Namibia - Internet report
Folks,
Internet in Namibia is supplied from a number of sources, but king of the hill is Internet Africa - an offshoot of UUnet based out of Virginia. They are based in South Africa, and run one, maybe two, 128K lines from Capetown to Windhoek. I had a barbeque with Dr Lisse - a German at the Swapokmund medical center who administers name services for the country.
Performance sucks for interactive work - telnet to RMI was painfully slow. I imagine WWW services are the same. So, yes, I skimmed your mail, but no individual replies. An internet Cafe that set up in Windhoek went out of business. However, the backpackers lodge in Winhoek has it, the car hire place had it, my student friend of the bus had it at home. So Email is a reality, and within the country is fast.
Namibia has fiber optic cable between major centers, and I think down to Cape town. It is probably a pricing issue that keeps it at low capacity still.
However, Namibia is probably an exception - benefitting from its close association with RSA over the years (they only got their own international dialing code 9 months ago). In West Africa when I was there people rode 100cc mopeds - here they drive cars or ride buses. Does that mean they are ahead or behind ?
I believe that capacity problems are only temporary - telephone calls are dirt cheap - Internet access is about $200 US per year for unlimited access - cheap even by US standards - and thus they will see steep, steady, growth.
Cheers, Andy!