huridocs-tech Developing countries struggle to get on WWW

Edited/Distributed by HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network
---------------------------------------------------------------------
## author     : KhanIA@super.net.pk
## date       : 20.08.99
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1999.08.20 - Friday 20 August - 4 months 11 days to 2000.01.01

Third World struggles to get into the world wide web

Nicole Volpe

NEW YORK 17 AUGUST

IN theory, the Internet's ability to bypass borders and
inter-weave world cultures was going to shrink the globe.

In reality, Third World countries, faced with poverty,
illiteracy, politics and lack of adequate communication
infrastructure are having to show remarkable dexterity to
eke out a place on the Internet. The hard, and perhaps
unsurprising, truth is that despite some amazing end-runs by
poorer countries, experts say the gap between plugged-in and
shut-out is widening every bit as fast as the gap between
rich and poor.

With only two per cent of the global population on line,
according to United Nations figures, the Internet in 1999 is
still more of a golden thread connecting the most privileged
global classes than a true World Wide Web.

"You'll find people in developing countries doing incredible
things with their fingernails, scratching out access," said
Raul Zambrano, information technology specialist for the UN
development project. "But while this is wonderful, the gap
between the haves and have-nots is widening."

The efforts by Third World countries, however, go largely
unnoticed. Most analysts who cover technology in the United
States do not cover places like Goma, a city in the
Democratic Republic of Congo that relies on Uganda for its
link to the Net.

Nor do many watch Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western
Hemisphere, a country that has less than one phone line for
every 100 people. Electricity is only available in urban
areas, and then for only a couple of hours per day. The
average per capita income is $250 per year.

Yet the first site to be entirely written in Haitian Creole
came online earlier this month, built in an office in
downtown Port-au- Prince that has had to turn to solar power
to fuel its operations. "We have to use solar power and
batteries and generators because there is no electricity
most of the time," Patrice Talleyrand, who creates content
for the Web site http://ht.orientation.com, said in a
telephone interview. "We have to be a little creative."

The site features discussion groups, Voodoo links and
surveys Although the site is in Creole, it can be switched
to English. New York-based Orientation.com is trying to form
a network of such Web sites for underserved nations, on the
view that eventually, profits will come from even these
markets.

"Eventually, the Internet is going to become more important
in these countries, and it is an advantage to be one of the
first ones to be involved," said Phil Ingram, international
marketing manager for Orientation.com.

Having Web sites on the Internet is only half the battle.
The real challenge is to provide access nationally in a
country with very little infrastructure, said Mr Talleyrand.

"The telephone company here in Haiti sees Internet service
providers as competition," he said. "They keep cutting their
phone lines," he added.

Some Haitians are now using wireless connections and radio
modems to connect to the service providers, also known as
ISPs.

"It's amazing, the things they do down there is like
something out of MacGyver," said Mr Ingram, referring to an
American television show about an agent who was able to
construct gadgets. -Reuters

http://www.economictimes.com/today/18tech04.htm




----------------------------------
Send mail for the 'huridocs-tech' list to 'huridocs-tech@hrea.org'.
Mail administrative requests to 'majordomo@hrea.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to: 'owner-huridocs-tech@hrea.org'.
Archives of previous messages posted to the list can be found at:
http://www.hrea.org/lists/huridocs-tech/markup/maillist.html