Comments on: Fibre for Africa

By: chrisw

chrisw — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:37:27 +0000

jellyfishcoolman, the WiLD project is not mine, but I feel that wimax is still at the expensive end of the communications market, similar to microwave. I think it is mostly deployed by carriers in licensed spectrum, and therefore not disruptive and itself susceptible to disruptive technologies.

Of course the industry may roll out wimax or fibre along routes than WiLD plans to cover, or alternative routes between those points, but the infrastructure costs and legal barriers are likely to make that a long, slow and expensive process, which WiLD can bypass by being unlicensed.

By: jellyfishcoolman

jellyfishcoolman — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:25:12 +0000

Hi. I have seen your analysis. What do you think will be the effect of WiMax on your WiLD project? I do however like the low cost aspect of it. I guess time will tell. With the submarine cables arriving I think the next battle ground will be connecting the masses and especially the rural folk. This could be the most radical revolution in telecomms. If it is cheap and efficient then it could work but we have to watch what WiMax does too.

By: manypossibilities

manypossibilities — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:49:54 +0000

Permalink for the African Undersea Cables map is now at http://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables/

-Steve

By: jim jay

jim jay — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:02:29 +0000

I think that whilst it’s important to ensure people don’t get any illusions that there are a magical techno-fixes for their problems if you aren’t physically connected it is a substantial problem.

There are a number of people who are skeptical about the idea that you can *just add bandwidth* – and they are right, as long as that argument doesn’t go so far as to say bandwidth is irrelevant.