Connectivity Providers Database

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 14:39:44 -0800 (PST) From: "Steven G. Huter" <sghuter@nsrc.org> To: nsrc@nsrc.org cc: Steven Goldstein <sgoldste@nsf.gov> Subject: Rebel-held Congo hooks up to Internet using radio waves Rebel-held Congo hooks up to Internet using radio waves Copyright © 1999 Nando Media Copyright © 1999 Associated Press By HRVOJE HRANJSKI Africa News Online http://www.techserver.com/noframes/story/0,2294,12166-20634-151610-0,00.html GOMA, Congo (January 28, 1999 1:59 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - There are no telephones in rebel-held eastern Congo, but there is the Internet. Access to cyberspace will cost you a dollar per kilobyte. A dollar for about 150 words of text sounds expensive for the country impoverished by a second civil war in as many years. But Bushnet, a small, Ugandan-based telecommunication company, says it offers the cheapest way of sending and receiving e-mail: through a shortwave radio between Goma, the eastern rebel stronghold, and the Ugandan capital Kampala, where it is connected to a standard telephone line. The technology is nothing new in Africa. Shortwave radio is a telephone where there are none. It is used from Somali deserts to Congo's forests by aid workers, warlords and missionaries. It is often the only source of information from remote settlements. Now, with $1,600 of equipment that includes a desktop computer, Bushnet is selling the e-mail service in Congo, where it started with Goma and has plans to link up at least two dozen other towns in remote forests effectively accessible only by air. "This is the only way to communicate from the bush for a dollar a page," said Bushnet's representative in Goma, Taty Kaliba. "It is cheaper than a satellite link, and we are not paying for radio frequency." Bushnet is using an Australian-made Codan HF Data Modem which is linked to a radio and a computer. Only one person can use it at a time. Every morning, the editor of the Temps Present newspaper collects the latest wire reports sent by radio from Kampala for his paper. Kaliba gives his friend a discount, and promises that he never charges full price except if it is only a page, roughly one kilobyte. "Well, it's expensive, but we have no other way of sending e-mail," said Claude Rwiyereka, another subscriber. Kaliba said most of the money goes to the typist, who keys in every word on a single keyboard. Web browsing is not possible and the quality of the shortwave connection is not good enough to carry pictures. "We already have 210 subscribers in Goma alone," Kaliba said. "Everybody is using us - the rebels, the missionaries, journalists, students." Although potentially one of the richest countries in Africa - with vast reserves of copper, cobalt, gold, diamonds and oil and rich in timber, tea, coffee and agricultural goods - decades of misrule and corruption under former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko left Congo with crumbling or nonexistent infrastructure. Even the rebels who took up arms in August to topple President Laurent Kabila, accusing him of the same sins as Mobutu, are sending and receiving documents via radio. At first, the rebel coalition of ethnic Tutsis, disaffected Congolese soldiers and opposition politicians confiscated Bushnet equipment and cut the lines on the local Telecel cell phone network - the only working telephone system in what was formerly Zaire. The rebels feared messages could reach their enemies in the capital, Kinshasa. In November, as they swept through the eastern half of Africa's third-largest nation, the rebels returned the equipment to Bushnet's local operator and signed up as just another subscriber for $30 a month. The Telecel Network, which is partly owned by a South African company, now operates only within Goma, using an outdated analog network. Most mobile systems now operate on digital networks, which can also be used to transmit data.