Comms problems pt II
Over the past few years, the first fibre optic cable has been laid from the frozen north, where the Internet rules supreme, to Kenya, with links to Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8165077.stm. Last week it was formally switched on, with ceremonies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. This is good news. Africa is ready for it, as is shown by the interest in all means of communication (see the ZIFF post), as is shown by the enthusiasm in Zanzibits for both web and graphics design, and web programming. But it will take some time to get to Zanzibar, and my little saga shows the difficulties that still prevail here.
The Zanzibits Internet link uses a satellite, Sky-Vision, which my ISP in the UK did a check on and found that it slowed everything down dramatically. It stopped everything working: FTP was unusable, a typical web access took 30secs+, any download above a couple of Mb was impossible or had to be left overnight. Unusable for project work.
My first attempt was to see if my UK mobile phone dongle would work; I took it to Zantel, they said it was the wrong protocol and I should try Vodacom. I then went to Vodocom (in case you’re wondering, not the same as Vodaphone; Vodacom is South African but Vodaphone have now taken them over. Maybe they liked the name). They gave me a free SIM card and lots of advice, I bought 2,000Sh (£1) of vouchers and loaded them up. No connection; Obviously my modem was locked into T-mobile. And it would have been only slightly better than modem speed (~5% of broadband) anyway.
One of my students then lent me his Zantel wireless telephone (looks like a landline but with an antenna), and associated bits and pieces, which he had used until it became too expensive and he went to a land line. It was fast at the time, but Zantel obviously downgraded the service so they could sell lots of their shiny new 3G modems. It was back to a bad modem-speed connection again.
I finally got agreement from Martin (of whom more later) that he would fund a 3G internet dongle from Zantel. Sweetness and light, but at a cost. The new fibre optic link should speed everything up dramatically and lower costs to boot. Let’s hope they get it going quickly. Zanzibar needs it!