Dabba (company)

Dabba is a South African company that is pioneering the establishment of village telcos. It uses wireless technology to provide voice and data services to under-serviced areas. Dabba has developed a distributed community based ownership model that encourages local entrepreneurs to provide telephone services not served by fixed line telcos at affordable prices.

Dabba was founded by Rael Lissoos & Manish Anant in 2004. He uses reprogrammed Wi-Fi routers as base stations, and open source software to build the components of a telecommunications network. Cheap Wi-Fi handsets are used to make calls. Dabba offers free calls in the area covered by the local network, and calls to 'phones on the national networks using pay-as-you-go cards.

The first pilot network is in operation in Orange Farm, Gauteng, a township near Johannesburg. In July 2008, Rael was recognised as the Social Entrepreneur of the Year at the Berlin Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.[1] He says "Wireless networks have traditionally been created top-down; we want to do it bottom-up".[2]