From my biased and limited perspective, the challenges in bringing internet access to Rwanda are hardly technological, but overwhelmingly political.
I'd rather not go into the details of the political problems here. But here are some things I'm pretty sure are true and partial causes to The Problem of Bringing Internet to Rwanda:
- Rwanda has a very unreliable power infrastructure. I remember standing on the roof of building that Terracom was in, watching a blackout roll across the city.
- Last time I checked, there was no IX in Rwanda.
- Terracom deployed a very extensive fiber network. But, much like the fiber network owned by the City of San Francisco, this network is hardly used. Most of the schools have unplugged equipment racked in a closet.
- The cell phone network in Rwanda is amazing, I was very upset when I returned to the pathetic offerings in the United States. Shortly after I left, Terracom and MTN both offered high speed links over their cell networks, but ...
- Because it is a land locked country. Getting high bandwidth, low latency connectivity is capital 'H' Hard. Satellite links are expensive, and have a minimum of 1000 ms latency. Running fiber to the coast and tapping in to a undersea cable is out of the question. See also: o3bnetworks.com