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Free Internet Access Is Profitable In Egypt
prostoalex writes "With the demise of free Internet access providers, it's interesting to see this model working in Egypt, where the state-owned telecom allows people to dial-up for free as long as they pay the regular phone access fees. Associated Press quotes the phone line charges being 25 cents per hour. The ISPs that promote free Internet access from Telecom Egypt are then given their share of the profit."
more bloody pyramid schemes
Good idea, the phone company makes more money due to more phone usage.
They just pay out a small portion for this, it is like quantity based discounts that other companys use.
Ig, or Internet Gratis, is one of the biggest ISPs in Brazil, and it's free. It runs on the advertisements it displays.
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
How much is that in terms of the average Egyptian's income?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
At $ 0.25 per hour, I would be paying about $3/day ~ $90/month. Right now I pay about $70/month for unlimited usage.
.... it's because we like to pay for unlimited usage of things whether it be the internet, phones or sex.
Americans hate pay per use pricing schemes. Notice how all of the cell phone companies have moved to flat rates for a large number of minutes
Okay, well we've worked out the first two at least.
The U.S. has free internet access too. All you have to do is live in a college dorm at most large colleges.
The same strategy is being used in India, and its quite successful. Its not exactly free, as you pay for phone access plus more, but there's no account setup, username/password and so on. Its extremely convenient, you get charged for what you use with your phone bill.
Yeah gee, that would be nice. Because then my always on account would only cost me .25c x 24hr x 30 days (ave) = $180 a month. Thats a pretty sweet deal, I'd drop my DSL in a heartbeat!
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
Kudos to the egyptians, now they only need to keep their telecom company state-owned; nasty things happen when you privatize those companies without adequate governmental regulation; witness what happened to the telecom companies in Mexico, Chile and perhaps other countries in south/latin america. They turned, overnight, into greedy monopolies which can't be stopped (here in Mexico, Telmex is running their competition, even the giants like Worldcom-backed Avantel and AT&T, into the ground via dumping and other monopolic practices); and the quality of service hasn't really improved. i'll stop ranting now :)
Wow, if only we had a single monopoly that controlled all communications, why then we could have a free ISP (well free in the part that you are still paying for it with your phone bill.) Gosh, they have almost 900,000 of 63 million people online. That is over a full percent! Instead, we have all these greedy little ISPs running around charging people for service. Can any of you remember how great it was when ATT was the only company, and we didn't have all this annoying fax, cellular, nickel a minute LD stuff? It was like paradise on earth. I think we should all get off this open source wagon, and jump back on the one company ruling the world wagon...like Bill Gates would like. For that matter, I am sure MS would be more than happy to give the US free internet access, if we gave them the monopoly of all software and internet publishing as the fee. Unfortunately, when you don't have one company controlling the entire market, it is really hard to rob Peter to pay Paul.
The real fact of the matter is that the service isn't free.. It's just being paid for through your phone bill.
Because I get my ADSL from my phone company (Telus) I can also pay for it through my phone bill... Does this mean that I'm getting my ADSL for free too?
(at $40CAN/month ($25US) for 1.5megabit down and 500kbit up, some people might claim that I really do)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Ok so how is this free? because guess what folks, most of Europe does this as well. The only difference is that Egypt has a monopoly on the local telephone system.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
One of the biggest enablers of commerce in the US is that we can just pick up the phone and yak without thinking about the cost. Letting your fingers do the walking can be quite expensive in many countries. While low cost internet access is a nice thing, low cost everyday phone service is far more important. I'll take free, unlimited local calling any day, then gladly pay $20/month for internet access if need be.
...free local calling plus paying $20/mo for internet access still comes out cheaper for any serious usage. So the Egyptians are still getting screwed (then again, so is much of Europe).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This is a state-owned monopoly telephone system that is very profitable. In essence, the state is providing "free" internet access by over-charging everyone else for telephone service.
This is really a strategy by the State of Egypt to keep itself firmly in control of the Internet in the country. The deals with local ISP's to split the money are just to ensure the ISP's loyalty. They are being bought by the state.
Here in Ireland, all dialup Internet access is this type of "free", in which you are billed for the phone time online.
For the phone company and ISPs, this "Free" Internet Access Is Profitable In Ireland, also.
Few people like it, and would rush to support the other side of the fence, in which there is a flat rate of about $40 euro a month for dialup, and that is it (following the typical unmetered approach available in most of North America). An option of pay-for-phonecall is good, but when the phone company colludes with ISPs to make it the only option available, it cripples the country's online growth.
The largest ISP in Ireland is IrelandOnline(IOL).
The nexus of protest against this forced free-but-pay-for-the-phonecall scam is logically located at IrelandOffline.org
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
In Poland, we've had "free" dial-up like this for about five years now.
But I wouldn't call it free in the presence of people that still are in this dial-up hell if I were you.
-jfedor
If you have a 24/7 need (ie, running a server) you probably won't use dialup anyway.
Although I 100% agree with you, I'm on 56gay and my line is up 24/7. I pay $178US a year. I can run whatever I want (yea, it's just a modem but, still...). I run SSH, my own mail, etc. And anytime anyone in the household sits down to a machine on the LAN, the Internet will be there. Anytime I need to check on my LAN or need a 100% external connection from work for testing or something, it's there. Granted I happen to have a pretty damn good ISP (I only get hung up on every 1.5 to 2 weeks (yes, seriously).
The point is, what I pay a year is what (roughly) these folks over there would pay a month.
OUCH!
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
One big advantage was that they didn't need to have a billing operation at all. Abuse was prevented by severely limiting what you could do if you withheld caller line ID. And they hijacked all outgoing SMTP. They didn't "officially" support Linux, but informally they did.
It did seem to work well, and they were profitable within a year of starting up. Ultimately, their customers demanded "flat fee, toll-free numbers". Also freeserve got swallowed up by something that got swallowed up, and the people I knew who worked there said it no longer was fun to do so.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
It's not just Egypt, it's any place with no flat local phone rates, i.e. basically everywhere except North America . Example: it's the standard in Switzerland.
(See also Estonia, Brazil, Portugal, India, Ireland, Argentina, Guatemala, England, Poland, ...)
Slashdot editors need to get out more.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
yak without thinking about the cost
>>>>>>>>>
Note to self: After ascending to high-dictatorship of the universe, raise phone rates. It will decrease the general stupidity of the population.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
If you decrease the general stupidity of the population, they are going to fight against the high-dictatorship of the universe...
guru in training
Free Internet can work anywhere that people are already paying per-minute for local phone calls. It doesn't work in the US where unlimited local calls are free.
I think it would be more appropriate to call it "Free Internet Fails in USA, works everywhere else"
Anyone know why Egypt is getting singled out?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Not all places in the US are that lucky to have flat rate unlimited calling. I can think of 8 million poor saps with SBC/Ameritech in the Chicago area who dont....
Trust me, you pay for access at college.
Trust me, you pay for access in Egypt as well.
There is free dial-up but you have to pay for phone usage.
I don't get it. If you have to pay, then it's not free.
The Egyptian Pound (LE) had been pegged at almost exactly 1/3 of a dollar for a long long time, but I look now and see that it's shot up to $1 = 4.65LE. Thus 25 = 1.15LE (approx). It's been about 10 years since I lived there... what does an Egyptian Pound buy you these days? Anyone on the ground in Cairo care to comment?
Looking for current data on income, the world bank cites a figure of $1,490 for Gross National Income per capita in 2000. So, that's about 6700LE. Africare says it's more like $3,420 (=15,903LE), but that's "real GDP per capita."
Getting useful numbers is tricky, especially when you're talking about a country like Egypt that has a vast off-the-books economy going on.
It's 10 pt/6 minutes, or 1 LE/hour, which is $0.22 at today's exchange rate. If you're connecting between midnight and 8 am, it's only 75 pt/hour, or $0.16!
So, what does a dollar buy you these days? With 07777777, it gets you over 4.5 hours of internet access. Thanks, GegaNet!
My question is what kind of throughput can you get over the average Egyptian phone line? I somehow doubt that it's a solid 56K from most locations.
You've got it backward.
Peak dialup internet usage comes about 4 hours later in the day than peak phone usage.
So the Egyptian phone company has found a way to make use of excess phone network capacity that is required to accommodate daytime usage but which goes underutilized in the evenings.
This would theoretically make it possible for phone rates to go down.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I'm pretty sure if you had to pay $.25 an hour for Internet access, you would have a much more conservative attitude.
:-)
You're damn right I would! I'm not infering different.
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It was only a few years ago that I was paying $3 an hour for access, and only a few years before that I was dialing up Prodigy long distance for around $6
I feel very bad for you. I'm with what was called at one time Erols. They got swallowed by RCN a few years ago. I've been paying the same rate for almost 5 years now. I THINK (IIRC), when I signed with Erols, it was like $172US a month. Since RCN grabbed them, it went up to $178US a YEAR. That's $14.83 a month. Dirt cheap. This goes back to around '95 or '96 (I honestly forget when I first signed with them).
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Even for you, it's more of a luxury than a need.
Yup. You are right again. It is a luxury; one which I'm getting every cent out of. I have been for a bunch of years now. And to reitterate a previos agreement, yes, I wouldn't be doing this if I was paying hourly.
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I don't see why this was modded up.
It wasn't. I post at +2 when I want to...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
You sound like someone who's never used the internet from Egypt.
The country shares about as much bandwidth as you could squeeze through a 2400bps modem.
Internet undercapacity manifests itself with a more graceful degradation than POTS undercapacity. So while it would be politically damaging for the PTT minister to consistently fail to provide dial tone, it's less so to provide slow IP throughput.
And in any case, apply a little slice of Occam's Razor here. There's no rational reason to believe the PTT would deliberately throw away rare and precious money by subsidizing dialup internet, just so they could get a mention on Slashdot.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS