Slashdot Mirror
How Africa Will 'Leapfrog' Wired Networks
umarkalim writes "In an interview with Al Jazeera, Les Cottrell at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory explains how Africa will actually 'leapfrog' the need to install hard-wired cables. He says it's often overlooked that the continent is huge and that the countries are diverse. He says, 'the cost of the infrastructure is quite high, especially if you have to connect every home with copper cables and fiber-optic cables ... I think in many cases Africa will actually "leapfrog" the need to install hard-wired cables everywhere, and will be able to use different techniques such as the BRCK modem, the low-earth orbiting satellites or the 3G solutions to get connectivity to where they need.'"
I still can't "leapfrog" wireless in my house. Running CAT6 all over the damn place.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
all the houses need power anyway... as my grandfather said if you're riding the hog anyway you may as well ride it to work.
They are leapfrogging wired because every time they lay down wires it gets stolen and sold on the black market. The news was talking about that years ago. It's forcing them to use wireless.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Yes. But that's somewhat orthogonal to the discussion, in the sense that Africa really has a lot of unresolved issues that won't go away until a lot of people die. Europe went out and conquered the world from 1500-1900, and then immolated itself in two huge wars in the twentieth century that fundamentally came down to questions of governance. Africa has to have some of those kind of wars, where everyone loses, before its people will accept suboptimal solutions.
Yes, it is...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Not necessarily.
You're sharing SPECTRUM with everyone and their brother. And that's actually even worse.
And building capacity for wireless is non-trivial as well. It's not just a matter of putting up another access point or uplink.
Example: GenCon.
Downtown Indianapolis has a plethora of connection options. Wired, wireless, cellular, etc.
On a Friday evening it just doesn't matter. Getting online via ANY means is a joke. You're better off with IP over smoke signal. As 50,000 people (over twice the population of the city I live in and an increase in Indy's total population to the tune of about 5-6%) in the area blitz the available spectrum for wifi and cellular, while wired connections in the hotels are drowned by rooms filled to capacity and everyone sporting a laptop/tablet/etc. And it's a static population increase for those 4-5 days.
Granted, in much of Africa, the population density is NOWHERE near that high. But you also have the same problems you would laying out a "universal" internet or power grid in the US. You have densely populated areas that are difficult and expensive to build capacity into. And you have very sparsely populated areas where people building the capacity likely will never see a return on investment. And the latter actually outnumbers the former by an order of magnitude or more. And Africa is the same thing, but with over 3x the landmass and population.
If something like this was going to be as simple as they're talking about, it'd have been done already.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
...shouldn't they focus on law and order first?
Sure, fine, but good communication and coordination are necessary elements of law and order, from developing a cultural intolerance for corruption right down to the cop on his beat and emergency numbers.
The moral of the story is, nothing comes 'first' before communications technology, because everything you do benefits from better comms capability, whether it's knowing the market price of the grain you grow, or finding job opportunities in your city, or organising a community protest, or just using plain old wikipedia to supplement your need for basic facts.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Wireless gets them some access which is better than nothing but not even close to fiber. Your not going to magic around the spectrum issues .
Yep, it would be much more accurate to say they're leapfrogging past copper - which is a Good Thing. But fibre isn't optional, not even with O3B's MEO satellites in the picture. If you look at the submarine cable map, you can pretty much see at a glance which countries are more aggressive about internet and technology in general, and which ones are being left behind. Fibre is going to be needed in most urban areas, even if it doesn't ultimately consist of FTTH.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Actually, do you know which country in Africa has the cheapest cell phone providers?
Somalia.
(ref: http://www.economist.com/node/5328015)
Somalia fascinates me from a free-society perspective. Usually Somalia is the punchline of some attempt to troll a libertarian, but if you actually look at what's happening there, it's quite fascinating.
This paper is one of my favorites. Take a look, you may be surprised:
http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Wireless gets them some access which is better than nothing but not even close to fiber. Your not going to magic around the spectrum issues .
This.
But the biggest issue in Africa is not spectrum (yet) it's copper theft.
This is pretty much the only reason wireless is better than wired. There are very few components worth stealing.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
In the late 90's several African countries were going cellular only, outside of major cities.
This article is 15 years out of date.
One of my company's clients at the time was the Republic of the Congo.
Nothing like first hand knowledge.
I'm glad that the amount you care is above minimum (I believe the phrase you are too ignorant to quote is "coundn't care less"). To address your ignorance further:
* The commercials for African charities are not representative of an entire fucking continent.
* Telegraph came before radio (which was initially called "wireless telegraph") and what the hell does itunes have to do with wireless vs wired?
Are you 10 years old? What idiot modded you up?
If you look at the submarine cable map [submarinecablemap.com], you can pretty much see at a glance which countries are more aggressive about internet and technology in general
Kind of interesting.
If you look at the US there are lots of submarine cables but most of them are heading out across the ocean to europe and asia with a few links heading up along the coast to alaska and south/central america. If you look at europe you see the occasional coast hugging submarine cable but most of the submarine cables are either crossing a local body of water (e.g. english channel, mediteranian sea, north sea, baltic sea ) or heading off towards America or africa/asia. Australasia is a similar picture, there are submarine cables sure but they are either connecting islands or heading off out the area. I interpret this to mean that the overland infrastructure is good enough and the countries trust their neighbours enough that submarine cables are only used when there is a good technical reason for using them.
On the other hand if you look at The middle east, africa, south and east asia and south america you see the map is dominated by cables hugging the coast with lots of landing points (virtually every non-landlocked country is hooked up to at least one of the coast hugging cables). I interpret this to mean that either the overland infrastructure in those areas sucks and/or the countries don't trust their neighbours.
In a couple of places (libya, angola, south africa) I even see cables that only land in one country but hug the coast landing repeatedly. This really suggests that the conditions for building overland infrastructure in those places must suck.
I also notice that a lot of the so called "undersea cables" from europe to asia cut across land in Egypt to get from the Mediterranean sea to the gulf of Suez. Could be nasty if egypt stops being friendly with the west.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Downtown Indianapolis has a plethora of connection options. Wired, wireless, cellular, etc.
On a Friday evening it just doesn't matter. Getting online via ANY means is a joke. You're better off with IP over smoke signal. As 50,000 people (over twice the population of the city I live in and an increase in Indy's total population to the tune of about 5-6%) in the area blitz the available spectrum for wifi and cellular, while wired connections in the hotels are drowned by rooms filled to capacity and everyone sporting a laptop/tablet/etc. And it's a static population increase for those 4-5 days.
What you have described, Sir, is a problem of having not enough bandwidth on the outbound pipes connecting Indianapolis to the outside world.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !