Mauricio Hernandez Z. wrote:
It is just unacceptable from my humble point of view that internet
access is not 'sold' as a reasonable and accessible price for everyone!
I just cant believe people get charged so much for an internet
connection.
It's a very common practice, unfortunately. Some nations have been
successful in liberalising their markets and therefore lowering costs,
but many many nations are still captive, if you will, to the local monopoly.
We in Vanuatu have been working quite a bit to ensure that this
important resource is managed responsibly, and (believe it or not) the
current situation is a significant improvement on what existed not so
long ago. All indications are that things will continue to improve,
although as you can see there are still some fairly significant
obstacles to access to communications at the grassroots level.
The way I see it, Internet is a service in the same category as
electricity and water, and therefore we have to do something, complain,
demand, etc.
Doing so is a bit of a bootstrapping problem, though. How do we get
togther, raise awareness and organise ourselves if communications are
poor to begin with?
In our particular case, we're a nation composed of 86 inhabited islands
spread over almost 1000 miles of ocean. On most of those islands,
there's no power, the roads are poor and there might or might not be
telephone available via obsolete microwave transmission equipment.
It would not be terribly difficult to establish workable wireless data
communications using 802.11 or 5 GHz equipment, but the telco here faces
a problem: They're bound by conditions of service that require that they
use carrier-grade equipment, and the cost of this equipment (and
maintenance) is too high for the island communities to bear. If they
allow others to install their own equipment, they effectively give up
their monopoly, and they feel they can't afford to do that.
We're doing our best to navigate this maze, and progress has been steady
but slow. In a few months I'll be setting up the first of several rural
computer centres in locations that have no power, no water and where the
telephone is about half a kilometre away. I'll be using wireless to link
up to the phone, and I'll do it with an antenna that, coincidentally(!)
manages to cover two other islands within its range. With a little luck
and some good will, nobody will object.
I would really appreciate if someone already knows about organizations
already 'fighting' for this issues, please share the info with me (at
least) or anyone else feeling this is something unfair in today's world.
Believe it or not, our biggest allies to date have been the World Bank
and the national government. The World Bank is quite interested in
market liberalisation (though for different reasons than ours), and the
government is acutely aware how poor communications is slowing
development here. The result is that Telecom Vanuatu is much more
attentive to the voice of the Vanuatu IT Users Society when we ask them
for improved services or lower fees. 8^)
For an example of how a grassroots movement managed to break a telecom
monopoly, I'd recommend you look at what happened in the last 6 years or
so in Jamaica, where Cable and Wireless used to have a vry firm grasp on
the communications infrastructure.
Best,
--
Dan McGarry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
IT Consultant
Community Communications Project
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