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How Mobile Operators Are Caught In the Middle In the Middle East and Africa
First time accepted submitter singinho writes "In times of political turmoil, operators are caught in the middle, between the wishes of the regime and the communications needs of the public. Orange exec Marc Rennard explains how he is forced to risk the lives of his employees." Companies operating with the blessing of any particular regime end up in some interesting predicaments; trying to keep communications open in a place like Mali (one of the places Rennard oversees) must make for some exciting work days for the guys in the field.
America's answering machine:
We would love to come liberate you, but our last 2 liberation actions from evil groups didn't go so well. We miss the days of the grateful Filipinos, Germans, French, Polish, Japanese, Koreans, and Kuwaitis. Please leave a message, and we will get back to you when our population has the stomach for war. BEEP!
sudo make me a sandwich
Whose laws?
When a country has multiple groups claiming to be the government which set do you follow?
What about when the government is obviously not legitimate?
Yeah, a real hero that guy. Snakes in suits... a real good read.
Watch out or you'll be Caught in the Middle in the Middle.
A similar crisis to when your appetite's pokin' atcha, pokin' atcha.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
He was discussing a moral obligation to attempt to keep the lines of communication up. He never said he could not keep them up, or that he could not stay in business. Perhaps you should actually read the article. Mmm Kay?
Whose laws?
When a country has multiple groups claiming to be the government which set do you follow?
When there is ambiguity on who is in charge, do you think there would be respect for the laws, whomsoever made them?
What about when the government is obviously not legitimate?
Rennard is not a judge, to pass judgment or rule on legitimacy. If he feels threatened operating in a country, legitimate or not, he should pull out his employees. Their security is more important than his desire to make money operating in an obviously illegitimate domain.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I thought companies don't care about anything except profit for their directors... People are just "living assets"....they come and go....
When a country has multiple groups claiming to be the government which set do you follow?
Whichever one has the gun aimed at you :/
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He can opt to pack all his employees and leave, without risking their lives.
Absolutely. Indeed, as he is quoted in the article:
Firstly, we have to protect our 2,000 employees in this region ... You just have to be able to protect your people in the country."
The article goes on to ask whether Orange has a corporate responsibility to keep communications running in situations such as this, and Rennard replies:
“In the end, I decided to send just three members of staff back, because if the network goes down, the public will ask, where were you when we needed you? But if I send these three guys back, and one of them is killed, that is on my conscience and I have to live with that. It’s not an easy decision to make, but this is my job.”
Whose laws? When a country has multiple groups claiming to be the government which set do you follow?
What about when the government is obviously not legitimate?
Orange basically goes where nobody else wants to go or where no sane company would ever operate to get money. They haven't really been able to compete very well with bigger, established players in more developed countries (with some exceptions) so they look for what you might call "garbage revenue streams" by going where there's little to no competition. Given that, they're likely to listen to anybody in charge and not ask questions if they think that doing so will preserve their revenue streams. This leads to a bit of a balancing act where they can't completely turn their backs on the people in charge and get kicked out of the country, but they also can't be completely irresponsible to their customer base either for fear of losing customers. But if they think that turning off the network today will enable them to get paid tomorrow, they'll do it.
So management at US mobile operators should be asking, "How can we become more like Africa?"
Have gnu, will travel.
I believe his employees should be free to make that choice. If he is not paying them enough to deal with the hazards I would think they would quit.
Now if he is misleading them in anyway, that is another issue.
This is really what these guys are going through!
I'd imagine that these guys are the ones that would see the most value in the sorts of long-duration persistent experiments in putting repeaters, etc. into aerostats, drones, even low-altitude satellites, etc - it would seem that getting the hardware into the stratosphere would provide three huge advantages:
1) on a tactical level it gets your hardware up out of the reach of people, generally. I have to imagine that vandalism, theft, and malicious mischief makes the maintenance of (even something as capital-cheap as) a cell network a bloody challenge (sometimes literally)
2) on a more strategic level, having these things up out of (easy) reach of a government can likewise somewhat allow the carrier to maintain a neutrality as far as traffic that they might otherwise find difficult. Governments have many, many ways that they can put pressure on carriers organizationally and financially, sure, but at least this would remove one lever. (OK, it wouldn't be removed; a government could likely take down a persistent UAV given enough motivation - but launching a ground to air missile is a little more obvious and blatant.)
3) finally, to have the hardware easily-removable from the geographic area.
-Styopa
I work in the 5th poorest country in the world (Guinea-Bissau, West Africa) where Orange is the only internet provider and one of the three telecom providers. Last report I saw, we, the 5th poorest country, have THE most expensive (for what you get) telecom/internet service in the world.
I spent a lot of time researching autocratic leaders (call them Dictators, or just "Dicks" if you like) when writing the Dictator's Handbook (http://www.dictatorshandbook.net/) and the research shows that despite promises to the contrary about the benefits of privatization, clever dictators can still have their way with privately-run services like cellphone companies. It's normal - almost expected - in much of the world for calls to be monitored, intercepted, dropped, and blocked. Everyone knows the SMS outage stories (Belarus, Russia, Egypt, to name just a few) but it goes way beyond that. Most of the commercial gadget conveniences that have made life easier have benefitted autocrats as well, who have new ways to track, monitor, and basically hassle its people. Chapters 4 and 11 of the Handbook cover it in depth. Now we get to smart phones, facebook accounts, linkedin profiles, and all the happy social media stuff: it's all a treasure trove for autocrats. The research dug up anecdotes about Iranians dragged in for questioning and presented with copies of their own email, cellphone call record, and worse.
If you want to weaken dictators, I don't think Twitter is the way to go. Shortwave radio was just as effective, if not more, and it was a hell of a lot harder to block. Cellphone operators are absolutely in a tough spot: required to meet quality-of-service rules while simultaneously kissing the Dictator's Ass. It's not an enviable place to be in, I can assure you.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
The better question is; how hard is it to operate in Middle Earth?
Watch out or you'll be Caught in the Middle in the Middle. A similar crisis to when your appetite's pokin' atcha, pokin' atcha.
That's when you get a Snickers! Not sure if it would work that same when you're in the Middle in the Middle...
I am no randroid. I just know that someone has to do these things, or the world would be even worse.
I would say for a few million a year I might take that risk. I would also want a very large company paid life insurance policy.
I would even support a minimum wage for this kind of hazardous work set at some multiple of normal pay. Maybe 10X or 100X.
If a company is offering a very high pay or life insurance they have an incentive to pay for protection. Hiring "contractors" is nothing new.
Life insurance for these kinds of fields prices in that risk, it will not be revoked.