Living In the Slow Lane

Digital connectivity is an issue here. Noticeable following a Christmas when many of our gifts have been electronic downloads – something which has saved on postage. Also a problem when it comes to Skyping, but curiously less so with FaceTime.

There seem to be two basic choices to us

1. A fixed landline with unlimited connection and fastish download speeds – costing a lot of cash each month in the range 300000 TZS (approximately £75) advertised as 4GB/s (it never reached this!)
2. A wifi dongle with a data limit (the best being 45GB but most being 20GB) costing 30000 TZS (approximately £7.50). The speed crawling along a 3MB/s (it doesn’t reach this)

We have tried the landline but the costs are high and the reliability was not brilliant. We are trying the wifi but in truth we are consuming a lot of data, meaning a lot of top ups. In addition it seems a little hit and miss.

We are currently downloading my daughter’s Christmas present – the Sherlock Series 1-3 and it look like taking 12 hours per episode to download!

At work the internet connectivity is patchy, and the network is likely to be down for all or part of the day. Speeds are slow enough to make internet research a challenge. Even gmail won’t work at times.

Such are the frustrations of living in a developing country with so little infrastructure – though I here i is better than it used to be.

Some things are better, here 3G seems almost universal and in town at least uploading is quick and easy.

Even so I long for the  days of reliable cheap connectivity we had in the UK – 75MB/s -a distant dream,

Data Dilemmas – Media Matters and Digital Devices

T Minus 23

We live our technological western lives surrounded by data. Electronic binary crammed full of personality. The data itself is invisible taking up no volume. The media upon which it’s stored is heavy and takes up space, space we can’t necessarily afford.