A Gentle Plea to Telkom’s CEO
We recently sent a request to Telkom to send us a map of their terrestrial fibre network in South Africa. This request was in the context of the AfTerFibre Project, which is attempting to crowdsource a…
Open Access, Africa, and Yochai Benkler
Since the announcement of the EASSy undersea cable in 2005, Open Access has been a term of significant debate in the development of undersea cable initiatives and in the general strategic development of communication infrastructure…
The Death of Fixed Lines in Africa
Today I want to push back a little (just a little) against the conventional wisdom that mobiles are the only communications infrastructure future for Africa. There is an implicit understanding in ICT4D work in Africa…
Africa, Innovation, and The Incredibles
Philip Auerswald recently took advantage of arch-villain Syndrome (from the Pixar movie The Incredibles) to paint a tongue-in-cheek picture of his relationship with Bill Easterly. Entertained and emboldened by this, I was reminded of my…
Municipal Broadband Investment in South Africa
There’s an interesting AFP article on the city of Johannesburg’s 1 billion Rand (~105 million USD) contract with Ericsson to deliver municipal broadband infrastructure. In it they quote an anonymous “telecoms expert” who says: …that…