c.Figallo

Archive for December, 2008

My first experience of being online was in 1983 when I was introduced to email at the offices of the Whole Earth Software Catalog. I was tracking the software and hardware we were receiving and distributing for review, using the first suitcase-like model of Compaq PC, but our few modems were connected to Kaypro PCs running the CPM operating system.

The fast modems at that time were rated at 300 baud. By 1985, when the WELL went into operation, we were using real speedballs – 1200 bps (bits per second) Racal Vadic modems. A year later, 2400 bps, then 5600 bps and soon after that 14.4 kpbs as the commercial Internet came into being.

I bring this up because Jerry Michalski sent a tweet the other day from Zanzibar, which he described as going out through a 300 baud connection. I’ll have to ask him when he gets home, but I don’t know if that was simply the effective speed of the connection or if someone in that neck of the woods was actually operating an ancient Hayes modem.

In some recent contract work, I had to investigate the availability of Internet access in Tanzania (another country Jerry just visited), and as primitive as the connectivity seems to be, I found that a revolution may be on its way.

An undersea fiber cable is being laid along the East coast of Africa that will bring true broadband to many people who have been sipping at the Internet through tiny straws. VSAT satellite dishes serve some of the larger, more successful businesses in Tanzania, but most users have access to only a tiny portion of that bandwidth. Dialup connections from rural areas are not only slow, but brutally expensive.

Another ray of hope will come next year when the first of the O3B (other 3 billion) low level orbit satellites are launched, targetting the rural populations that currently go without a connection to the Net.

Given the huge needs for development in places like Tanzania and most of the southern hemisphere, the arrival of usable bandwidth on the Net will open a lot of possibilities across the region, with even more dramatic changes in store than we experienced here in the U.S.