Mobile Internet In Winneba

The semester officially ended Saturday with a grueling exam that left me contemplating serious bodily harm to the lecturer. 🙂 I decided to take a few days off and work out the pent up energy from the exams. My sister has been hounding me all through the semester to visit her at Winneba so I decided it’d be the perfect getaway. This morning, I jumped into a car and here I am in Winneba. This place is really cool. The peace and quiet here is simply great. I haven’t been out the entire day; spent it in bed with the first Lord Of The Rings volume: The Fellowship Of The Ring… this is how life is supposed to be. 🙂

I’m blogging from the house ‘cos she (my sister) bought one of these mobile internet office packages (this one runs on the kasapa cdma network). The annoying thing is it comes with drivers and special software for *only* windows (why am I not surprised?). That’s very inconsiderate of the service providers because not everybody in Ghana uses windows. The Mac user base is beginning to flex its muscles and an increasing number of people, notably sys admins and IT professionals, are using linux whenever they can. But gets worse… here are snips of the terms and conditions imposed on all users of this service

>Mobile2i Pay-As-You-Go data sessions may be used with wireless devices for Internet browsing, Email (including >Document & Photo Attachment upload/downloads), and Corporate intranet access.

That’s it? That’s all I’m *allowed* to do? I’m paying good money (or at least my sister is) for this service. They charged GHC2,000,000.00 for the starter kit and GHC30/kb thereafter! Who uses *only* email these days anyway?

>Mobile2i Pay-As-You-Go Internet services may not be used:
>(i) For uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music files or games,
>(ii) With server devices or with host computer applications, including, but not limited >to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, Voice over IP (VolP), >automated machine-to-machine connections, or peer-to-peer (P2P)file sharing.

I’m over-paying them for this so-called internet service and they have the impudence to tell me what I can and cannot with it? So how are theur customers going to get all those hefty updates for windows, anti-virus apps and all those programs that need regular updates.

>(iii) As a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections.
In other words, if I want to use their service, I’ll *have to* dump my other service providers. Don’t we have any anti-trust monitoring authority in this country? I don’t think this clause is legal; if it were, troski drivers could bar me from taking cheaper MMT buses to school. Perhaps the guy who came up with this one was on drugs or something.

>The Mobile2i Mobile internet service may not be used for Internet Cafe operations or any type of “Pay to Use” business models.)
>We reserve right to limit throughput or amount of data transferred, deny or terminate service, without notice, to anyone we believe is using Mobile2i in any manner prohibited above or whose usage adversely impacts our network or service levels.
>NetAfrique Dot Com Ltd reserves the right to protect its network and that of its service providers from any harm, which may impact our users. We also reserve the right to terminate service upon expiration of any Customer Agreement term.

I think the way these guys treat their customers is criminal. They should be lined up shot, but that’s just me. 🙂 Seriously, the amount of disrespect in these few lines is absolutely shocking. These people don’t realize that there are several other companies offering this type of service. Many offended clients will simply switch service providers, period. It’s high time Ghanaian businesses started respecting the customer. They are not doing us any favors and they’d better realize that quick.

Anyway, since I’ve finished cleaning all the latest virus-infected files on this box (860 according to McAfee), I’ll just reboot and go back to the safe haven of kubuntu. It’s unfortunate I couldn’t get this internet thing to work with linux. The application software installs just fine under wine but it has problems detecting the usb modem thereafter… sigh. But it’s been a good day and I’m looking forward to exploring Winneba tomorrow.