Alex Little

Ethiopian Telecoms Company (ETC) started to provide a pre-paid mobile internet service several months ago, though as I (usually) have a good connection at work, I’ve never really considered purchasing a dongle and setting up an account for myself. However, my housemate Martin, with not having a computer, let alone internet connection through work, recently set himself up with CDMA.

The dongle comes with a driver/installation CD for Windows, so this morning I thought I’d have a go getting it set up on my laptop running Ubuntu 9.04. Getting it all set up proved to be much more straightforward than I had anticipated. Here’s what I needed to do:

1. Install wvdial (I have Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook remix, so if you have the normal desktop version this step may not be necessary): sudo apt-get install wvdial

2. Plug the CDMA dongle into a USB port

3. At the terminal enter: sudo wvdialconf

4. Then enter: sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf

5. In the text editor change the block that reads:

; Phone =
; Password =
; Username =

to be:

Phone = #777
Password = etc
Username = etc

Then save and close the editor. Note that the username and password should be in lower case.

6. At the terminal enter: sudo wvdial

7. Without closing the terminal open the browser and you should be connected.

Now that it’s working I have the opportunity to spend huge amounts of money using the internet whilst at home. I’m not sure of the exact tariff, but given our usage so far it seems to be around 0.5 birr per minute (approx 2p).

Have been connection-less for the last few days as the PCs we’d been using at the Red Cross Centre have been taken away and have then been finding my feet in Mekelle, so I’m making a few posts all in one go…

(22nd Sept)
Got my hands on a copy of ICT Monthly – which is the main (only?) IT magazine in Ethiopia, and its got some info on the internet penetration in Ethiopia (0.2%), which is extremely low, in Africa only Liberia is lower, even Somalia is higher (at 0.8%). More stats are available at http://www.internetmonthlystats.com (though not had chance to have a look myself).

Not sure exactly what is meant by ‘penetration’, but *think* it’s related to the number of accounts with ISP relative to the total population. Also the reasons as to why Ethiopia should be so much lower than other neighbouring countries (Sudan – 8%) are unclear.

We’ve spent the last couple of days in a IT workshop wich some of the other VSO volunteers who’ve been here for the last year or so. Has been excellent hearing about their experiences, but also some horrendous stories about wasted money, lack of planning, poor connections. Just one example is that fact that they’re building 12 new universities in Ethiopia – all to the same design – but they haven’t made any provision for IT installation, which means the nice new buildings will now need to have holes cut through walls and all the cabling installed for any form of network or computer room to be installed. I’m guessing that this isn’t the last of these sort of stories that I’ll be hearing over the coming months!