Zanzibar Embraces Mobile Phones
The BBC reported in August that Zanzibar is the latest developing country to take advantage of cellular phones to route around unreliable, expensive state-run phone systems.
According to BBC reporter Daniel Dickinson, Zanzibar cell phone company Zantel has enrolled 45,000 subscribers.
As in other countries, cellular phones may have their drawbacks, including expense, but they are often hands down better than the monopoly land-line companies.
According to the BBC, it can take 4-5 years to obtain a landline in Zanzibar, and generally only the wealthy have the resources to navigate their way through the red tape and bureaucracy.
Other developing nations are turning to Internet-based protocols for voice communications to route around the obstacles thrown up by traditional telephone carriers in their country.
If these nations would just learn to free their most important resource — their people — to solve problem in a market setting, they wouldn’t be “developing” for long.
Source:
Zanzibar’s mobile revolution. Daniel Dickinson, The BBC, August 12, 2003.
The Zanzibar Embraces Mobile Phones by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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