Zimbabwe satellite service shutdown for non-payment

Tue Sep 19 08:06:13 UTC 2006

On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 12:00:36AM -0500, Gadi Evron wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Sep 2006, Sean Donelan wrote:
> > Intelsat has shutdown the primary satellite link for Zimbabwe's state 
> > communications company for non-payment, which has affected most of the 
> > ISPs in the country.
> 
> I can't really blame them. I doubt the Internet is considered critical
> infrastructure over there yet,

i guess that would depend on who you are, i'm sure a number of aid
organizations and other NGO's are quite dependent on the internet.

> and I doubt Intelsat would care... but this
> is interesting in the sense that even if you can't fault intelsat in any
> way... Intelsat, Inmarsat, etc. run quite a bit, and if it's a
> "country" that gets disconnected, that is a problem even if it's not
> "their" problem.

i would imagine that this was a last option for intelsat, as they have been
the backbone for many places, especially those away from western infrastucture
for a long time.

"The state company TelOne acknowledged receiving a final demand for payment of
its satellite arrears last month and asked the central bank to provide hard
currency which has so far not been allocated."

-- 
[ Jim Mercer        jim at reptiles.org        +971 50 436-3874 ]
[          I want to live forever, or die trying.            ]