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.
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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.