Internet

The Big Antenna In The Sky went down the other day. Mobile phones stopped working for the morning. Which is roughly as much a catastrophe here as it would be in any other country, as people don't have enough money to buy chicken wings or cheese, but everybody - including the kids - has at least one mobile phone. Most families have a satellite dish on the corrugated-iron roofs of their shacks as well.

On the bright side, we've got unlimited Internet access now, and we can finally phone England. Well, we're supposed to have unlimited Internet access. The website which informs us of our Internet consumption keeps telling us we've used up three hundred and something megas out of our monthly allotted gigabyte, which is still listed as costing 49€. Expensive stuff, Internet. Until the end of last month, there were two main Internet providers: Orange and STOI. Orange offered unlimited Internet access at a speed of 56kb for 15€ or so per month. STOI offered 1Go of Internet access per month for 49€, plus an extra 0.49€ per megabyte above the 1Go limit. Which meant that last month, we had a bill of over 120€, just for Internet access, as there are two of us now, both downloading pictures and videos for our respective pupils.

Since the middle of last month, an underwater cable called LION2 has been connected to Mayotte from Madagascar. Internet providers have multiplied and gone mad trying to talk everyone into choosing their particular offer. Some have already connected their customers to high-speed broadband. Others are a bit behind. Ours, of course, is a bit behind. The lady behind the desk told us that "it could be two days, it could be three weeks before you receive the high-speed Internet. But we assure you, it'll come before the end of the month of May". Getting there slowly.