Seacom the company that has attempted to connect Africa to the world wide web like most other continents, with the physical undersea fibre infrastructure that does so, has arrived in Africa. In record pace they’ve wired the whole continent which now has the fastest internet in the world with some regions offering 12mb connections at record low prices!
What This Means
For Africans this shows record progress and incredible promise. Already expats all over the continent have begun bit torrenting countless hours of American TV Shows like Lost, Top Chef and Family Guy. In fact Akamai estimates that over 1% of all the worlds internet traffic can be attributed to video downloads from expatriates all over the continent! Africans themselves are rushing to their nearest internet cafes to watch the latest football games, to Skype family members and to watch recordings of the Obama Inauguration.
There’s so much opportunity to make money using the web that even those infamous Nigerian spammers have set up legal business and put aside their deceptive guises as princes and long lost family members.
Word From the Street
Appfrica.net asked a few people across the continent how the massively increased bandwidth would change their lives…
“For me it is so good,” says Sondoto Kobia of Kenya. “I went to sleep yesterday barely being able to get out my emails, but this morning I uploaded a two-hour video of my sons graduation to You Tube in only 10 minutes! I’ve also heard from a number of family members who moved all over the world to places like Spain, France and Washington D.C. The phone is ringing, that’s probably one of them now!”
Badru Bantu, CEO of mobile company Orange-Kumquat-Banana Ltd. added, “This is unprecedented change and boon to businesses all across the continent. I ordered 10,000 VOIP phones for internal use at our corporate office now that we can actually use them. Our communication with trade partners has been immediately improved and we expect to double revenue this year, even in the economic down-turn which means more jobs and more opportunity.”
A number of Linux distributions like RedHat, Ubuntu, and Suse are reporting record downloads from African IP addresses, as well. I also had the pleasure of speaking to billionaire Ubuntu CEO Mark Shuttleworth via radio-phone from his most recent trip to the moon, “It’s incredible. In only a few hours we have 300% growth!” There was a 20 second delay before he added, “By the time I return from space, I expect that number to grow signifigantly.”
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About the author: Jonathan Gosier is a software developer, writer and social entrepreneur. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he incubates and invests in East African entrepreneurs as the CEO of Appfrica Labs. He's also a TED Fellow.
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Under Sea Cable Arrives in Africa
Seacom the company that has attempted to connect Africa to the world wide web like most other continents, with the physical undersea fibre infrastructure that does so, has arrived in Africa. In record pace they’ve wired the whole continent which now has the fastest internet in the world with some regions offering 12mb connections at record low prices!
What This Means
For Africans this shows record progress and incredible promise. Already expats all over the continent have begun bit torrenting countless hours of American TV Shows like Lost, Top Chef and Family Guy. In fact Akamai estimates that over 1% of all the worlds internet traffic can be attributed to video downloads from expatriates all over the continent! Africans themselves are rushing to their nearest internet cafes to watch the latest football games, to Skype family members and to watch recordings of the Obama Inauguration.
There’s so much opportunity to make money using the web that even those infamous Nigerian spammers have set up legal business and put aside their deceptive guises as princes and long lost family members.
Word From the Street
Appfrica.net asked a few people across the continent how the massively increased bandwidth would change their lives…
“For me it is so good,” says Sondoto Kobia of Kenya. “I went to sleep yesterday barely being able to get out my emails, but this morning I uploaded a two-hour video of my sons graduation to You Tube in only 10 minutes! I’ve also heard from a number of family members who moved all over the world to places like Spain, France and Washington D.C. The phone is ringing, that’s probably one of them now!”
Badru Bantu, CEO of mobile company Orange-Kumquat-Banana Ltd. added, “This is unprecedented change and boon to businesses all across the continent. I ordered 10,000 VOIP phones for internal use at our corporate office now that we can actually use them. Our communication with trade partners has been immediately improved and we expect to double revenue this year, even in the economic down-turn which means more jobs and more opportunity.”
A number of Linux distributions like RedHat, Ubuntu, and Suse are reporting record downloads from African IP addresses, as well. I also had the pleasure of speaking to billionaire Ubuntu CEO Mark Shuttleworth via radio-phone from his most recent trip to the moon, “It’s incredible. In only a few hours we have 300% growth!” There was a 20 second delay before he added, “By the time I return from space, I expect that number to grow signifigantly.”
Click here to read the rest of this article.