Onno W. Purbo in English 2016
To see knowledge based society in Indonesia is his ultimate dream and passion. Knowing the Indonesian condition, self-finance and sustainable must be embedded in the process.
In February 2000, quitting from his honorable position as a lecturer at the Institute of Techologgy in Bandung (ITB). He spent the rest of his lifetime to educate thousands of Indonesians on low cost Internet, Internet Telephony and free open source software. He wrote more than 40+ books. He is now well knows as Indonesian Internet evangelist if not one of the Indonesian Internet founding father. He normally copies his 2TB USB external harddisk to local organizers and participants of his talks or workshops.
It is all started in 1993, when he and a couple of his students built a simple 1200bps packet radio gateway to the Internet at Institute of Technology Bandung in Indonesia using refurbish 286 computer. Using the simple technology, connection to a dozen schools and universities were made. In 1998, the network was grown into a larger Indonesian Education Network as part of Asia Internet Interconnection Initiatives (AI3) connected to WIDE Network lead by Prof. Jun Murray in Japan. In 2000, he lead the Telephony over Internet (VoIP), known as VoIP Merdeka. In 2006, the Indonesian shift into VoIP Rakyat. Later in 2015, call area +62520 and +62521 implemented in the system and known as Telkom Rakyat. In 2002, he received IDRC Sabbatical awards, enable him to share Indonesian experiences to various part of the world including neighborhood network (RT/RW-net) and Wajanbolic (Wokbolic), which leads to the liberation of WiFi 2.4GHz frequency in 2005. In 2008, funded by Ministry of Research and Technology, he lead a team of writer to write free ebooks for ICT class for junior and senior high schools and enlight more than 3000 ICT teachers on it. In 2015, he runs free e-learning servers at http://cyberlearning.web.id/moodle/ and http://belajaronline.web.id/moodle/. It is now has hundred of courses with about 15.000 students / participants.