BUSIA, Kenya
For several years, when he wanted to browse the internet, George Busoli would board a motorbike to a market center about 10 kilometers away from his home where a cybercafe is located. The journey would cost him about 2.3 U.S. dollars. This, therefore, meant he had to find another reason to visit the market center, besides browsing the internet. Sometimes, however, he would arrive at the center only to find that he could not be served at the cybercafe. “Something often came up,” Busoli, who lives in Sisenye village in Busia district of Kenya, recounted on Monday.
“Sometimes I would find there was no power at the market center, other times internet connection would off or the operator would not be there.” To avoid such inconveniences, Busoli would call the cybercafe operator to get assurance he would access the internet.”Sometimes this also did not work since I would take about an hour to reach the cybercafe and during this time, perhaps power would have gone off,” narrated Busoli. Now, for Busoli, all these inconveniences belong to the past.
The 29-year-old bought about four months ago an internet-enabled mobile phone, which has ended his tribulations in the quest to use the internet. The mobile phone has given Busoli, as thousands of other people in rural Kenya, internet access freedom.Many of them, who are acquiring internet-enabled handsets whose prices have dropped, are finding internet access cheaper, convenient and reliable through the gadgets as compared to cybercafes.”Buying an internet-enabled mobile phone is the best thing to have happened to me,” said the secondary school teacher. “It has given me freedom to access internet at my convenience.”
As in many other areas in rural Kenya, Busoli found accessing internet in his village a nightmare because of various reasons, key among them poor infrastructure. Most areas in rural Kenya do not have electricity connection, which means businesspersons cannot set up cybercafes close to people. Often, only the main market center is connected with power, therefore, businesspersons have to host their businesses, especially those that rely on power like cybercafes, at the central point.
This makes sense, however, accessing the market center for many people in need of their services is always a struggle because of poor road network, which push up transport cost. Such inconveniences, thus, make things like the internet become a luxury. “The money I used on transport while going to access the internet was quite substantial. What I also paid at the cybercafe was a fortune,” said Busoli.The teacher would be charged 0.04 dollar per minute to access the internet.
This is incomparable to what Kenyans in urban centers pay for internet access, which is between 0.005 dollar and 0.01 dollar per minute. “Each time I went to the cybercafe, I would pay at least 1.4 dollars. There is a time, however, I paid 3.5 dollars because the internet connection was so slow and there was an important mail I had to send,” he said, With his internet-enabled mobile phone, Busoli feels he is a freeman when it comes to internet access.
“I no longer need to call the operator before I leave home or think of boarding a motorbike to the market center. What I do is to ensure that my phone has airtime, which is readily available,” he narrated.Busoli said he uses his mobile phone to check his emails and browse the internet for information. “This is cheap and convenient for me. If, for instance, I check only emails, this does not cost me even 0.05 dollar on the phone. At the cybercafe, this would cost me at least 0.5 dollar, yet internet connection was unstable,” he said.
Bernard Mudisi, a social worker with a community-based organization in Mt Elgon district, noted that internet-enabled mobile phones have made people in villages get in touch with the world through the internet. “I can confirm to you there are no cybercafe in this district. For people like us who must access internet, mobile phones are our only saviours,” he said. Mudisi is active on social media, which makes many people believe he is based in an urban center. “Thanks to my mobile phone, people do not believe that I am based in one of the remotest part of Kenya, with numerous infrastructural challenges,” he said.
Like millions of other Kenyans, Mudiri and Busoli enjoy affordable internet access on their mobile phones through various offers from telecommunication companies.Most of the telecom companies in the East African nation have come up with tariffs that allow users to access internet and make calls affordably.Data from Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) indicates that mobile internet subscriptions on GPRS/EDGE and 3G dominate the internet market. They represent 98.8 percent of the total internet subscriptions in the East African nation.As at March 31, according to CCK, there were 6.49 million internet subscriptions in Kenya, up from 6.15 million in December 2011. About 30 percent of Kenya’s 40 million people have access to the internet. (Xinhua
Leave a comment