A study carried out by researchers from Universiti Sarawak Malaysia (UNIMAS) in 2004 on establishing ICT facilities to provide basic telecommunication infrastructure in rural areas so as to overcome challenges in providing the community and schools with internet connectivity.  This study highlights some of the barriers and challenges the research team encountered in creating the facility. The research team describes the remote areas as follows:

"The areas are Bario and Bedia. Bario, the home of the Kelabits is slightly 1000m above sea level in the interior of Sarawak. It is about 400km to the South East of Miri and covers an area of about 5km radius of beautiful mountains, valleys and padi fields. The journey from Miri to Bario takes about an hour's flight using a Twin Otter plane. There was only a daily flight from Miri to Bario, but since October 2003, MAS has provided a twice-daily flight. By land, the journey may take 4-5 days to reach Bario from Miri."

"There are about 1000 Kelabits living within the 5 km radius of the center - the small town with shophouses. The Kelabits are mostly farmers planting both wet and dry padi and are well known for their fragrant Bario rice.  Long Bedian is another remote area situated about 500km from Miri. It is the home of the Kayans, another indigenous group in Sarawak. Long Bedian can be accessed either by boat (on the Baram river) or by land (through logging tracks). By boat, one has to take a 25 minutes flight from Miri to Marudi and from Marudi to Long Lama, a journey of about 3 hours by longboat before preceding another 2-hour journey by four wheel-drives through logging tracks. By land, the journey to Long Bedian from Miri takes about 5 hours through logging tracks. The Kayans in Long Bedian are mostly farmers while some are involved in operating small shops. Others work in logging camps driving timber trucks and cranes."

"Telecommunication infrastructure in Bario and Long Bedian were very ‘basic' before the implementation of the ICT project by UNIMAS. The community depended solely on the unreliable radio call to communicate with the outside world. Radio calls were limited to certain hours only and conversations were made public as anybody with the right equipment can listen in on the conversation. Public utilities such as 24-hour electricity supply and treated water are not available in both these places and the community relies on generator set or solar power to generate electricity for their basic needs. In Bario, the generators are provided by the government to supply electricity to school, clinics and other public facilities for limited hours due to the expensive cost of fuel. On the other hand, in Long Bedian, the electricity supply comes from the village generators and the village folks pay for the cost of fuel (cost of fuel in Long Bedian is lower given its accessibility to Miri by road). Because of the insufficient power for telecommunications equipment, Radio Channel Services (RCS), a half duplex communication system was then the only available means of communicating to the outside world. Mail takes days or even weeks to reach these remote places and up-to-date newspaper is a luxury.  The lack of communication systems has been the major drawbacks to the development in both these places. The school children were already disadvantaged both economically and socially, and have had little or no exposure to the outside world. The community folks occasionally received news from families and friends through mail or from any relatives returning home for a holiday."

(Extract from a paper titled Bridging the Digital Divide - the e-Bario and E-Bedian Telecommunication Framework by Zen, H., Hamid, K. A., Songan, P., Yeo, A. W. and Gnaniah, J.(eds))