Re:Why the Evidence of Water on the Moon is Bad News
by catzaa on Monday September 28, 2009 @08:34PM
(#849546)
The article is interesting about mobile phones. For interest sake, MTN is a South African company. Mobile phones make things such as informal jobs a lot easier (e.g. if someone wants to organise labour for a project).
The problem still however is price. In China it costs 0.15 Yuan to send a text message – in SA it can be the equivalent the equivalent of 1 Yuan. Voice calls are even more expensive (R3+ a minute – about 0.4 US$). I believe that the price elsewhere in Africa is even more expensive (since some of the base stations run on Diesel generators).
I also don’t think that telecoms growth should be seen as economic growth (it is not always coupled). Telecoms is however still a giant problem. In SA we have huge problems with extremely expensive Internet. This is extremely unfavourable. We have a lot of people that can speak English without an accent at the same time zone as Europe – yet it is too expensive to put up call centres.
The problem still however is price. In China it costs 0.15 Yuan to send a text message – in SA it can be the equivalent the equivalent of 1 Yuan. Voice calls are even more expensive (R3+ a minute – about 0.4 US$). I believe that the price elsewhere in Africa is even more expensive (since some of the base stations run on Diesel generators).
I also don’t think that telecoms growth should be seen as economic growth (it is not always coupled). Telecoms is however still a giant problem. In SA we have huge problems with extremely expensive Internet. This is extremely unfavourable. We have a lot of people that can speak English without an accent at the same time zone as Europe – yet it is too expensive to put up call centres.