VoIP Booming in Africa 172
securitas writes "The NY Times reports on the rapid growth of voice-over-IP telephony (VoIP) in sub-Saharan Africa and the battles it is waging with the government monopolies/ILECs. VoIP upstarts are taking market share from the government telcos, making it vastly more affordable to make a phone call since they don't charge the usual exorbitant tariffs and excessive user fees. Governments have responded by shutting down these operations, seizing equipment and cutting off service to lines they suspect of using Internet telephony. Part of the boom is related to the wait times for getting a phone line (Ghana Telecom has a backlog of 300,000 line requests), poor quality of service (50% of time you get a busy signal instead of a dial-tone) plus the willingness to trade voice quality for basic service. Foreign companies are now setting up VoIP call centers and multinationals like gold giant Newmont Mining plan to use VoIP for communications in and out of Africa. Some observers call Accra the next Bangalore, predicting a boom for the region that may make sub-Saharan Africa a major technology hub. This fits nicely with Kofi Annan's drive to use the Internet and wireless networks to change the lives of the poor."
The next Bangalore... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The next Bangalore... (Score:1)
Re:The next Bangalore... (Score:3, Insightful)
From what they talk about in the article, it already seems there's a call center there, which is being used to sell services in the northeastern US. Despite the claims of the article though, places like Ghana (which is really one of the better off places in Africa) still lack the resources that places like India have. Programming jobs are outsourced to India because 1) there is an education system there that produces a work force capable of doing that ki
Re:The next Bangalore... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is really the key. Without the lower cost, why outsource at all?
Re:The next Bangalore... (Score:1, Insightful)
Would you be pissed if your job was taken over by a robot? Why do you get pissed if it's taken over by a fellow human? Why not just ask for welfare rather than burden someone trying to run a business?
Provide less value? Unprofitable? Get outsourced.
Anyway, it's going to be USA -> Bangalore -> Africa
-Johan
Re:The next Bangalore... (Score:1)
Interesting concept, but welfare comes from the taxes paid by citizens & corporations.. corporations & wealthy citizens (e.g. busines owners) pay a vast majority of the taxes, so either way it's the same deal.
Actually (Score:1)
Yes I would be pissed off if my job was taken over by a robot. I dont like the new automated self healing server technology, that makes me and all my knowledge and certifications useless.
Do you think I have the time and money to not only compete with 6 billion people, but machines too?
Re:The next Bangalore... (Score:2)
And how long until our boys have to lug around the Saharan Torpedo?
Re:Robots versus Humans (Score:2)
Re:Robots versus Humans (Score:1, Insightful)
Unemployed people are starving and dying. Tech workers are _not_ being exploited in India.
Re:Robots versus Humans (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Robots versus Humans (Score:2)
It depends. (Score:1)
I dont think programmers would be happy if computers programmed themselves.
I dont think repairmen would be happy if robots repaired computers.
people who get layed off arent happy period, it doesnt matter if you got layed off because someone else took your job or because a computer did it.
The difference is this, when a computer in the USA takes your job, at least the USA is making money off of it, when your job is shipped overseas now some other country is making money off of it, no taxes are paid, no ben
Re:Robots versus Humans (Score:1)
In the end, unless we leave capitalism behind, and work out some sort of feasible socialist (star trek style..) government, we're never going to be a
Im not exactly pro robot. (Score:1)
Robots are good for labor based jobs, robots are bad if they learn to think.
Self healing PCs, or PCs which can physically repair themselves would be a nightmare, self programming computers would basically end capitalism as we know it.
Re:Robots versus Humans (Score:2)
Your mileage may vary (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Your mileage may vary (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Your mileage may vary (Score:5, Interesting)
I just started using Vonage's VoIP for a second line (email me for a referral/discount), and the quality is fine. I had to do some QoS tinkering on my firewall, but now the VoIP traffic has priority over other network traffic and call quality is consistent. Before the QoS tinkering, the calls would sound horribly choppy when I started a large download.
Leased lines, Internet backbone, VoIP QoS (Score:4, Interesting)
but as a professional business tool I don't think VoIP is there yet for rock solid stability and clear communciation
As a professional business tool, as it's discussed in the article, companies like Newmont (the second largest gold producer in the world) will most likely use dedicated or leased lines (and probably VPN for security) to get to the Internet backbone, at which point VoIP's QoS has a much higher likelihood of being stable and clear.
A company like Newmont will not allow critical corporate communications to be transmitted with a technology that can't perform to the high levels that it is accustomed to. Newmont can afford the best, so this seems to be an indication that whatever VoIP solution Newmont is using is more than capable of handling the task.
Re:Your mileage may vary (Score:1)
Better than what they have now (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember, we aren't talking just about business, we are talking about empowering the little guy to have access to the outside world. The more access to means of communication, the less they can be controlled and oppressed by others.
The quality bar has been lowered by mobile phones (Score:3, Interesting)
I use VoIP all day (I have a nice commercial Quintum gateway at home, and at each of our offices). I will get calls from co-workers on my cell, and if I get frustrated (often) I will call them back over VoIP with MUCH better performance. All of our inter-office voice traffic is VoIP.
Your problem
Re:Your mileage may vary (Score:2)
With a bit of luck... (Score:5, Insightful)
...this will be the start of the demise of telephone networks - at least over in Africa, anyway. VoIP is getting more and more refined, along with more and more applications, such as the GPL'd Asterisk [asterisk.org] software PABX system. Most of the larger PABX systems I've seen around give the capability for VoIP links to other offices and if suitable gateways become more widely available, the move to VoIP will slowly but surely become more widespread as the larger companies that deal with the countries that have widespread VoIP penetration start to use those links to reduce the cost of making phone calls.
Can't come soon enough for my liking.Irony? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is but one more great example of how monopolies can be good for markets; Put enough pressure on a resource, and people will find alternatives.
It would be great if this could help uplift the entire continent, but I still have my doubts. Corporations bring in the money, and no corporation is going to set up shop in a country with no stable government... which seems to be a real theme on that continent.
Re:Irony? (Score:1)
Re:Irony? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure how this monopoly situation is really good for the market in general. If there wasn't all of this gov't monopoly pressure, maybe the money being invested in lower-quality VoIP would be invested in building a half-way decent phone system. The way things are now, only people with access to high speed internet (via radio or satelite or whatever) see
Re:Irony? (Score:3, Informative)
Circuit-switched telephone networks aren't actually costly to build nowadays -- the competitive-bid price of circuit-switching (TDM) gear is a small fraction of what it was 15 years ago. Lucent and Nortel stock suffers as a result. Undersea cable bandwidth is also much, much cheaper. If one evaluates the cost of building a new wireline network from scratch, then TDM/circuit is not much costlier than VoIP; it coul
Re:Irony? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all; that's exactly where you'd expect it to happen first. In more advanced countries, you'd expect the established phone companies to have the clout to block it.
But it's not even true that third-world nations were first. There have already been a lot of stories about how most of the new phone service in Japan is now VoIP. And Japan isn't exactly a third-world nation.
The real puzzle is why Nippon Tel didn't manage to block it.
Here in the US, we've been reading about how the phone system has gone to IP for essentially all long-distance traffic. But the phone companies have done a good job of blocking VoIP at the retail level, because this would destroy their main source of income.
Re:Irony? (Score:2)
-- PhoneBoy
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Irony? (Score:2)
Legal? Probably, if only because there's no law specifically forbidding it. Slimy? Absolutely.
Fortunately, I don't have AT&T Broadband, er, Comcrap. Of course, I dunno if Charter is any better, but at least they haven't blocked SIP traffic to Vonage yet.
-- PhoneBoy
Re:Irony? (Score:2)
You have it backwards. In more advanced countries you would expect the competing entities in the country to be vying for customers by introducing new technologies and racing to see who can stay ahead of the competition. When you have large entrenched powers stifling innovation, then your country no longer belongs in that coveted "more ad
Re:Irony? (Score:1)
Ironic, or to be expected? (Score:2, Insightful)
I am not sure it is ironic. On the contrary, it may be expected. Since they do not have the same existing infrastructure, and investment in and desire to depreciate same, it is easier for them to start over from scratch. They may not have to worry to the same extent about obsoleting existing equipment and infrastructure overnight, bankrupting companies and people, and threatening the powers that be.
Re:Irony? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not ironic at all. And I think, it's also not too much related to
competition, but rather to the history of the market.
Let me explain my view: I'm german, but live in Spain since a few years.
Germans perceive Spain as "10 years" behind, when it comes to technology.
This is definately not true. There's only little technological research
and development going on in Spain (a lot less than in Germany). But on the
other hand, Spain doesn't have the same legacy!
While Germany, as a first minute adopter, employs less-than-state-of-the-art
system and keeps them running (because it was a huge financial investment),
"2nd category" countries like Spain can directly head towards the refined
essence of the technology. Until no more than 3 years ago, Germany still had
a considerable market share of analog cellular phones, while Spain was
practically 100% digital.
There are hundreds of similar examples. Because Spain doesn't invent all
the stuff, they don't hurry to get stuck with expensive first generation
prototypes. They just relax, lets stuff grow and madurate, and ignore
comments about being "behind". As soon as the technology is ready and
cheap, they employ it en gros within very little time. They overtake
the leader, and with only a fraction of the financial investment.
Of course, without 1st generation adopters there wouldn't be and 2nd
generation. So the germans aren't as stupid as it appears here. But in
my opinion, this mechanism is definately involved when African countries
use better technology than the USA or Europe...
Marc
Why no VoIP? In the West QoS and revenues rule all (Score:3, Insightful)
Historically Africa has had a whole series of problems that we aren't going to get deep into here, including the legacy of colonialism, wars (part of the legacy), famine and disease. These problems have prevented African nations from reaching their full potential and resulted in an underdeveloped telecom infrastructure (among other things, but that's for another discussion).
In the West, which has had relative stability for the last 60 years, the
Re:Why no VoIP? In the West QoS and revenues rule (Score:2)
are out-to or in-from a crappy cellphone, voip
can't hurt my average call line quality much if
any.
VoIP in the 1st world (was Re:Irony?) (Score:1)
See.Digitalphone [digitalphone.ch] for the details (click in the upper left corner for the right language). And yes, this is for people who don't even have a POTS line at home, in direct competition to our monopolist Swisscom.
Re:Irony? (Score:2, Funny)
No, iron would be a metal.
VoIP-Ipv6-hexadecimal! (Score:1)
Re:VoIP-Ipv6-hexadecimal! (Score:2)
Not to mention a bountiful supply of nourishing food.
Is there anything Kofi can't do? My Hero! <roll eyes>
getting rid of boom and rumble (Score:3, Funny)
VoIP Booming in Africa
A good highpass filter will take care of that booming which is usually caused by microphone handling. Set your rolloff at about 50Hz.
*RIMSHOT*
Famine and war are also booming in Africa.. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Famine and war are also booming in Africa.. (Score:2)
Karma: Was great until I cast aspersions at Kofi Annan by likening him to Bill Gates on
Re:Famine and war are also booming in Africa.. (Score:1)
Most people take the telephone for granted. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Most people take the telephone for granted. (Score:1)
Re:Most people take the telephone for granted. (Score:2)
Yes I can... That's why I'm proud to live in a country with tons of gun-carrying crazies... It's funny, people always say how much they hate having crazy gun-nuts around, but they take so many things for granted that are actually protected by the gun-toting nuts.
Even if a politician like Bush could -uccessfully work-over our government and bend it to their will, they'd still have to be careful not to i
Re:gun rights do NOT protect liberties (Score:2)
Secondly, things like tanks aren't of any use at all in urban combat. About the only option the military has to do is to kill everyone, or fight on disadvantageous terms.
Third, guerrilla warfare has time and time again has allowed a "weak" force to overcome monumentally powerful forces.
Terrorists have shown, ti
And yet the 419s keep coming. (Score:5, Funny)
I am Neal, Boy of Cow, and I please to have your assistance! My father was the operator of a VoIP service until the government of Ghana have responded by shutting down the VoIP operation, seizing his equipment and cutting off service to lines it suspect of using Internet telephony. I have an OC-48 of bandwidth available for all ur spamming need, but 1st u must deposit me the IP addresses of 256 open proxies of stupid lusers with open proxies on verizon.net, attbi.com, rr.com, charter.com, or cogentco.com! PLS HELP, U HELP ME, I CAN HELP U! GOD BLESS U!!!1!
Re:And yet the 419s keep coming. (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/search?q=419 [google.com]
Cost (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cost (Score:3, Informative)
Does your phone company require a "hot" line for DSL? They (often) don't here; you can have DSL without even paying for dial tone service, and at prices roughly equal to what you describe. So, even at your asymmetric rates that comes to $4 a lin
Re:Cost (Score:2)
I've never seen a phone company that didn't require a "hot" line as you describe. It's one of the most effective ways they have of blocking VoIP, since you are already paying for the phone line to get broadband.
In a related note, why doesn't FCC require local phone companies to give you DSL lines without attached phone
Re:Cost (Score:2)
That may have changed now that the phone company convinced the FCC it doesn't have to let others share its lines for internet services, but in many plac
Re:Cost (Score:2)
Why would I want to pay $40 to vonage for a service I already have, namely, local calling. Sure, I could get tons of LD calling along with it, but for that I have my mobile.
I would switch to Vonage for their features (like web accessible voicemail) without a second thought, IF I could ditch my ILEC phone line and still keep my DSL.
Sadly, that doesn't seem to be an option around Dallas. And I'm NOT using cable modem
Re:Cost (Score:1)
I personally do not trust the QoS I receive from my ISP to allow me to go over to VoIP. I would not like to try to call the emergency services and receive the following:
The Number cannot be contacted
The Number you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Number might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.
Give me ONE stable, always on reliable line; whatever the technology
Re:Cost (Score:2)
VoIP was so hyped several years ago but in the end arrived to late to make a difference.
my 2 cents.
Re:Cost (Score:2)
Re:Cost (Score:1)
Re:Cost (Score:2)
Also, even though VoIP would probably still save you some money, you are stuck needing a teleco line for DSL, which means you can't very well cut out the telco completely. With companies, who have dedicated data lines, at least 100Mbps lines, bandw
Re:Cost (Score:2)
Solve that like NZ Telecom Jetstream (Score:1)
VOIP + Corporations (Score:2)
I was there.. (Score:5, Informative)
VOIP is illegal, aside from strictly personal use as it represents potential for competition with the phone company. Ghana Telecom only wants to implement VOIP such that it may save them more money to increase their bottom line.
In fact, as I understand it, they have implemented it to a rather large degree, and have yet to pass any savings to their extremely poor customer base. Internet cafes outside of the capital, Accra, often pay somewhere in the vacinity of $1000 per month[1] simply in long distance charges, as no ISPs exist outside of the two major cities. Despite the fact that the infrastructure exists to extend leased lines and add pops in many locations throughout the country, Ghana Telecom has no interest.
USAID, in an ill-advised attempt to help has set up and fully funded telco charges for some remote internet cafes but left behind no administration, allowing the established companies to severely undercut their competition.
[1]: 8,400 Ghanaian cedis equal one US dollar. Many people outside of the two major cities (Accra, Kumasi) often make under 100,000 per month. While this is often sufficient for housing and food, twenty cents per minute long distance charges are simply outrageous.
Re:I was there.. (Score:1)
law of retarded demand (Score:1, Insightful)
If you wanna control people, control communication (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why governments want to control their phone systems, and why they don't really want it to work that well. They don't want it to be too easy for their subjects to communicate with each other, particularlly they're scared somebody's going to discuss the overthrow of those in power. The ability to freely communicate and have at least something that resembles a fair election of leaders is taken for granted in most of North America and Europe, but in other places it's not so easy.
So, by creating a telephone monopoly that makes a half-hearted effort, they've been able to say that they have telephone service for business purposes, while still limiting their people's ability to talk to each other over distance. But, the Internet snuck up on these regimes from behind, and just now they're realizing they forgot to regulate and monopolize it. VoIP isn't that good or reliable compared to well-maintained phone systems, but it's pretty good compared to intentionally mismanaged ones. Competition is usually welecomed because it forces the old monopoly to either perform to the best of its abilities or get out of the game, but this time the monopoly is just crying to the rulers and the rulers see the need to solve this problem the same way they solve any other threat to their ability to stay in power...
VoIP is an idea that looks interesting on the chalkboard but there's no reason for Americans to convert to it when they have an ultra-reliable phone network and pretty good cell phone coverage in populated areas. It's the places that don't have those things that really need VoIP.
They can't shut it down... (Score:2)
What are they going to do to stop international VoIP? A house-by-house search of everyone that has a computer? Checking all in-comming and out-going mail to be sure it isn't going to/from a VoIP company?
Re:They can't shut it down... (Score:1)
Re:They can't shut it down... (Score:1)
However, that is an incredibly short-term solution. In fact, to prevent blocking-by-port, most internet-services companies run their service on the authorized ports, but also run them on port 80 on several machines. This has made blocking of Instant Messaging applications far more complicated, and they _could_ have made it impossible to block, had they wanted to incur
Re:Is that my country in your back pocket...? (Score:2)
I'm really not a naieve person. By most people's standards, I am extremely cynical and paranoid. Although, since most people are naieve, that puts me at just about the right level of cynicism and paranoia.
I say "no matter what" because I know IP technlogoy rather well, and there are plenty of ways to get around just about any possible blocking they could imploy. The only real solution is to practically cut off the internet, which I _assume_ is not going to happen for
open source VOIP is still not very well known ! (Score:5, Informative)
Well this is news... (Score:1)
Re:Well this is news... (Score:1)
To export our values and technology to the third world we need to look more carefully at the state of our own house. Some technologies are not appropriate in the third world, the same thing applies to areas in the US.
Expensive high-tech communication is not the answer to poverty and ignorance.
There is no get rich quick consumer base to fleese so the American big dollar high-tech model will not work. Coca-cola politics cause hate, and
I built a telecom gateway in Accra (Score:4, Interesting)
Along with the 11-meter antenna, all the equipment was housed in a small building full of racks and UPS, and a generator outside. The generator (and fuel storage, fuel delivery services, etc.) had to be rated to be able to deliver hours of power, on a routine basis (daily), because that's how often the power would fail.
Now, that was just the gateway to allow the public phone network to interface to the rest of the world. I also built a pan-African voice and data satellite network for a corporate customer (hint: Exxploit) that simply wanted to bypass all the local telco nonsense and just have a system (albeit and expensive one) that would work regardless. Calls went from city to city (e.g. Libreville to Accra) over the private satellite network and went to the rest of the world via a direct hop to London.
A critical factor in all of this is the ability to get the equipment LEGAL in the country (look up "homologation") -- it's really just an elaborate national shakedown system (as is the european CE mark). The key for us getting the contract was that we had our foot in the door in most of the countries already and could get the equipment in and on the air by riding our existing paperwork.
Anyway, all this is to illustrate that the tariff issue is of critical importance, and solving the technical issues are really secondary -- you've got to find a way to make it legal or the local jackboots will shut you down.
- Chris
P.S. And to illustrate a sadder side of the business, the guy who built the Accra gateway with me, Peter Kennedy, later took a contract job building telecom infrastructure in Chechnya, was taken hostage by Chechen rebels [google.com] for ransom, and was found decapitated a few weeks later. Not a peep out of the U.S. State Department. Peter was a really nice guy.
A little bit too much of "I" in the parent post (Score:1)
_You_ have built it or helped build it? Because if you've built it yourself, you must be really close to God Almighty.
Re:A little bit too much of "I" in the parent post (Score:2)
>_You_ have built it or helped build it? Because if you've built it yourself, you must be really close to God Almighty.
That's fair. I was the sole systems engineer in charge of rolling it out. Another [sales] engineer convinced the customer that our stuff could do it, a program manager dealt with the money side, and one or two field engineers (like Peter) built the first remote sites, educating some locals in the process and then t
Re:I built a telecom gateway in Accra (Score:2)
That's tragic, but what does the US State Dept have to do with it? From the google links, they were "three Britons and one New Zealander".
Re:I built a telecom gateway in Accra (Score:2)
Typical anti-US tirade (Score:2)
When we *don't* intervene, we're the bad guys. I heard a tirade on CBC (Canadian) this weekend about the failure of the US in Rwanda. I'm sorry, but there was a *Canadian* in charge of the peacekeeping force and it was the fucking Francophones in Europe responsible for getting that political situation set up that way.
I've got news fo
Re:Typical anti-US tirade (Score:2)
Re:I built a telecom gateway in Accra (Score:2)
the U.S. State Department is supposed to send
little marshmallow bunnies and chickies to their
old co-workers. This just goes to show how far
downhill things have gone since Jimmy Carter.
Re:I built a telecom gateway in Accra (Score:2)
GnomeMeeting (Score:2)
GNU Gatekeeper (Score:2)
Wire cars in Zambia (Score:1)
obligatory SpeakFreely plug (Score:3, Informative)
encryption, multiple codecs, NAT, the works.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/
The original author and once-again maintainer is John Walker, founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD. (!!!)
note: the debian package is criminally out of date and www.speakfreely.org is depreciated, out of date, and morphed into a commercial site.
Wohoo (Score:5, Funny)
Worlds biggest VoIP rollout (Score:3, Informative)
The Quality of Service (QoS) issues (lag, jitter, etc) were overcome using tagged VLANs and prioritising voice over video and other general data traffic. The Gigabit eithernet backbone is in a meshed star topology, supposedly providing five 9's (99.999%) reliability. Multiple gateways connect the internal telephone system to the outside analogue world.
Looks like Africa has some competition.
VOIP in Ghana (Score:4, Informative)
I was in Ghana as a volunteer last August, and I actually worked for a Ghanaian ISP that terminated VOIP calls, in addition to consulting and helping other "ISP's" set up VOIP gateways.
The legality was murky at best. Everyone gave me conflicting answers about whether it was legal or not. From the prevalence (I'll explain later), I would say that it's certainly tolerated. Few people (if any) ever got busted for doing VOIP. Part of the reason is that corruption is so rampant, you can easily dash (bribe) your way out of any trouble if you're willing to pay up.
Most "Internet Cafe's" or ISP there (most) with their own satellite were doing VOIP. The math was easy. A 512 down/384 up connection were costing about $8,000 U.S. per month (this is before fiber became available). You can't sign up any decent amount of dialup customers because most people didn't have phonelines and GT (Ghana Telecom) would take its sweet time pulling lines.
In fact, it took something like 18 months I believe for the NGO that I was volunteering for to get two lines (and I believe they had to totally work their connections). Almost all businesses and expats resorted to cellphones (the dominate player was Spacefon, I believe it's actually a scandinavian company that worked out some sort of a sweet deal that can't be revoked). But it's almost impossible to call a cellphone from a landline or vice versa (another long story, also has to do with the fact that GT is a government owned monopoly).
Internet Cafe's were a joke. They typical charge was something like 4,000 cedis to 10,000 cedis per hour. That translates to about 40 cents to just over a dollar. Nevermind whether the typical Ghanaian can afford those prices, if you have to pay out something like $8,000 per month just for the bandwidth, you simply can't make your money back.
So instead, what you do is to set up an "ISP/Internet Cafe" and you really do sign up customers and such. But what you really do is to get GT to pull a bunch of phonelines to your premises. Then you install a VOIP gateway and negotiate with western telecomms to terminate calls to those phonelines. That was the only way that they can pay for the bandwidth. Even in the U.S., voice services are much more lucrative than data services.
The "ISP" that I worked for not only terminated calls of their own, they also helped other places set them up as well (they charged a consult fee in addition to getting some sort of kick back from the bandwidth provider). I personally help with a couple of those and helped setting up a traffic shaper/bandwidth limiter.
They were actually in negotiations with GT to help them set up a prepaid card system that used VOIP. But I don't believe it ever got anywhere. The trouble with GT is that they had a monopoly and didn't have any incentive to be competitive. And because long distance voice services profits are very high, they have almost no reason why they want to change things.
So while private companies are definitely adopting VOIP, I don't believe GT is actually taking advantage of the technology. I actually sat in on a meeting with some higher-ups at GT. They didn't seem to care that it's a good technology or it would be the right thing to do. The primary interest definitely seemed to focus on how they (personally) would benefit. It's not out in the open of course. And they would never mention it. Only how there are little things that are wrong on your applications and paperwork, and how they just haven't had to chance to pass it on to the right person yet.
Either way, it was certainly flourishing. Just about every client visit where the "ISP/Internet Cafe" that had a satellite, there were VOIP gateways terminating calls.
VoIP in Nigeria (Score:3, Informative)
Rwanda Telecom situation (Score:1)
Future applications... (Score:2)
"Hello?"
"Hello,
I am sorry for the embarrassment this phone call might cause you as we have not had any correspondence before this phone call. I got your address through my nephew with Nigerian Military Chamber of Commerce industry and Mining during my research for a reliable and trustworthy partner who l can do business with though l did not disclose the nature of the business l intend to do with whoever he recommend for me... "
Re:Subject (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, it's worked for California...
Re:Idiots. (Score:1, Funny)
1. INTRODUCE MCDONALDS TO AFRICA
2. AFRICANS GET FAT
3. ????? THE ANSWER, IS TO SUE MCDONALDS!
4. PROFIT!!!!!1
See! I've fixed the world's problems! Praise me!
Re:Idiots. (Score:2)
Poll (Score:2)
Which is saddest: