Nepal Wireless Networking Project — Mahabir Pun's Himalayan Village-to-Village Internet

In 2002, school teacher Mahabir Pun, with technical help from volunteer engineers he recruited online, rigged an indoor WiFi radio to a modified satellite-TV dish to bridge roughly 40km from his home village of Nangi, in Myagdi district, to internet access in Pokhara — the first hop of the Nepal Wireless Networking Project (NWNP).

NWNP aimed to extend internet connectivity village-to-village across Nepal's mountain districts and to build local services on top of it — telemedicine, school networking, e-commerce and job/agricultural information — while training local technicians to reduce dependence on outside experts.

By 2005 the network reached 22 villages and carried telemedicine consultations from two rural clinics to a city hospital. By around 2012 it covered roughly 140 villages across 15 districts, later reported at over 175 villages, using long-distance WiFi links, mountain-ridgeline relay towers, and more recently satellite and fibre backhaul. NWNP seeded locally run telecentres operating as small businesses or community services.

Pun received the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership and was later inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame; the project has been the subject of independent case studies by the Association for Progressive Communications and academic reviews of its social and economic benefits.

Reported village and user counts vary across sources and years, and systematic, independently audited impact evaluation (for example of usage rates or income effects) is limited compared with the qualitative and case-study evidence available.