Why My Internet is So Slow

Why My Internet is So Slow: Monarchy, Monopoly, and Government Monitoring

   I’m not sure if this will be interesting to anyone except my friends who are all about technology and sussing out government corruption.  In the US, we are accustomed to multiple ways to instantly communicate with family and friends- send a text, post a picture on FB, tweet, Skype, and call with unlimited minutes.  With minimal expense and great ease we can call a friend when we are having a bad day or phone a relative when they are sick.   We take it completely for granted.  After a few months in Africa and a week in China with no Facebook, I fully appreciate these freedoms. 

    I have been trying to explain the phone system in Swaziland and the internet (and the respective limitations of these technologies), to family and friends abroad.  The first “foreign” concept is airtime, pay as you go.  Most of Africa and the world, work on Sim cards.  You can buy a starter pack in a new country for a few dollars.  Then you purchase airtime that is used every time you call, text, or that is converted to data bundles that can used for the internet.  It’s kind of like a cricket or go phone.  Every picture, every minute, every megabyte or Kilobyte used when you open your web browser is taking airtime.  Airtime is pretty expensive especially when more than half the country is unemployed.  So lots of our Swazi friends will call and hang up because they cannot afford to call us on their airtime.  Conversations are succinct to the point of being rude; just the facts.

     It is hard to overstate the importance of communication as human beings, especially in a country with a life expectancy of 49 and a raging epidemics of HIV and TB; good communication can literally mean the difference between life and death. 

     Heather and I were lucky enough to be in Swaziland just at the time the fight over communication technologies was coming to a head.   It is important to reiterate that Swaziland is a monarchy.  The king has the controlling interest of 51% in every government sanctioned entity.  This is not a free market economy, and American ideals of competition and against monopoly do not fly here.

      There are two competing interests in Swaziland for mobile technology and communication.  One is MTN, which is an international company found throughout Africa.  King Mswati III gave MTN the right to develop all mobile technologies in Swaziland, a monarch endorsed monopoly.  The competitor is the government owned and run Swaziland Posts and Telecommunications Corp (SPTC) basically the Swazi postal service.  SPTC also provides landlines and stationary communication devices.  However, it had slowly inched into the mobile market.  

     A while ago, SPTC introduced a product called the “fixed phone”, which was like a house phone you could take with you in your car or to another location like a cellphone.  It was relatively inexpensive and allowed two parties with “fixed phones” to have extended conversations.  Corine and I had another SPTC product, the dongle.  This was a small device that you could install and plug into the USB port of a computer to connect to the internet.  Both products were more reliable and less costly than MTN’s offerings because of SPTC’s not for profit status as the national post.

     A recent lawsuit concluded in MTN’s (the non-Swazi company) favor giving it a legal monopoly on all mobile technology in Swaziland, and prohibiting SPTC (a Swazi government entity) from selling its dongle and its fixed phones.   As a result of this lawsuit, starting in August, the Swazi government threatened to it shut off the dongle and fixed phones.  In late Sept, thousands of customers who owned a dongle, including us, were cut off from the internet.  

      Sometime in October, the members of parliament had a vote of no confidence in the King’s Cabinet related to its dealings with SPTC.  This is an unprecedented event in Swaziland.  Some of our Swazi friends have helped frame this issue for me; otherwise I might have just thought it was just more political wrangling over cheaper, better internet.  For me, it was a personal inconvenience during my time in Swaziland.  I couldn’t upload pictures to Facebook easily or Skype my mother.  However, for many Swazis, the government sanctioned end of the dongle and fixed phone meant that they were unable to communicate with one another in affordable and meaningful ways.  It serves to further isolate Swazis from the rest of the world. 

    In China, I thought internet would be lightening fast, after-all half the components used in tech items are made there.  However, I didn’t count on every website, every click, and every keystroke being monitored, and that takes time. 

    And the take-home message of all of this, as Americans we are freedom gluttons.  We have access to so much communication and information.  As a friend would say, “God Bless America”.  Today while you are texting your mom or enjoying your warp speed internet ( by Swazi standards) to bash the opposing political party in a public forum on Facebook, take a minute to celebrate your freedom and then go ahead and look up the latest celebrity breakup just because you can.