In whatever part of the Earth a person lives in, it is necessary to pay for access to communication tools like phone networks and Internet acess. In much of the world, though, this cost is too high, leaving innumerable people unable to utilize this vital aspect of modern life. This evening the PBS Newshour broadcast a story about a man who is attempting to make Internet and phone access a more affordable option for some of the poorer parts of Johannesburg, South Africa. Rael Lisoos founded a company called Dabba to provide telephone service through the Internet. By creating a network connecting buildings in particular neighborhoods, Lisoos is allowing people to bypass the more expensive large telecommunications companies. While the goal is to make a profit from this business, thereby making it sustainable, his primary motivation for starting Dabba was to connect poor people to the vast world of digital communications and resources. Rael Lisoos believes that greater prosperity and productivity can only come when more of the poor in a society have access to information resources.
It is not an issue many people in the Western world tend to think about, but having access information is an important factor in being able to attain economic prosperity. By connecting with other businesses over a long distance and getting information about new markets or prices of commodities, businesses operating in poor countries can expand the range and profit of their activities. The impact on education should not be ignored, either. Internet connections could help to alleviate the problem of a lack of access to books and other educational materials.
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In Thailand, phones & calling were cheap within the country. There were a variety of plans also. Calling overseas was very expensive when I first got there, but got cheaper the longer I was there.
ReplyDeleteIn many places, it's not even that the cost is too high, it's that there's no option.
ReplyDeleteThe most relevant place I've been is Ghana, which is one of the more developed countries in Africa. Internet connection? Rare. Some families pay half their income to send their children to school. Some pay more than half. And that's just for books and uniforms. And we wonder why illiteracy is so high.
In most places, cell phones are cheaper than landlines, because the infrastructure is easier to build. They didn't have it before.
There's more to it all. I visited a pineapple farm in Ghana. They imported black plastic from Europe because there was a place in Nigeria, but no roads to get it cheaply to Ghana. The Infrastructure was built by the colonizers, to get everything to the ocean ports.
I guess the point is that not only can people not afford connection, they don't have it available.
And even if they did, they couldn't afford devices to use it. They can't even afford to send their children to school.