Talk:Telecommunications in Ethiopia

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The article lede mentions that ETC is a monopoly, and that internet access requires ETC's involvement, while further along, the text says there are 89 internet hosts. I think this may be a contradiction, at least with the part about ETC being a monopoly. I can imagine it being the case where there are 89 internet hosts, but that they still require ETC's involvement. (Or it may be the case that "internet host" is not the same as "ISP".) Clarification would be helpful. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 17:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

(I can say, based on my own experience, that Google defaults to an Ethiopian Google portal (google.com.et) in Ethiopia, and some articles that showed up on my personal news.google.com page would not load when I clicked on them.) -- Gyrofrog (talk) 17:27, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe the intent is to say that ETC is, to use computer jargon, part of the network backbone for Ethiopia. That is, it is the ISP for the ISPs in that country. This is not an unusual situation: even in the US, most ISPs own outright no more bandwidth than the few yards of cat-6 connecting their servers to the interconnect at the Central Office, & lease the rest of their bandwidth. That may sound as if ISPs are an unnecessary middle-man in the business, but they play a useful role dealing, on one hand with the individuals at the phone company who actually know how the Internet services work (all phone companies are huge bureaucracies where most of even the technical people have no clue how to fix, nor even if anyone at their corporation knows if it is possible), & on the other with the end users who have problems -- or need to be taught how to do stuff. The problem with ETC in this case, if the external links I added to this article are to be trusted, is that it is spending more effort as an agent of the government controlling the information passing over its Internet connections, rather than improving those connections both in number & speed. (There have been times when I accessed an .et sub-domain when I honestly wondered if the entire country is connected to the rest of the Internet by a T-1 line. The data transfer speeds have been that slow!) -- llywrch (talk) 19:56, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanx for the info. (I know about U.S. phone company bureaucracy, having worked at one for 10 years - actually I was trying not to think about it) -- Gyrofrog (talk) 20:12, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

On a somewhat related note, Economy of Ethiopia describes mobile phone development as "stifled" due to the government monopoly. As with internet service, the government monopoly does exist, but I'm not sure it's accurate to say mobile phones are "stifled." (I've left comments at Talk:Economy of Ethiopia.) -- Gyrofrog (talk) 14:31, 12 May 2010 (UTC)