Mauritius Aims To Be First Wireless Nation

hattan writes "This tropical island off the east coast of Africa is best-known for its white-sand beaches, its designer clothing outlets and its spicy curries. But tiny Mauritius is about to stake a new claim to fame. By year's end, or soon afterward, it is expected to become the world's first nation with coast-to-coast wireless Internet." From the article: "An undersea broadband fiber-optic cable, completed three years ago, gives the island fast and reliable phone and Internet links with the rest of Africa and with Europe, India and Malaysia. Many of the country's 1.2 million people--a mix of French, Indian, Chinese and African descendants--are bilingual or trilingual, speaking French, English and either Chinese or Hindi. The country is democratic, peaceful and stable."

Comments

The Vatican

[ari_j]

How in the hell can anyone be faster than the Vatican to reach this level? Seriously, that's a nation you could get wireless inside of an afternoon, but maybe wireless networking is a sin like sausage was at one point. I don't get it.

Re:How developed is Mauritius?

[MSBob]

Its per-capita GDP (the best indicator of the overall "wealth" of the country) is around $13,000 which is similar to Czech Republic or if you're not familiar with Eastern Europe it's about half of UK's per capita GDP.

I'm sure its IT industry is limited by its size but not because it's "dirt poor" because it's not.

It's a very historic place.

[CyricZ]

Remember, the Vatican is a very historic place. There is monumentery there that cannot be disturbed by the placing of wireless transponders.

Besides, such systems would have very little use in the Vatican. Canon law states that all documentation from the Vatican must be in written form, on paper, and stamped with the holy seal of whichever bishop, priest, archbishop, cardinal, Pope, etc., is responsible for the document. You can't apply a holy seal to an electronic document.

Re:It's a very historic place.

[kaens]

Bless the bits?

Re:It's a very historic place.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a little known fact, but the Pope's hat is actually a mobile wireless access point, 802.11g I believe...

Ambitious Maritius

[Dancin_Santa]

The African continent is one of those areas that is perpetually in the dark, both literally and figuratively. It appears as a large black mass in the World At Night map, and it has been a long time since it was a source of mankind-advancing knowledge (at least since the Library of Alexander in Egypt was destroyed).

In addition, its history of being conquered and carved up by Western empires has left it nearly incapable of functioning as a cohesive continent of nationstates. Rather, it languishes in tribal warfare made all the worse by the relatively recent influx of Islam which has torn the northern countries of Chad and Sudan to shreds.

But separated from the mainland, Maritius is amazing in its ability to remain relatively free of the strife that plagues the rest of the Dark Continent. Catering to foreign tourists who want to get away from the normal tourist hotspots, Maritius has been much more stable and forwardly progressing than its neighbors. It is really no surprise that it would be the first African nation to attempt something as ambitious as this project.

That it is the first in the world is absolutely amazing.

Re:Ambitious Maritius

[burts]

Let me tell you a little bit about Mauritius. My background: I am mauritian and currently working towards a master's degree in EE in South Africa and i have /. for breakfast... The internet revolution has started here, in a sense. The price of a decent ADSL(128/64) line has dropped drastically during the last few years (abt USD 29 / month). It used to be *much* higher. Now they are introducing wireless internet soon. Things like video-on-demand, internet tv are all being planned here. These are all very nice but educating the public should also be happening hand in hand - and this area of things sucks big time. I would also like to mention that people have no idea as to what is F/OSS! There are very few businesses that use Linux here. People don't even know about FreeBSD (and i suddenly feel alone). I don't need to mention what is the favourite pirated OS in this place. i am sure you can all guess. But what is really annoying is the politics that exists in the government system. It really makes you think twice before trying to get a job here. Meritocracy is not very prevalent. i could go on and on... Curiously it only seems to happen when the General Elections are close!

Re:This is the free market at work.

[andhravodu]

Ah, the knee jerk reactions start. let's check some facts BTW

Size of Mauritius : around 1,865 km
Population : about1.2 Million

in contrast, size of LA: 1200 square kilometers

what, you say it's easy to actually network a tiny country. noooo, let's put some spin on it.... oh, BTW, let's put the catch words competition, innovation blah blah. this should get modded insightful

Geeks in Paradise

[axonal]

Excuse me? Excuse me, senor? May I speak to you please? I asked for a mai tai, and they brought me a pina colada, and I said no salt, NO salt on the margarita, but it had salt on it, big grains of salt, floating in the glass...

Re:That's just lovely.

[metlin]

That has, after all, worked so well in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, North Korea, Haiti, Panama, Kosovo, Iran, and India.

As a matter of fact, it has worked in India, and quite well too - since the day they have gotten independence from the British in 1947, at least.

In a country of 1.2 billion people, majority Hindus, they've a Muslim President, a Sikh Prime Minister and a Catholic Caucasian female ruling party president. In fact, it's worked better than it does for the US, where except for two Presidents, every other one has been a Caucasian Protestant male.

Not to mention that India has a free market economy which has been growing by leaps and bounds. And it's quite unsettling that you would compare India (which is quite a broad-minded secular democracy with a growing economy) with countries like Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran - you, sir, just proved that you're as ignorant an idiot as the parent poster you were abusing.

Bah.

Re:Oh yes it is..

[rzbx]

"I wish I could move there, but I doubt there's much work for a software developer in a country nobody's heard of until today."

I think the bigger news is the undiscovered island of 1.2 million people.

From someone who lives there...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I live in Mauritius, the home of the extinct dodo.

Country's bandwidth to the Internet: 128 Mbps

Here is some information about Internet connectivity with the biggest ISP, Telecom Plus.
266 US$/month - Business ADSL 1024/128
147 US$/month - Business ADSL 512/128
78 US$/month - Business ADSL 128/64

40 US$/month - Residential ADSL 128/64
60 US$/month - Residential ADSL 512/128
266 US$/month - Residential ADSL 1024/128

Taken from
http://www.telecomplus.net/adsl_tariffs.htm
1 US$ ~Rs 28
VAT is at 15 %

Oh, forget about getting dedicated >1mbps connections, they cost over 2,400 US$/month last time I checked.

Also, Mauritius claims to home the most intelligent building in the world, the Ebene Cybertower.

See, this is a great place to live, all the peace and quiet is here but if you want to move here to enjoy cheap, fast and reliable internet connectivity, its the wrong place to be.

Information:
www.mauritiustelecom.com
www.gov. mu
alt.mauritius

Have a nice day.

Re:Sealand is NOT a country

[raju1kabir]

Oh, don't be so harsh on them. It's easily as independent as the country I started in my parents' basement when they wouldn't let me go sleep over at my friend's house one time. Out of historical interest, I will reproduce its Constitution in its entirety here: "No grownups."

As far as I've been able to tell, that's the same law that governs Sealand.