Cyberspace the South African way

Life is tough without Internet. Rather, life is tough without fast Internet. Since my arrival back in South Africa for a prolonged stay in my beloved hometown of Stellenbosch, things were moving along at a quiet pace. They call not for nothing the Cape Town area Sleep City. We do not like to make haste down here. Or so they claim in Johannesburg, in the north of the country. I must admit at times there has been some measure of truth in that josteling.

For example, joining cyberspace the proper way - with fast Internet - took 9 days. But I guess that would be true across the country and could be worse in denser regions such as around Johannesburg. I suppose setting up an Internet service with Comcast in Waltham from a clean start would also take about 10 days, since the technician would have to come out on site. Here in Stellenbosch, it was a case of self service - the modem came via a courier and everything just worked after plug-in. Being the neighbourly country we are, my neighbour was so kind as to take impromptu delivery on my behalf when the courier had forgotten to phone first. And the courier had the common sense to knock at the neighbour's when my door was not answered.

So tonight, life is good again. Here I am, blasting through cyberspace at a blistering 384kbps over ADSL. Yes, after three weeks of clonking along at 115kbps via my mobile phone, 384kbps is going at F1 speeds indeed. And mind you, most Internet content is throttled upstream so as to download no faster than about 384 kbps. I can attest to that claim from many hours on the Internet drumming my fingers while superfast Comcast was trundling along at a choking 300-400 kbps.

But what joy to click on Yahoo Mail and have that familiar mail interface pop up - at the same effective rate as with my old Comcast service in Waltham. What bliss to be rid of the past three weeks of frustration and dispair at the modem speeds served by Vodacom and my Nokia 3110, which could only muster EGPRS. The little workhorse did not support 3G, even though Vodacom provided it.

And speed is everything. Speed is as important as timing these days. But cyberspace the South African way is not 5Mbps peak download speed as in the USA. It is 384 kbps for most of us - the affordable rate. And the service is capped in terms of total transferred content. Forget about downloading HD movies in droves. One barely does the usual MS and virus definition updates. One thinks twice before massaging too many pictures online. This is a generous country, but not one of abundance.

But I am back in cyberspace the South African way.