30356: Clerie (reply) Re: 30354: Lally (reply): Cellphone Impact on Foreign Remittances (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: philippe@gcal.net

It's true there are a lot of satellite dishes in Haiti. But all of these
installations are of the _no other choice_, _last chance before blowing a
gasket_ type.

For the most part, local service has been spotty, slow and intermittent, not
to mention expensive. There have been improvements but if reliability and
speed are required then be prepared to pay. Temporary loss of service (at
most 15-20 minutes) when it rains is a small price to pay for otherwise
highly reliable internet service.

Satellite works for browsing, e-mail, instant message, so-so voice over ip and
for small downloads. For anything else forget it. Within a year or so, there
will be widely available _legal_ music and movie downloading services. The
web is going multimedia. That means lots of big files. Think CD size files
several times a day. I'm not sure the satellite services will be able to cope
with that.

--


Philippe

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The trouble with common sense is that it is so uncommon.
<Anonymous>