Found this great article on Internet
Telephony in sub-Saharan Africa. We expect to move our
phone system to Internet telephony before the end of this calendar year, and
roll it out to field offices with sufficient bandwidth in the first quarter of
next. Does anyone else have any
experience with Internet telephony in the field?
-
Dykki
Source: Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1058134211457&call_pageid=968350072197&col=969048863851
Internet transforming Africa
Voice over Net opening up new business avenues
But authorities see it as a threat to their power
G. PASCAL ZACHARY NEW YORK TIMES NEWS
SERVICE Jul. 14, 2003
ACCRA, Ghana—The Internet bubble has long
since popped in the United
States, Europe and Asia. But in parts of Africa
the Internet is serving as
a powerful force for change, primarily by allowing
companies and
individuals to make international telephone calls
far less expensively than
through conventional channels.
Calls in and out of sub-Saharan Africa have long
been among the world's
most costly, strangling business opportunities and
burdening ordinary
people. Services have been tightly controlled by
state-owned telephone
companies, many of which are rife with corruption
and incompetence. African
governments also imposed high tariffs on
international calls, seeing it as
a lucrative source of revenue.
But now, thanks to what is called
voice-over-Internet, phone alternatives
are flourishing, drastically lowering costs and
expanding opportunities for
business and consumers in some of the poorest
places on earth — even as
they pose a competitive threat to
government-sanctioned telephone companies
Sending telephone calls over the Internet is
gaining ground in Africa
because it makes possible a range of new services,
linking the sub-Saharan
region to the world's major industrial centres in
ways unimaginable only a
few years ago. And better digital connections,
mostly via satellite, are
raising the hope that Ghana — the most
peaceful country in a West African
region besieged by civil wars and ethnic strife
— may become the regional
hub for an information-technology industry.
"As Ghana improves its connectivity to the
outside world, it has the
potential to become for Africa what Bangalore
became for India," said Paul
Maritz, a former senior executive at Microsoft who
recently visited Accra
to survey the nascent high-tech scene here.
Secretary General Kofi Annan, at a recent U.N.
conference in New York,
delivered a message that developing countries also
need to include wireless
access, known as Wi-Fi, in building an Internet
system.
"It is precisely in places where no
infrastructure exists that Wi-Fi can be
particularly effective," Annan said,
"helping countries to leapfrog
generations of telecommunications technology and
empower their people.''
As the movement advances, though, many
government-owned telephone
companies, which dominate wired service in most
African countries, are
fighting a rear-guard action.
Internet telephony "is presented as the
salvation for business and society
in Africa," said Oystein Bjorge, chief
executive of Ghana's national
telephone carrier. "It is not.''
Bjorge, a Norwegian telecommunications consultant
hired recently to do
battle against the Internet telephone services,
says it wreaks havoc with
the economics of state-owned phone companies. Here
in Ghana, the national
phone company is waging a sporadic campaign
against its own citizens who
use the Internet to make or receive telephone
calls from America and
Europe, periodically turning off the lines of
those suspected of doing so.
Three years ago, the government even jailed the
heads of some of Ghana's
leading Internet providers. Though later
exonerated by a court, the
dissidents fear another crackdown.
"Internet telephony is changing the whole
power structure," said Francis
Quartey, chief technology officer of Intercom Data
Network and one of those
jailed. ``The dangerous thing is that the power
elite is responding out of
fear and ignorance.''
Acquiring reliable phone service is essential,
foreign investors say, which
is why they bypass the state-owned telephone
company. Ghana Telecom has an
order backlog of more than 300,000 lines; bribery
is the fastest — indeed,
usually the only — way to obtain new
service. Even those with service
suffer from frequent outages and inaccurate bills.
Roughly every other call
results in a busy signal, an indicator of what
Ghana Telecom calls "network
congestion.''
Under the circumstances, Internet telephony seems
positively fabulous to
many weaned on Africa's creaky systems.
"Internet gives me control over my
destiny," says Sambou Makalou, chief
executive of Rising Data. "My business needs
to be up 24-7; we can't get a
busy signal.''
Busy signals are common in Ghana because the
public phone networks are
overloaded. As recently as four years ago, a
telephone dial tone was among
the scarcest resources in the country, which had
fewer than 200,000 phone
lines in a nation of 19 million.
Few people realized how much demand for phone
service was waiting to
explode until Ghana's most successful wireless
company, Spacefon, launched
in 1996. Before it started, executives thought the
potential customer base
was probably 3,000 people, at most 12,000. Seven
years later, Spacefon has
more than 300,000 subscribers.
The country's total phone lines are now
approaching 750,000, roughly
two-thirds of them wireless. But completing a call
is still difficult,
especially between rival networks (there are
five), and neither Ghana
Telecom, nor the country's legal wireless
operators offer a reliable
connection to the Internet.
In response to these limitations, private
businesses have built scores of
data networks, relying on satellite- and
radio-based Internet-access
systems. These private networks at first only
carried data.
But telephone service became appealing because of
the high network costs:
Companies typically pay from $2,000 to $5,000 a
month for a robust
connection to the Internet, an enormous sum when
economic output per person
is only about $400 a year.
"I'm paying $2,000 a month for Internet
access, so I want to use the
technology to the fullest," said Austin Addo,
chief information officer, of
Ghana Link Network Services.
Addo's company, which began operations here early
this year, helps the
government calculate duties on goods imported into
the country, relying on
frequent updates, via the Internet, of product
values. The company's
partner is based in Madrid, Spain, so Addo uses a
standard device to make
international calls over his computer network. He
isn't billed for the
calls, which would otherwise cost him roughly 75
cents a minute, including
the cost of line.
His telephone calls are not really free, since he
pays $2,000 a month for
Internet access. But he is still saving lots of
money because he can speak
as long as he wants without worrying about the
cost.
"Five years ago to get this level of
communication," he said, "I'd have to
fly to Spain — several times a week.''
Such productivity gains have been a cause for
celebration almost everywhere
in the world. But official anxiety over Internet
telephony is widespread
throughout Africa.
Neighboring Togo, for instance, allowed Internet
telephony until the end of
last year, when the government cracked down on
behalf of Togo Telecom. So
many foreign calls in tiny Togo were being routed
over the Internet that a
small "com" centre — ubiquitous in
Africa, offering calls for a fee — took
in $10,000 a month from just two phones.
