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Developing Nations Crippled By Broadband Costs
eldavojohn writes "If you live in the EU, you probably enjoy low broadband costs. If you live in Finland, it's even a legal right. If you live in the US, you probably pay a moderate cost. But if you live in the developing world, a UNCTAD report paints your picture pretty grim. Ridiculously high bandwidth costs are inhibiting developing nations from enjoying productive use of the internet — like online banking and market tools."
Broadband access, of course. I'd imagine that narrowly edged out security, stability, access to medical care, and clean drinking water.
Nuff said.
Pigeon net. Apparently a carrier pigeon is faster as well.
Here is the thing, in developing and third-world nations the infrastructure simply isn't there. Most of the time their countries are located in hostile terrain, either they are isolated by mountains, the sea, have extreme climates, have a corrupt government that doesn't want to help its people, or the people simply live in remote areas. Just look at rural America, there are lots of places where the best you can get is cell phone internet speeds, and a lot of these people live just a mile or two outside of a town. Think of how bigger of a challenge this is where you have people who live many miles from any major town, are dirt poor, and you have to cross hostile terrain. Thats how its like in most of these countries.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
is online banking.
The broadband is everywhere, yes, but to actually get any features you need you're going to have to pay.
Want a static IPv4 ip? No problem, it's available for business subscriptions that cost you twice or three times as much. Want an IPv6 subnet? Sure.. but it'll cost you. How about upload bandwidth that doesn't suck? Go ahead, but it'll double the price and you'll have to use a different technique.
I have two static internet connections (not counting 3G) at home for that reason: ADSL2+ (24M/3M) with a small IPv4 subnet and a /64 IPv6 for every day stuff, and a VDSL2 (100/64M) for hosting anything bigger than a two megabyte image *with a dynamic ip*. If you wanted to have a fat pipe with any of the features users actually need you have to pay hundreds of euros for a decent symmetric SHDSL connection.
For anyone curious the ADSL2+ line costs me 80EUR a month from a smaller enthusiast ISP and the VDSL2 60 eur/month from a big known ISP. I wish they'd offer something usable at lower price :-(
Also I know no ISP that offers fiber to home (they say "fiber" but it means fiber to your block and then DSL/cable from there to you), unless you pay really big.
...You know why? Because for most developing nations, entire major cities are unplanned (read unmapped).
All they do when one is looking for directions is to say something to the effect..."Just near that big tower...behind the "Kofeko" market.
And I know because I am originally from one of those developing nations. The concept of an address does not exist. In fact, I had to think hard and ask my family what I should put on the visa application forms as an address before coming to these United States.
Nuff said.
Why don't they just use dial-up like we all did 15 years ago. If they don't have a functional telephone infrastructure then maybe that's a problem they should address first.
But if you live in the developing world, a UNCTAD report paints your picture pretty grim. Ridiculously high bandwidth costs are inhibiting developing nations from enjoying productive use of the internet -- like online banking and market tools.
Online banking and market tools does not need broadband. Also, productivity tools are not the main use of the internet, contrary to what many "industry analysts" would tell you. And lastly, the United States is not a single market. Increasingly large segments of this country have fallen to third-world status, and some of our states, if they were independent countries, would qualify for foreign aid from many countries. Especially those where industry has failed, such as Detroit, MI, or most of the southern states which continue to rely on federal tax dollars to subsidize public works projects because the infrastructure has either degraded or has not been built. Fights over water resources are intensifying in some states, for example.
The United States' is significantly behind even some so-called "third world" countries because our corporations have exclusive rights to the data pipes and they are placing more and more restrictions on them daily. There is an erroneous assumption that the market will pressure them to upgrade, or that it's lagging because of a recession, or regulatory costs, etc. Those things might even be true, but they are not the main reason broadband access in the United States is so pitiful: It's because of exclusive contracts with the municipalities and a very few large companies that own those licenses. With no competition, there has never been an incentive to invest in an upgrade. Therefore, while other countries enjoy a competitive atmosphere, the United States does not. We are being outpaced by countries which have state-owned utilities -- China, for example, has a significantly more advanced cell phone network than the United States, and its citizens pay less on average. It is a profit center for the government and upgrades are routinely planned and executed there.
Simply put, in the United States, broadband has stalled because we've combined all the problems with capitalism (monopolies, boom-bust cycles, etc.) with a state-owned system (slow/no growth, not cost effective). Since the dot com bubble burst, no new investment has been made in infrastructure. Some people on so-called "broadband" connections have been so rate-limited or bandwidth-limited that in some cases dialup or satellite provides a more attractive alternative by price-point.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
...just like Nigeria...
Perhaps we should send them some money... you know so they can pay for broadband... I hear the initial investment will pay back something like 10000%!
The EU has half a billion (mostly rich) people living in an area half the size of Australia, this is an ideal situation for broadband development. If you look at just Sudan and DRC together, these are already larger than the 27 member states of the EU combined. I suspect that in Africa, just like everywhere else, relatively wealthy countries with a high population density will have the best broadband connections. (Egypt? South Africa?)
Depends on your precise definition of "developing" is. Once you've got the basic stuff covered, the massive upfront cost of telecom infrastructure can create a serious economic stall when you reach the point where you need it.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
How else is my friend the King Abu Molabi Tiberius of Nigeria meant to provide me with my share of his inheritance? Perhaps the state of internet access over there is why I still haven't heard back from him?
When I first started using AOL 18 years and 1 month ago, it was $8 / hour in business hours, plus long distance charges --- $4 during non-business hours after the first free 5 or 10 hours each month (and one paid the long distance charges regardless).
Granted, most people were in a metropolitan area w/ a local connect #, but still, bills could easily get into the hundreds of dollars per month.
Once the infrastructure is built and paid for, costs can come down, but one needs the early adopters to pay to run the copper and set up the connections &c.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Here in mexico no only is expensive, we just recived from the morons in the congress a new tax for Internet services.
If I lived in what we euphemistically called a 'developing nation' would I not be more concerned with things like food for my family and adequate housing in my community and less concerned with things like connecting to my bank via the web or updating my Facebook status? I can think of no absolute basic (i.e. food, water, shelter) that is, as yet, a broadband-only option.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
This is news? Basic transport is a more important aspect to everyday life in these places. They are not going to have well-planned highway systems or electrical grids. And you want broadband? Build roads, water pipelines, sewer systems and power lines first. Then you can focus on broadband.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Okay.. so the 1Mb broadband right is a law in Finland.
But I for one am pissed at the price differences between regions. If you live in the vicinity of a moderately sized Finnish city, you might get 30Mb cable connection for about 35 euros per month. Move just 90 kilometers to a smaller town, and you get a 1Mb DSL for 50 euros per month. The consumer can't do anything because usually the smaller cities only have one service provider. The provider can pretty much do anything with the pricing.
How's that fair or cheap? Is this a problem in other countries also?
At least here in Uruguay costs for housing content are extremely high compared with the developed world. I remember last decade when the "standard" connection for 64kbps output was like US$2k. And things didnt improved a lot in the following years. This year finally you could get an affordable (as in US$200/mo) to get a fixed IP (adsl) with 4M/512K connection, but other kinds of (non-adsl) connections could be far more expensive.
And if that is the situation here, don't want to think how bad is in other less developed countries.
They seem to be doing okay in Nigeria......
Mebbe we should introduce some type of cap & trade bullshit so that we can raise the broadband capabilities of the "developing nations" while handicapping the developed nations. That would only be fair. In fact, I volunteer to be the Handicapper General.
- Harrison Bergeron
It is clear that the petit bourgeois of the developing world are having difficulty. How are they to manage their bank accounts or find the lowest cost maid service? They live lives that lack basic necessities like online shopping and right-wing blogs! It is vital that we act to improve the lives of those whom we have so much in common with!
I think the term you are looking for is Economy of Scale.
In this case, in the African nations, the cost of Infrastructure and transport to other Internet connected companies is both relatively large (because of a large geographical area that infrastructure has to be deployed to), and has to be shared by a fairly small population of customers. Even if you tried to 'scale up' in Africa, by lowering the cost, there are many people so utterly poor they could not even afford the equivalent of $5/mo for Internet access. That's not to say African nations don't have wealthy people, but as a friend of mine from Nigeria described it to me, there is essentially no middle class in Nigeria (and I think that might be fairly typical of most of Africa) - you have people who are well connected with the government, oil companies, etc, and are rich, and then you have destitute poor people who are exploited by the rich.
Without a middle class, there's no way the ISP's in Africa can get the economies of scale necessary to make broadband cheaper (and, you know, if the only people who can afford your product are the rich, what is your business incentive to make it cheaper? To a rich person, making hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars a year, $500/mo is 'affordable', and to the poor, $20/mo is 'unaffordable', so why *try* to get broadband down to $20 or $30/mo? In 1st world nations, the pressure to get the price down is that, even though you might reduce your price by, say, 10 percent per month per subscriber, you have a possibility that you might increase the total number of subscribers by 20 percent oor 30 percent, meaning you actually make more money. Not so in Africa.
That'd be why telecos are gearing up for big business including cellular banking in Africa http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0826/p07s01-woaf.html.
I write software for banks for a living. Web, mobile, voice, atm, teller, whatever. As far as my industry has indicated, these developing nations rely on cell phones for the majority of their banking, and anyone with enough money to care about banking will likely use a cell phone for that purpose - at least for common daily usage. There are people out there who have to rely on a hand-crank generator or pay a vendor to charge their phone - they have no access to electricity, but you'll note, they STILL have a cell phone.
Even in developing nations, cell phones are incredibly pervasive.
Once you've got the basic stuff covered
Let's let them get that covered first, then, shall we? Can you give me an example of a "developing nation" that has the basics covered adequately?
I think it's kinda funny that the wikipedia entry mentions that many "developing" countries don't like the term "developing nation" because it implies they aren't "developed." Hmmm. I wonder who in the country doesn't like that - the poor that are starving to death, or the rich that seemingly are keeping the country poor by their greed and careless attitude towards the people.
Or that "Cuba" (the nation?) has decided not to follow the "Western model." Yeah, no kidding. I'm sure the entire country is happy with their model and Castro is in power because the people/nation as a whole like him there...
Less than half the population of the planet has ready access to electricity, phones, adequate nutrition, clean water, and health care. That's due to developing nations having far more inadequacies per capita than developed.
You're not wrong as in incorrect, you're wrong as in assuming your priorities matter to the people in those countries, because they can't eat bandwidth.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I live in Baghdad and bandwidth here is very very expensive as it comes from VSAT terminals , 1024/512 link costs more than $3000USD/month. As a temporary solution , I started integrating Squid Cache Servers for ISPs , and I am thinking about building a city wide cache network using ICP (Internet Cache Protocol), normally the request hit ratio is more than $40 , with some servers it is 60%.
I think there is some confusion between "broadband" and "internet access".
Step one is Internet Access, 56k modem or GSM/EDGE speeds, which allow you to do 99% of the useful thinks you can do on the web (Youtube and gaming are NOT in that category of useful things, online banking, forums, websites, email, IM are)
Step two, broadband, I see as more of a luxury / convenience thing.
To me, the real cut off should be NOT between broadband vs narrow-band, but between permanent connection + unmetered access vs dial-up + pay for use.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
"Ridiculously high bandwidth costs"?
If you're so clever why don't you go and sell them a broadband infrastructure for oh so much cheaper.
I'm sure once you've built exchanges (and power plants to run them), hired a cable ship to lay submarine fibres in, bought international bandwidth, servers, hired a huge technical support team to keep this running for more than 15 minutes you'll have no problem with selling people high speed broadband for a few dollars a month! right? hey where'd everyone go? it's easy right? we'll get loads of customers! just need to find a really stupid investor... how about the government? Oh wait, they have no money either
I'm pretty sure the capital city of Burkina Faso (you ARE aware of that country, right?) largely lacks paved roads for reasons other than lack of broadband internet.
Yes, the fast flow of free/cheap/vast information is helpful. Remember: it's a luxury, not a human right.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Like you can't do online banking via touch-tone phone? I used to do that back in the Dark Ages; these days, even developing countries have mobile phone networks, where you can do your banking and market research by text message. Sorry, someone is just trying to scare us.
Having spent several years living in Ecuador, I can say that broadband access does matter. Just because other things also matter, such as water, food, roads, and whatnot, doesn't mean that one of the key infrastructural elements of communication and creativity in the world today is unimportant. Yes, I believe that the top priorities must be health care and education, since they are the basis of what can be provided to help people improve their lives, but other infrastructural issues are important, and indeed are among the tools that can improve health care and education.
The real problem however is not costs. The real problem is inequality. This makes the few powerful and they then manipulate prices to their own benefit. Infrastructure is much cheaper to set up, because normal laborers make a fraction of what people in the first-world make, yet the rates for using that infrastructure are much higher in absolute terms.
There seems to be an assumption that because countries are poor, the broadband costs are high. I believe the inverse, that they are poor because broadband (and many other) costs are high.
Why are costs high? Almost always because of government meddling, artificially high barriers to entry, and corruption.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Then what do they have to bank, or market? FiOS in every home is probably at the bottom of the list when you're forced to eat mice to survive in Zimbabwe.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Whenever corporations realize that a good resource distribution leads to a bigger ammount of clients, they will start developing the countries themselves, because a non-poor people is a better customer than a poor one. In the developing countries, many people still harvest their food, and not buying it from the nearest Wal-Mart, get it?
MOAR CUSTOMERS
How about education as a productive use of broadband?
"— like online banking and market tools."
and porn.
is online banking.
This is an issue that affects everyone. My bank is running a promotion. I get free checking if I pay my Nigerian associates using their online "automatic bill pay" option. But, alas, the royal family is using dial-up, and I have to send my checks by USPS.
You haven't even found the real cause! No, cost is no cause. It's a symptom. The real cause is what you get, when you trace it all the way back, until there is no way of tracing it back any further.
I bet $100, that you will come out at the actions of the WTO. (Notoriously known for keeping levels artificially out of balance. At the profit of those, who are the most powerful in the WTO. You know who.)
Of course, in the time between searching for that cause, you can look for options that circumvent the problems at the most widest level possible. Like making it possible for the people there, to create their own, completely independent broadband net from next to no money.
That's yet another reason, why the OLPC project was such a great idea (independent of its execution). One OLPC with a proper Linux installation, and fast long-distance WLAN/WiMax per town, could suffice. Count the people in all developing nations with high bandwidth costs, divide by 1000, and you have a rough estimate for the number of computers you'd need. Then do the rest, just like every other successful charity organization. Make one of those stupid charity festivals. They might be stupid, but they raise large sums of good money in short times. And with being the single most helpful charity plan in the whole wide world (because you don't give fish, but teach how to fish), you have the chances on your side.
Oh, and if you're an engineer: Come up with a really really cheap broadband tower and system, that can basically be built out of trash and by a non-expert. If you do that, you are good with all social urges to help others, for the rest of your life. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
depending on which country you live in, and in which area of the country.
Ridiculously high bandwidth costs are inhibiting developing nations from enjoying ... porn
There, fixed that for you.
Again, this is code for Marxist redistribution of wealth. There will always be developed countries and there will always be 3rd world countries. Nobody has the right to a certain standard of living. The United States went from a small developing nation to a world superpower. Why, hard work and inginuity. China is doing the same now. We are not responsible for every 3rd world toilet.
Came to say this exact thing. Some countries look like they are trying to jump too far ahead while they don't even have the basics covered. If you can't reliably deliver food to your people or provide basic health and medical services the last frickin' thing you and they need is internet access.
But if you live in the developing world, a UNCTAD report paints your picture pretty grim. Ridiculously high bandwidth costs are inhibiting developing nations from enjoying productive use of the internet — like online banking and market tools."
I don't want to sound like a meanie, but by definition, that is a developing nation. We all had to start somewhere and develop into what we are today.
Someone needs to stop thinking broadband is a right. Its not. TV isn't. Radio isn't. You aren't born with a right to broadband internet access.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
Everyone else started with dialup, why can't they?
Further, cell phones are so prevalent in some developing countries even the bums have them. Why not use the wireless infrastructure?
... even have enough money and a computer to even be able to do online banking? I imagine they're far more interested in having potable water, something to eat, and a roof over their heads before they even think about needing a computer or a broadband connection.
Geez. The folks that come up with these studies need to get out a little more.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If UV light is good for drinking water, then why does the CDC recommend against making sun tea? Mmmmm, Alcaligenes viscolactis.
Being dismissive is easy. But online banking improves productivity, especially in rural areas where banks cannot afford to set up branches to serve a few customers. Online banking also eliminates the need to go to the bank. Simply visit the cybercafe and conduct transactions. It is not the luxury that people make it out to be, once they realize how useful it can be.
It is the same with cellphones - they were a luxury earlier. But now, they are necessities in rural areas too. Run a search for Reuters Market Light to see how they have made the cellphone a way of helping farmers earn more money and improve crop production.
Better availability of broadband can open up a new world for rural communities, give them better access to information. There is nothing wrong with striving for better broadband. Other basic needs and the internet are not mutually exclusive.
Why can't we have all of that?
Development is not homogeneous. Some people may still be subsistence farmers with little access to clean water. 150 miles away, someone in a city may have running water, electricity and an office job. But her business is hampered by astronomical communication costs. Her business profits provide tax revenue to the government. If tax revenues go up, the government can do things like improve the roads to the farmer's town so he can get more crops to market and not be a subsistence farmer anymore an just be a farmer who can afford school fees for his children.
the phone and stringing wire and cable costs more because of the climate, the ground tends to flood a lot and won't hold the poles, and the economy is so bad that the technology costs a lot.
My Thai in-laws had ISDN 128K BPS speed but paid a lot for it, and only had the USB interface to it. I wondered why they didn't have DSL or Cable modems, but it seems ISDN is cheaper and uses the ordinary phone lines.
Most Thai people have cell phones because the land near them won't take on ordinary phone lines and cell phones are cheaper than the land based phone. But something like an iPhone or Blackberry costs them like $900USD or almost 30,000 Thai Bhat. Not because they are being price gouged, but because the economy is so bad that technology costs more there. The cost of computers, game consoles, cell phones, DVD players, TV sets, etc are all high because of that. But food and clothes are cheap because they are not technology based and produced by native farms and companies. The technology made by native companies is usually cheaper than technology from foreign companies, but the iPhone, Blackberry, etc are all foreign made.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Guys, you're making yourself look bad with all this "why don't they build roads and proper houses" bullshit. They already have. You think the people in those offshore call centres sit in mud huts?
Brazil? China?
Actually, that was for the fools on AOL, etc. Others of us working in the industry back in the 80's, had "free" connections. Of course, it was to either a university, OR to a high tech company. And when I started, I could not get on the speedy modems of 300, or even the 110. I was restricted to 75 baud. Besides the modem for a 300 was over 1K, which back then WAS a lot of money.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why don't we count ourselves as crippled by broadband costs?
We are, compared to some of the developed nations of the world.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Well when corporations and governments are corrupt, the best way to go is obviously to install (wireless) mesh networking equipment. Essentially you need a few people who can install the alternative firmware onto cheap wireless routers and set an IP-Address. The rest of the people now just need to put those routers in convenient places. As a bonus feature, you could add simple single chip serial terminals into the case and make cheap and tiny internet terminals.
What exactly does "ridiculously high" mean? Is there a definition, or is it more of "I know it, when I see it" kind of thing?
And what is there to do, if, indeed, the costs (rather than the deplorable thirst for profit) make something too expensive to buy?
Does United States get to publish a "study" describing establishing a base on the Moon as "ridiculously expensive"? Can we then shame the rest of humanity into paying for it?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"are inhibiting developing nations from enjoying productive use of the internet -- like online banking and market tools."
There are different levels of development, you know. Do you really think that someone who is starving and has no idea what a computer is for (apart from the kids who play starcraft in internet cafes) needs online banking? What, are those banks starting to accept cows, goats and chickens as deposits? Does a bank really cares about those whole $50 the village managed to save last year? You can pay someone to stand in line for you at the bank, and they will gladly stand there all day for a dollar. And then you think they will open an account? No, that dollar is going straight to the liquor store... or whatever vice is fashionable in their neighborhood.
I LIVE in the "developing world" and know whereof I speak. Those who have money - those who drive the economies, even of these small or poor countries, can afford internet at any price, by satellite or whatever. But Poor Joe Average, well no, he can't afford the internet. And he'd have no idea what to do with it. There's a whole learning curve him and the rest of the population have to go through. But learning takes time and money, and if you're on the verge of starvation, you don't HAVE time and money. You keep doing what you always did.
Lack of internet is not "holding people back". Lack of EDUCATION is, education to get them more productive at whatever it is they do, more efficient, less wasteful of time and resources. THEN they start making money. However someone is still going to have to sew your bras and socks and shirts, someone is going to have to poison himself in the factory making cheap goods for the "developed world", and someone is always going to have to be on the bottom. Though exactly who gets to be on the bottom changes from time to time... kinda like sex.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Just get rid of unnecessary graphics on their webpages and they don't really need "full" broadband. Most of the stuff moving over the web is useless eye-candy or gimmicky JavaScript junk. To do basic stuff requires very little bandwidth (by today's standards) if they simply design web-pages right.
True, international commerce-related info may still be bloated. I've been pondering the idea of a graphics-off-friendly browser addon. Most pages can be browsed with the graphics off if one could choose which graphics to keep activated, such as "image" buttons. Once you mark a page appropriately, then it either only loads those graphics you previously selected as necessary (usually for navigation), or gets them from cache.
Table-ized A.I.
There's a drought in Ethiopia comparable to the one in 1984 that took 1 million lives ... and you're worried about broadband access ?
Get a grip, ffs.
I wouldn't really call it faster for anything mentioned in TFS because of the fact that while you can get a lot of data really fast via pigeon there is terrible latency.
That's nothing compared to the packet loss. Ever get this error with ethernet over copper or fiber?
While America circles the bowl, blowing trillions on saving failed banks and failed wars, the African continent has nowhere to go but up. A 2% per year increase in GDP is looking mighty fine compared to Western nations backsliding into tent cities and soup kitchens.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Who ever knew that Australia was a developing country! Broadband costs here are killer. Oh and we're slipping backwards when it comes to trasnport, health care, employment and education.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Getting rid of the kleptocratic dictatorships goes a long way towards letting Africans solve their own problems.
We might also quit making them live longer, or at least couple it with intensive support for birth control, because while as nice as it is not to die of sleeping sickness or malaria, its very nearly as bad to overpopulate the countryside, forcing unemployed & landless citizens to hang around shantytowns, living in poverty, getting AIDS, joining a criminal gang and/or whatever the local revolutionary militia is this month.
Really, if fucking Westerners would quit thinking they needed to "fix" Africa, we might see Africa fix itself.
I'd also like all the lefties who backed the "people's revolutionary movements" in Africa to step up and take some credit for the shithole they created. My guess is that the overwhelming majority of, say, Zimbabweans would much rather live in a nation run by Ian Smith than one run by Robert Mugabe.
The point here isn't the irony of delivering broadband to lost pygmy tribes with no indoor plumbing.
Hasn't anyone noticed that to use the internet efficiently for even mundane tasks it requires more and more processing power and bandwith? I wouldn't pay for broadband either, since I rarely use the web for video, gaming or large image downloads -- I could easily get by with dial-up and my PowerBook G4. Heck, I was using a circa 1998 Thinkpad two years ago. But both machines became an increasing hassle to use even for basic browsing of primarily text sites due to the ton of gimmicky overhead in the form of useless bells and whistles and un-optimized content.
I agree that people in the 3rd world probably have larger priorities than high-speed internet. But certainly the internet is a tool that they could benefit from, and the sad fact of the matter is that without high-speed, an increasing portion of the internet is functionally inaccessible. That is a legitimately dire state of affairs, IMO.
So, the complaint isn't food, water, safety, nor health. It's on-line banking.
No wonder broadband access is so expensive -- I can't fathom how I'd implement an internet banking integration to my mattress. How would you go through quality assurance to test for bed-bugs?
The OP wasn't referring to actual *banking*, but the jobs that go along with supporting online banking. God knows, Americans are too wealthy, lazy and don't want to those jobs anyway. Viva unemployment benefits!
Companies would not be outsourcing to countries with lower costs of living, where lower salaries go a longer way.
Here in Bosnia and Herzegovina you can get flat rate at our only ISP (HT Mostar) that provides ADSL (with fair use clause, which means it's not flat) internet access for over 40 euro with a 512/64 KBits/s connection (it's a mockery to call it broadband), with a 12 month contract minimum or you pay more. RIP-OFF.
Their advertisements and their behavior make me wanna puke.
I pay 20 for my 2048/256 KBit/s connection with 5 GiB monthly traffic. Seeing as there are 3 more people using the connection other than me, this is barely enough to have decent use of the internet. This means no internet radio, no YouTube and video, no surfing all you want. The last 10 days I can't even do much besides IM and e-mail since I'm always close to the traffic limit. Sure I could go over the limit and get a a much larger bill.
The largest flat rate package (again with the fair use policy) costs over 80 euro. Well, that's monopol.
And no, I don't starve. I have water (most of the time), even though we don't have water supply here (we use large reservoirs and collect rain water). But shit happens and sometimes we run out of water during summer, then we pay someone to get us a cistern of water. Apparently our local government are working on that (yay!). We have food and electricity (most of the time as the infrastructure is a disaster). We aren't dying of starvation like people in Ethiopia, but it is not easy compared to some people in the world who take food, water and electricity for granted.
Could I live without internet? Probably, but probably not as I'm a computer technologies student.
But hey, I want to surf the web, be able to update my OS and software, download Linux distributions and (free) games and play them, keep in touch with my relatives over Skype or other communication means (cause it's way cheaper than what the same company that gives us ADSL charges us for telephone), watch video and listen to internet radio, be part of the community, perform any tasks that for college requires internet, download drivers and other stuff, help my friends remotely over internet (e.g. Remote Desktop). I don't need to download gigabytes of music, videos and games, I just don't want to count every megabyte of traffic I spend in fear that I'll go over the limit and will have to pay more.
Soon Fedora 12 will be released and downloading the Fedora 12 DVD will be a pain, because I can kiss internet access goodbye for most of the month. Let's not mention downloading any extra packages I may need (there are always those) and updating Fedora and other packages over time.
Developing Nations Crippled By Broandband Costs. Well, duh! We're mostly crippled by those monopolistic opportunistic bastards in government and companies who don't give shit about people and progress as long as they have a comfortable life.
All the sexy babes want me... to fix their PC.
I guess that includes Australia then.
There are cities of moderate size (100,000 residents) in the US where there are no decent, cheap solutons for broadband access. Albany, the capitol of New York State, has only cable modems available, and they're slow, unreliable, and expensive. Yet the suburbs of the city of had FiOS for some time. The problem is income disparities - in NYS, poorer zip codes are deprived of DSL while middle class an rich neighborhoods are showered with FiOS. Yet the politicians continue to let Verizon do whatever it wants.
Having access to credit is an incredibly powerful tool. I couldn't have gotten through school without credit. I got a loan online to pay for college. If I was starting a business, opening a line of credit would be a very high priority in my business plan. Microlending is being recognized as a significant opportunity to fight poverty.
While we often use the internet for youtube and forums there is an incredible wealth of knowledge on the internet. I learned more about my profession from the internet than in college. I found the internet more educational than college, while in college.
I am paying the equivalent of $50 USD per month for 2 Mbps ADSL - and I consider myself lucky that the quality is decent.
SARAVA!
And let's not forget the current Mexican Administration, hellbent on establishing a special tax on all telecommunications: cell and landline telephony, internet access, the works.
Absolutely correct.
Africa is all about m-banking at the moment. It's extremely popular,all mobile operators are rolling it out: http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/-/539444/606272/-/rv5n6h/-/index.html
Next step would definitly be online banking, as in, not tied to a mobile operator, using (much cheaper) IP than mobile connections, and if the banks can finally get serious, proper banks running it.
Economic Growth != Socio-economic Growth
UNHRC Resolution
US Congress Resolution
Prime Minister of India
This whole topic seems to be slanted towards capitalism being the only true way to enlightenment. I disagree. What people here are arguing for is the right to become a wage slave for some huge corporation, probably located overseas. Why ?
You can't have any of the modern "conveniences" without paying somebody else for the privilege. Online banking ? That assumes that a central banking organisation is a good thing. I disagree, they are all corrupt in one way or another, and lead to the publics wealth being funnelled into private hands. Good transport links ? So you have to pay taxes to support a government who pay private companies to produce roads so that you can buy cars from private companies and buy oil and gas from private companies to power those cars which you never needed in the past. Why would a rural farmer need to transport produce further afield ? To make more profit ? Why ? Because it's being forced upon him. If he's happy growing enough food for the local people and gets a good return on that, it is pure greed to try and make more. Rich != happy.
But of course this is a US site so I'll be called a troll, modded flamebait and otherwise argued into the ground by people who believe that the debating system you practised at school is actually a legitimate way of discussing things. It's not. You have to step away from the ideology and work from the ground up. I hate having to work. I am prepared to do it to get what I need, but to be forced to take part just to enable a third party to get even richer is not part of the deal. Broadband for developing nations ? Listen to yourselves. Maybe you think that because you have to do it, so should everybody else. Hardly freedom is it ?
You might argue that we need services like police to keep some kind of order, and that has to be paid for. Yes, we do need policing, but surely the cost of providing the police should be met by those who commit crime ? Unless you follow that method, you end up with the situation we are seeing now, where police are becoming more about prevention than cure, and because they're so entrenched, they become the executors of government will instead of our servants. If all criminals had to pay for their deeds instead of being fed, educated and watered at public expense, maybe there would be less criminals. Ideally the police force would gradually dwindle and become a part of history. Instead, they are growing, and not because of a rise in crime, just because of a rise in criminal statutes. And what causes that rise ? We do, by demanding the government DO SOMETHING about every little nitpick that affects our perceived profit making ability.
Money isn't evil, the love of money is, and capitalism is the love of money for its own sake. You have to accumulate more of it or you aren't a good little capitalist. That is wrong. And to commercially impose the same set of twisted rules on developing countries is wrong. The US is supposed to stand for freedom, but instead it's imposing their definition of freedom on other countries. And contrary to popular belief, the US way is not the best so far. It's not even the best at the moment. People like Mugabe are the ultimate capitalists. They want it all for themselves and fuck everybody else. Is that a good economic model ? Most billionaires will claim that they don't do it for the money, it's all about "keeping score" they say. Unfortunately, that implies that the higher the score the better you are. So it is definitively about accumulation of as much money as you can get. Are we all doomed to become ferengi whether we like it or not ?
I'm writing from an East African country where we are paying $500 for WIMAX monthly after being tortured by a big telecoms inability to implement ASDL an Internet services with any degree of customer or technical service. First of all, I wanted to mention that if you care about this at all, come volunteer in Africa in technology support. Some of the more idealistic suggestions on this thread such as the wireless mesh network need a critical mass of IT people to create the idea that community IT is possible. Otherwise, people just will use half-baked service companies and stagnant telecom based ISPs who never clean up their act or run a decent network. Also, the shortage of technicians is driving up the costs just as much as the shortage of customers. We recently switched to a WIMAX network and $250 was what we paid (after hefty discount) for a two hour wiring between antennae and router. Of course, computer services aren't important as food and basic infrastructure. However, where will those improvements come without development of some kind or another. These days information technology has a supporting role in most other development work. For example, at my volunteer in a developing African nation, we are too small and short-staffed to host mails servers in our New York and East African offices. So we use a managed web mail solution. When our Internet connectivity is hosed, staff can't work. Bandwidth is not the only obstacle to getting people to participate in knowledge economies. There are many rip-offs. In 2008, in my area, you could pay $300 for a highly used Pentium 111. Yet another problem we are facing is a lack of exposure to FOSS ideas. Therefore most of the user population is using cracked Windows and the scene is malware laden. Hard to take advantage of any bandwidth when the whole country is probably a bot-net. In short, yes bandwidth costs are a real problem inhibiting development. Many people in the continent feel improving the IT situation is a valid and real goal which requires more human resources.
Sure, most of these countries have a lot of other, bigger, problems.
But to totally ignore "small" problems because you're so focused on the "big" problems - as a general rule, that doesn't make sense. Heck, because they're "smaller", you might just be able to handle them, whereas you wouldn't be able to get *anything* done on the big problems due to to *their* size.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
for e.g. in India there is no corruption free delivery system.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
Yeah, Compuserve rates were even more exorbitant, but I couldn't recall those off the top of my head and was too lazy to look it up --- Delphi was probably the least expensive connection, but I can't recall those rates either.
Even for those w/ ``free'' connections, someone was footing a similar bill --- the bottom line is, building the initial infrastructure is expensive and someone has to pay for it.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
To effectively communicate or do online banking all you need is 33k modem. You don't need broadband. Let them start from lower lever first if they can't afford watching YouTube in HD.