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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."
I hope you are not serious... It would be a shame for anyone that has taken the time to learn as much about computers and technology as the kids in the slashdot crowd to condescend to the level of trailer park intellect. Maybe you should get out of your house once in a while, talk to a black that isn't holding a forty or 'smoking crack' and maybe your viewpoints will change a little. ...better yet, just keep believing what your dad/uncle/brother taught you and live life lonely bitter and ignorant. you are probably not joking and are probably too intelligent to change your viewpoints
Lucky you. You weren't born in the Congo. They can't go to the local 7-Eleven and buy 'ribbed for her fucking pleasure' condoms like you can. Then again, you probably don't need them anyways because what kind of moron girl is gonna put up with that sort of idiocy.
...this will be the start of the demise of telephone networks - at least over in Africa, anyway. VoIP is getting more and more refined, along with more and more applications, such as the GPL'd Asterisk [asterisk.org] software PABX system. Most of the larger PABX systems I've seen around give the capability for VoIP links to other offices and if suitable gateways become more widely available, the move to VoIP will slowly but surely become more widespread as the larger companies that deal with the countries that have widespread VoIP penetration start to use those links to reduce the cost of making phone calls.