The aim of the TIER project is to address the challenges in bringing the Information Technology revolution to the masses of the developing regions of the world. Historically, most projects that aim to do this rely on technology that was developed for the affluent world, but these imported technologies fail to address key challenges in cost, deployment, power consumption, and support for semi- and illiterate users.

TIER focuses on developing a hardware/software infrastructure explicitly designed for the physical, political and economic realities of developing areas. It will build on existing research at Berkeley and elsewhere, but also face a number of new technical and organizational challenges. This project addresses these challenges with novel technology, while validating the impact of through real-world deployments.