And that's what telecenters are. Francisco J. Proenza, an economist with the Investment Centre of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, along with Roberto Bastidas-Buch at the Telecommunication Development Bureau and Guillermo Montero with the Inter-American Development Bank, define the telecenter as "a shared site that provides public access to information and communications technologies." Some telecenters focus on providing telephone service, but more and more of them are offering access to the Internet and to productivity software and printers. In addition to providing the tools, telecenters also provide training to teach locals who have never used computers how to do it.

According to Proenza et. al., it only costs $15k to $20k in funding from the United States to open up a basic telecenter in Latin America. But this amount is drastically reduced by using older hardware and Free Software like the Linux operating system. Scott Robinson, of the Universidad Metropolitana-Iztapalapa in Mexico, notes that a low-cost telecenter ideally consists of five or six networked Linux PCs, connected to the Internet via satellite, dedicated lines, or dialup to regional ISPs. With this kind of setup, the cost goes way down -- all the necessary software (free of charge) doesn't require the latest hardware in order to run efficiently.

Perhaps it was the increasing use of telecenters in South America that led the Peruvian congress to propose a law that would require the government to use only Free Software. Maybe Congressman Villanueva Nuņez knew about the thriving telecenter set up for the Ashaninka tribe about 250 miles west of Lima, Peru.

Before they got wired, the Ashaninka community knew only hardship and extreme poverty. After their telecenter sprang up, they learned to make money through the Internet by selling oranges to Lima, which boosted the tribal income by 10%. They set up a cybercafe. Young men and women in the community were inspired to hope for a different kind of life, studying to become programmers or graphic designers. Then the telecenter was burned down by an arsonist. They're still working to put the pieces back together. If only they'd used Free Software to begin with, the monetary loss wouldn't have been so great.

Africa and India are making use of the telecenter concept as well. Microsoft is well aware of this and is making moves to donate software to help the centers get started. Forward-thinking IT people will see the potential danger in accepting such a gift -- NewsForge columnist Jack Bryar points out that, although Microsoft has said it has no plans to require license fees from the telecenters, there's no guarantee, and in fact, Microsoft' s past actions seem to indicate that it will eventually ask for the money.

Though Microsoft is making moves to be the first technology adopted by remote rural areas around the world, Linux is poised to snatch its share of the new territory, too. The buzz is that Linux, along with satellite technology that provides instant "portable" broadband, is about to show up in Brazil. The World Economic Forum has already taken action in a program that would use Sony Playstation consoles, running Linux and equipped with satellite links to access the Internet.

If first-timers use Linux and OpenOffice and Netscape/Konqueror/Mozilla/whatever first, they won't feel a need to use Microsoft products, especially when they discover how much those products cost compared to the freely available alternatives. That's why Microsoft doesn't want Open Source software in telecenters, in government, or in your house.