Wednesday
Another good ‘n warm night of sleeping. No a/c, but a nice breeze going through. Nice thing was, had water in the morning, so got a nice cold shower to wake me up!
Had several meetings today, the chairman of the Liberian Telecommunications Authority, Dr. Vandi was gracious and took a lot of time out of his day to help us understand the process, the role of LTA, some of the needs, issues and challenges that he sees ahead.
After that, we spent some time with the General Manager of LiberCell, one of 4 mobile providers in Liberia. For a population of some 3 million, 4 providers is quite a few!
Mr. Alawie was also very gracious and hosted Edem and I while we discussed the capabilities and plans for LiberCell in Liberia. Very interesting business, especially given the level of competition.
An interesting side note regarding the effect of this competition. The model of cell phones is quite a bit different here than most people, say, in the US look at cell phones (e.g. mobiles). Here, people actually buy a phone (without subsidization from the service providers). Because they do this, the phones are unlocked, i.e. they work with any service provider given the right SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card. What appears to happen for some, is they will buy a SIM card from each provider (~$5 each). Then, they wait around for some kind of special on minutes from one of the providers and then stock up….I tell you…
Speaking of locked phones, we went downtown to try to get Edem’s t-mobile phone unlocked….$95 to get it unlocked! Nuts I tell you. Of course it was only $25 to get my cingular phone unlocked (which, btw, they were supposed to have emailed me the code last week, but it still hasn’t arrived….grrr). We got a couple waters and headed back to the office…
Set up a few more meetings, try to get organized for tomorrow, struggle with the bandwidth, and that should about do it for the day!
2 comments:
yeah i have had that same experience with phone providers in the US telling me they'd email the code to unlock my phone, and then conveniently forgetting to do so.
Apparently, since Edem hasn't received his code from Sprint either...what a scam!
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