonprofit presence that does, in effect, the marketing work and creates the relationships, at which point the for-profit arm can fulfill the order,” he said. And where is the market? “You name it — anywhere there's not a universal phone system. We've had inquires from India, Africa, Siberia and other areas of Southeast Asia.”

OK, start pedaling.