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VoIP Booming in Africa

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the spam-over-IP-also-booming dept.

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."

11 of 172 comments (clear)

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    1. Re:YOU ARE MOST LIKELY A GAY HOMOSEXUAL NIGGER! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

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  6. Re:Idiots. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

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  7. Famine and war are also booming in Africa.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    But this is /. , so we will mark this as off-topic.

  8. Booming market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Another booming market in Africa is spear chucking. I hear they can kill a lion from 10 yards away with one of those things.

  9. We need a 'prime directive' for WHITE CULTURE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    It's pretty obvious from where I'm sitting that the savages in places such as africa cannot adopt to our level of cultural sophistication, and should probably be left to chuck spears, as they were happily doing before we adpoted the White Man's Burden. :(

  10. Re:SHUT UP, ASSWIPE by Anil+Kandangath · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    People are never hopeless.. they are like you and me, they want a better life, but in the given circumstances, they do what they need to do in order to survive. All the polital meddling and puppet regimes and colonialism in Africa has not exactly given people there a great experience of how democratic life should be. They have seen guns and they use it. They have not been given access to education (and more importantly, any good use of education after putting in all that effort), so they do know about 'not making 15 children'. Maybe we should just stop being so condescending.