Developing Nations Crippled By Broadband Costs 239
eldavojohn writes "If you live in the EU, you probably enjoy low broadband costs. If you live in Finland, it's even a legal right. If you live in the US, you probably pay a moderate cost. But if you live in the developing world, a UNCTAD report paints your picture pretty grim. Ridiculously high bandwidth costs are inhibiting developing nations from enjoying productive use of the internet — like online banking and market tools."
cellphones replace much of this in Africa... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:'cause what the developing world desperately ne (Score:3, Informative)
Once you've got the basic stuff covered
Let's let them get that covered first, then, shall we? Can you give me an example of a "developing nation" that has the basics covered adequately?
I think it's kinda funny that the wikipedia entry mentions that many "developing" countries don't like the term "developing nation" because it implies they aren't "developed." Hmmm. I wonder who in the country doesn't like that - the poor that are starving to death, or the rich that seemingly are keeping the country poor by their greed and careless attitude towards the people.
Or that "Cuba" (the nation?) has decided not to follow the "Western model." Yeah, no kidding. I'm sure the entire country is happy with their model and Castro is in power because the people/nation as a whole like him there...
Re:Development crippled by what? (Score:3, Informative)
The solution to hunger, as I am aware of, has never been to give them a computer. It's typically been to give them food and a source to make/grow/manufacture/whatever their own food.
Or perhaps get rid of the lame government (which may mean getting rid of the lame culture that supports the lame government).
As Amartya Sen pointed out "No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy."
I know it too well. (Score:1, Informative)
Here in Bosnia and Herzegovina you can get flat rate at our only ISP (HT Mostar) that provides ADSL (with fair use clause, which means it's not flat) internet access for over 40 euro with a 512/64 KBits/s connection (it's a mockery to call it broadband), with a 12 month contract minimum or you pay more. RIP-OFF.
Their advertisements and their behavior make me wanna puke.
I pay 20 for my 2048/256 KBit/s connection with 5 GiB monthly traffic. Seeing as there are 3 more people using the connection other than me, this is barely enough to have decent use of the internet. This means no internet radio, no YouTube and video, no surfing all you want. The last 10 days I can't even do much besides IM and e-mail since I'm always close to the traffic limit. Sure I could go over the limit and get a a much larger bill.
The largest flat rate package (again with the fair use policy) costs over 80 euro. Well, that's monopol.
And no, I don't starve. I have water (most of the time), even though we don't have water supply here (we use large reservoirs and collect rain water). But shit happens and sometimes we run out of water during summer, then we pay someone to get us a cistern of water. Apparently our local government are working on that (yay!). We have food and electricity (most of the time as the infrastructure is a disaster). We aren't dying of starvation like people in Ethiopia, but it is not easy compared to some people in the world who take food, water and electricity for granted.
Could I live without internet? Probably, but probably not as I'm a computer technologies student.
But hey, I want to surf the web, be able to update my OS and software, download Linux distributions and (free) games and play them, keep in touch with my relatives over Skype or other communication means (cause it's way cheaper than what the same company that gives us ADSL charges us for telephone), watch video and listen to internet radio, be part of the community, perform any tasks that for college requires internet, download drivers and other stuff, help my friends remotely over internet (e.g. Remote Desktop). I don't need to download gigabytes of music, videos and games, I just don't want to count every megabyte of traffic I spend in fear that I'll go over the limit and will have to pay more.
Soon Fedora 12 will be released and downloading the Fedora 12 DVD will be a pain, because I can kiss internet access goodbye for most of the month. Let's not mention downloading any extra packages I may need (there are always those) and updating Fedora and other packages over time.
Developing Nations Crippled By Broandband Costs. Well, duh! We're mostly crippled by those monopolistic opportunistic bastards in government and companies who don't give shit about people and progress as long as they have a comfortable life.