Technology in Tanzania

Last summer, fiber optic undersea cable came to East Africa as the last major part of the world to be connected with high speed internet. This has not made a big difference in Iringa yet but costs for internet access have already been coming down. We saw trenches being dug on the way from Dar to Morogorro (200 km) for fiber optic cable and this main trunk will eventually continue all the way to Iringa but it will have to cover some rough terrain.
The cell phone is king in East Africa. There are 124,000 land line phones in Tanzania and 13.8 million cell phones. There are not many places that do not have cell phone coverage but our partner village of Kising’a is one of them. You can buy a sim card with a phone number for about a dollar and then buy cards with a scratch off code number that you enter on your phone to apply credit. Tanzanians mostly use text messages because each text message is only 60 shillings or about 4 cents. A study at the university showed that students spend more on their phones then they do for food. In Kenya, and now in Tanzania, there is a system called mpesa where people can use their phones to send credit to others to pay bills. There are redemption centers where the payments can be converted into cash. This is an effective system where people often do not have bank accounts
If you have one of those 124,000 land lines you can get a DSL modem for internet but most Tanzanians use an internet café or use a cellular modem. Internet is charged by the volume used, either by the MB on a modem or by time at the internet café. Internet café’s are 1,000 shillings per hour (< $1) but the speed is horrendous. The DSL modem is supposed to be up to 2 mbps but I am using a cellular modem which has a top speed of about 300 kbps (a 1 MB image should take about 25 seconds to download). The Vodacom modem I am using cost 99,000 shillings ($75) and I bought 2 GB of internet volume (both upload and download combined) for 95,000 shillings. This volume needs to be used within 90 days and if I run out early I can just subscribe for another package. Paying by the MB makes you think about your browsing. I am using foxfire with automatic image downloading disabled and have turned off Windows Update so I don’t get 20 MB of junk every time I connect. The speed is fine for skype audio and for email and news.