KalahariLog

Three weeks, to the day, since we arrived, we finally have a connection to the internet at home! We are supposed to get about 128Kbps but so far it seems more like 20-60Kbps. Still, this is an order of magnitude faster than what I get at work. A couple of days ago I talked with the head of the IT department at the University. He told me lots of fascinating facts and figures about internet in Africa. The University is connected to the rest of the world on a 7Mbps connection, spread out between 2-3 different providers.

So why are the individual connections to the outside world (for example, my office computer) so slow? It seems that most University staff with a computer on their desk, be they professors, administration, or staff, have at least one Audio or Video streaming application going at any given time. I saw this myself during the first couple of weeks, when I had to go from office to office to get unordinary amounts of paperwork taken care off: literally every computer that I saw was playing music and none seemed to be using CD's.

If I am doing the math right, it seems that the University is paying over 2 million USD per year for its internet connection and most bandwidth is taken by non-essential transfers, rendering the connection nearly useless for those who actually want to do work (or as the case may be, remotely check email). It is also worthwhile to mention that as far as internet connectivity goes, Africa is way behind Europe, North America, and even Asia. The costs for intenet connections are outrageously high as most connections go through satellite companies whose rates are as high as their satellites' orbits. To put things in perspective, Botswana is the 3rd best connected country on the continent. And I've been told repeatedly that should be happy to get my 20Kbps at $130USD per month...

Today we had a fairly good-quality video conference with Joe and a pretty poor-quality one with Alex. Both Alex and Joe are working on their PhD theses and I trying to stay in touch. It seems that Mac-to-Mac via iChat works fine even with less than 128Kbps while Mac-to-PC doesn't quite work with low bandwidth. Hopefully, Alex can use the Macs in our department and starting next week we'll have regular video conferences. Hurray for technology!