The primary advantages of a VAN are its low cost and ease of set up. Instead of laying copper or fiber to each village or trying to establish costly long-distance wireless links or satellite uplinks, a VAN takes advantage of existing transportation infrastructure to create an affordable broadband network. Although the latency or delay of this network is higher than other networks it is cable of providing a higher per-day data throughput than other low-bandwidth technologies, such as telephone modems.

Real-time communications not required for public kiosks Communications tend to be asynchronous Villagers trade-off latency for affordability Leverages two major trends Cost of wireless broadband (WiFi) Cost of digital storage Easy to implement on widespread basis Lower uplink costs and maintenance requirements Bandwidth does not decrease with distance Seed infrastructure that is scalable with demand Reduced Regulatory Challenges & Licensing Fees