VoIP Booming in Africa

securitas writes "The NY Times reports on the rapid growth of voice-over-IP telephony (VoIP) in sub-Saharan Africa and the battles it is waging with the government monopolies/ILECs. VoIP upstarts are taking market share from the government telcos, making it vastly more affordable to make a phone call since they don't charge the usual exorbitant tariffs and excessive user fees. Governments have responded by shutting down these operations, seizing equipment and cutting off service to lines they suspect of using Internet telephony. Part of the boom is related to the wait times for getting a phone line (Ghana Telecom has a backlog of 300,000 line requests), poor quality of service (50% of time you get a busy signal instead of a dial-tone) plus the willingness to trade voice quality for basic service. Foreign companies are now setting up VoIP call centers and multinationals like gold giant Newmont Mining plan to use VoIP for communications in and out of Africa. Some observers call Accra the next Bangalore, predicting a boom for the region that may make sub-Saharan Africa a major technology hub. This fits nicely with Kofi Annan's drive to use the Internet and wireless networks to change the lives of the poor."

Comments

Re:Your mileage may vary

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Well, the problem could be that they haven't allocated enough bandwidth for their VoIP. With POTS, you either have a dial tone or you don't. With VoIP, you can get more dialtones but at lower quality.

I just started using Vonage's VoIP for a second line (email me for a referral/discount), and the quality is fine. I had to do some QoS tinkering on my firewall, but now the VoIP traffic has priority over other network traffic and call quality is consistent. Before the QoS tinkering, the calls would sound horribly choppy when I started a large download.

Re:Irony?

[jetmarc]

> How ironic is it that third world nations could end up leading the way in voip adoption?

It's not ironic at all. And I think, it's also not too much related to
competition, but rather to the history of the market.

Let me explain my view: I'm german, but live in Spain since a few years.
Germans perceive Spain as "10 years" behind, when it comes to technology.
This is definately not true. There's only little technological research
and development going on in Spain (a lot less than in Germany). But on the
other hand, Spain doesn't have the same legacy!

While Germany, as a first minute adopter, employs less-than-state-of-the-art
system and keeps them running (because it was a huge financial investment),
"2nd category" countries like Spain can directly head towards the refined
essence of the technology. Until no more than 3 years ago, Germany still had
a considerable market share of analog cellular phones, while Spain was
practically 100% digital.

There are hundreds of similar examples. Because Spain doesn't invent all
the stuff, they don't hurry to get stuck with expensive first generation
prototypes. They just relax, lets stuff grow and madurate, and ignore
comments about being "behind". As soon as the technology is ready and
cheap, they employ it en gros within very little time. They overtake
the leader, and with only a fraction of the financial investment.

Of course, without 1st generation adopters there wouldn't be and 2nd
generation. So the germans aren't as stupid as it appears here. But in
my opinion, this mechanism is definately involved when African countries
use better technology than the USA or Europe...

Marc

Better than what they have now

[rynthetyn]

Considering what I've heard about African phone service from a professor I had who lived in Africa for a number of years, I would venture to say that VoIP would be an improvement on what they have now. In many parts of Africa, the phone lines are in such bad condition (poorly spliced together, full of dirt and the like), that you're lucky if you can have a conversation through all the static. If they were able to implement Wi-Fi so that it was available to a broad enough segment of the country that people in remote villages could have internet access, VoIP could revolutionize the lives of the average African villager.

Remember, we aren't talking just about business, we are talking about empowering the little guy to have access to the outside world. The more access to means of communication, the less they can be controlled and oppressed by others.