
Why flying 'Internet drones' over Africa is a dumb, libertarian fantasy - IBM
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/digital-culture/why-flying-internet-drones-over-africa-is-a-dumb-libertarian-fantasy/article17371996/
======
doctorfoo
Why can't it just be a "dumb" fantasy? Why does it have to be a dumb
_libertarian_ fantasy? I don't see anything particularly libertarian about it.
If anything, the existing infrastructure there is a vaguely libertarian thing,
the product of their own self determination, and the Google-ish meddling is
merely run of the mill capitalistic scheming.

A great article otherwise though.

~~~
patrickaljord
Libertarian bashing seems to be fashionable lately. Which is funny because
most people in power are not libertarians.

~~~
forgottenpass
_Which is funny because most people in power are not libertarians_

I didn't know someone had to be in government before their ideology could be
considered silly.

 _Libertarian bashing seems to be fashionable lately._

Of course it is. Many of the libertarian voices I hear these days are off the
rails. Some, but not all, of my politics are libertarian but in the last few
years I stopped saying as much because I don't want to get lumped in with the
loons. There is a lot of untenable wishful utopian thinking seen as axiomatic
going around these days.

------
devx
How is this nonsense even being upvoted here?

Who seriously thinks Google and Facebook bringing the Internet to the whole of
Africa isn't a good thing for Africans? The only things I'd be worried about
in this case is

1) Google/Facebook enabling mass surveillance of Africans, against Africans'
will, but there would be nothing they can do about it except "stop using the
Internet", in their case, since they wouldn't be able to control them (at
least that's what the author is insinuating, too)

2) They serve a very restricted version of the 'Internet', where they heavily
promote their own services

But in case 1) the majority of the African countries already decided to
implement deep packet inspection at the ISP level at that last ITU meeting,
and other such technologies to enable mass surveillance of Africas, and in
case 2), I can't imagine they would do that, because their services would
become a lot less useful, too.

As for stuff like providing competition to their local carriers - come on.
Most ISP's and carriers can't cover the whole Africa and they won't do it
anytime soon anyway in the traditional way. Either they do this sort of stuff
themselves in the future, or others do it before them. One way or the other,
it's much easier to bring Internet to the whole of Africa this way, from the
sky.

~~~
dublinben
Why do you not think it's likely that Facebook or Google would heavily promote
their own services? That's exactly what AOL provided when you accessed the
'internet' through an AOL dialup account. If these projects are intended to be
profitable, then they'll be heavily taking advantage of the captive audience
that's using them.

~~~
ataggart
>That's exactly what AOL provided when you accessed the 'internet' through an
AOL dialup account.

And where is AOL now?

~~~
c_c_c
I understand your point but AOL still makes money off of dial-up
subscriptions. According to this article they make the majority of their
profit from their approximately 3 million dial-up subscribers.

[http://www.techspot.com/news/51589-aol-dial-up-users-
account...](http://www.techspot.com/news/51589-aol-dial-up-users-account-
for-70-of-profit-posts-first-gains-in-8-years.html)

------
acchow
> First: I don’t trust people in Silicon Valley to tell me what’s happening
> elsewhere in California, let alone what’s happening (or should be happening)
> in Africa.

But the first paragraph mentions the ubiquity in Africa of California-born
Whatsapp, which isn't even that popular in Silicon Valley and California?

Oh, and Android.

------
danielweber
When I think of libertarians, I think "people who want to spend their own
money to bring Internet access to Africa." Yup.

~~~
21echoes
... with the stated intent of fostering freer markets outside of government
regulation, and bringing these tools to people outside the scope of
regulation, oversight, and tax burden. these points are what the article is
about, if you actually had taken the time to read it.

and anyway, libertarians _do_ believe in charity, just not government-coerced
charity.

~~~
Crito
You don't have to be libertarian to be sceptical of the benevolence of
_African_ governments.

~~~
spartango
This blanket characterization of an entire continent's people and leadership
strikes me as borderline racist.

Yes, there are corrupt governments in some African countries, and yes, there
is a history of corruption in many of these countries. But to group all of
Africa's governments together and judge them with such prejudice is hardly
just.

~~~
Crito
Sorry, " _many_ African governments".

The African governments effective and non-corrupt enough to provide basic 21st
century amenities like internet access are, practically by definition, not the
African governments that we are talking about. What need do those countries
have with drone-internet if they already have widespread uncensored internet
access?

When we talk about drone internet for Africa, we are talking about drone
internet for African countries that have _at best_ benevolent _but ineffective
or resourceless_ governments.

As far as I can tell from wikipedia, there are only three African countries
where significant internet access is present: Morocco, South Africa, and
Egypt. Egypt however has a recent history of internet censorship/blackout and
an uncertain future for internet censorship.

~~~
coldtea
> _The African governments effective and non-corrupt enough to provide basic
> 21st century amenities like internet access are, practically by definition,
> not the African governments that we are talking about. What need do those
> countries have with drone-internet if they already have widespread
> uncensored internet access?_

You know, you can have a government that's not corruct and still don't have
"basic 21st century amenities like internet access". Actually your own people
might not even care about such "basic amenities".

Sometimes the corruption comes from people outside pushing such amenities down
your throat.

~~~
Crito
> "at best benevolent but ineffective _or resourceless_ "

Really though, what is the point of routing your humanitarian efforts through
an ineffective government? Unless the resourceless government is the target of
your humanitarian aid _(as opposed to the people that the government claims as
their own, but is unable to care for)_ , why bring a loser on to the team?

African governments are either corrupt, ineffective, resourceless, or have
provided uncensored internet access to their population. If it is the later,
then this sort of aid is not necessary. If it is any of the former, there is
little reason to involve those governments unless absolutely necessary.

------
joe_the_user
If the drone technology succeeds, it will succeed as technology rather than as
charity. Describing the projecting as bringing something to Africa is indeed
dumb but this is a comment on the hype, not the project itself.

Just consider, wireless tech is inherently more efficient over time than wired
tech for a huge variety of applications. Wireless phones are replacing wired
phones in the Western world and given sufficient advances, it seems logical
wireless will replace the Internet duopolies and monopolies in the Western
world.

It seems just as logical for wireless transmission points to replace wired
transmission points. Hence mobile, wireless drones seem a logical step. Africa
is a logical place for this, not because of the great needs of the po'
Africans but because the infrastructure is not fully developed, because
transmission points are especially expensive there and because the market is
fairly open.

We know that Google and Facebook are companies that make their money giving
stuff to the consumer for free. So these companies offering drone-based
Internet to Africa sounds like a logical business step - if/once the tech is
ready and working well. And of course these companies us the litany of "we're
hear to help the poor benighted Africans" but that's for the consumption of
the Western public who can't imagine Africans as paying consumers.

Altogether, I'm by no means uncritical of the present unbridled advanced of
every sort of tech but ordinary African cellphone providers are far, far back
on my list of folks whose suffering I might cry over. Plus I'd expect that
given an African demonstration, the drone tech would let a figurative Google
drone army surround Comcast's Dark Tower and figuratively burn it to the
ground using affordable rates.

------
olgeni
"In Ghana, well-resourced foreign providers came in, did the gritty work of
building up infrastructure [...] and genuinely tried hard to win customers
from other providers."

Basically: the free market provided Internet access, but libertarians are
stupid.

~~~
21echoes
those foreign providers provided a service with government regulation,
oversight, and pay taxes. the proposed google and facebook solutions do none
of those things.

~~~
pjscott
How is this better for people than a company that just moves packets around?

I mean, government regulation and oversight are presumably means to an end,
rather than goals in themselves, so tell me: in this case, what advantage do
they offer? If we were talking about, say, emissions regulations for a
factory, or worker safety regulations, or something like that, then I could
see the case for it. But for this? Man, I just want my packets to go from one
place to another.

~~~
Apocryphon
Packet-moving still comes with a lot of potential issues and possibility for
malfeasance, though. Just look at Net Neutrality. Or NSA surveillance.

~~~
glenra
"Net Neutrality" is still at this point essentially a hypothetical problem.
It's people hyperventilating over how companies _might_ conceivably act, even
though the companies have essentially no actual financial incentive to act
that way (and to the extent that they do, it'd be pro-consumer to let them do
it).

"NSA surveillance" is the sort of problem that comes from giving government
_too much_ power and money; doing an end-run around governments probably
_reduces_ the potential for invasion of privacy - it means you have one fewer
actors trying to deliberately undermine reasonable security standards.

Any other candidates?

------
jessaustin
Hmmm, he's been to Ghana. Clearly he's an expert on the situation in Africa,
because that country is _so_ typical.

~~~
Apocryphon
How is it not? Certainly, one can't overgeneralize about such a huge
continent. But it's neither South Africa, nor is it Somalia.

~~~
jessaustin
Much closer to the former than the latter, according to the Failed States
Index Rankings:

[http://ffp.statesindex.org/rankings](http://ffp.statesindex.org/rankings)

On that list, Somalia is ranked 1, while Ghana and South Africa are 110 and
113 respectively. (For comparison, Finland is the champ at 178.) Certainly
there are other ways to compare nations, and Ghana is not a perfect society.
However, Ghana is exceptional among African nations, and it is a measure of
the cluelessness of TFA that this fact isn't mentioned.

------
Apocryphon
This article definitely makes some good points addressing the paternalist and
potentially disconnected attitudes that foreign companies have towards Africa.
But it doesn't bring up enough examples of local African companies,
individuals, or initiatives that are pushing for their own solutions to
Google's (and it seems, Facebook's) plans. He mentions CCHub, but that's about
the only name.

------
pekk
I'm sure everyone in Africa who is suspicious of the west will be enraptured
at the idea of permanently ceding rights to their sovereign airspace, having
drones permanently circling over them, easily monitoring all their
communications and maybe taking photographs too.

Everybody in Africa trusts us implicitly, and why shouldn't they?

~~~
pjscott
You're aware of satellites, right?

~~~
coldtea
You are aware they are way above national airspace that matters, right?

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
High-altitude balloons are above the airspace that matters -- the service
ceiling of the country's surface-to-air missiles.

Seriously though, there's no recognized boundary for sovereign airspace:

[http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA436627](http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-
bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA436627)

------
Havoc
Spot on. The entire idea is bullshit. In the more prosperous its not an issue.
e.g. MTN alone has 1000+ LTE towers here. And in the less prosperous area
people care about having safe drinking water not Facebook.

Nobody is really speaking out against it though. If google wants to throw some
balloons in the air let them - its their risk.

~~~
devx
You say that, but I've seen it before in my own poor country - people would
rather buy expensive smartphones than better food.

This technology _matters_ to people. The Internet _matters_ to people, more
than you think. Because it's not just a technology, it's a way to _connect
people_. That's why it _can_ be more important than safe drinking water or
food to a lot of people. It's not just a matter of "gadget vs staying alive".
There are other fundamental issues at stake here.

There is also research that shows that the more technologically advanced an
area is, the richer it becomes - which means jobs, infrastructure, _and_ food
and clean water for people. So don't dismiss it so easily.

Technology through phones and Internet is also helping people have more
democratic states, which is also a pretty critical issue in Africa. People can
talk to each other and inform themselves better. They can organize and
protest. They can chase away the dictators this way. So who are you to say
that clean water is definitely more important to them than technology?

~~~
colechristensen
Would you say communications infrastructure is the best way to help poor
developing nations?

~~~
ollysb
Seems reasonable, the more information people have the more they are able to
leverage the resources that they have available.

------
throwaway_yy2Di
* What's this Freudian obsession with tax-avoiding libertarians?

* How exactly do you avoid paying taxes on something that's _free_?

~~~
pjscott
I don't think that this, or Google's balloon project, are supposed to be free.
Cheap, sure -- they have competitors on the ground. But for something like
this to stay aloft, they'll need to charge enough money to at least have a
plausible chance of recovering their operating expenses at some point.

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
The author claims they would be free at a couple points in the article.

On re-reading, that's precisely one of his complaints: providing a free
service deprives governments of tax revenue.

    
    
        "Carriers, some of them foreign but some of them local,
        have been in many of these markets for years, providing
        for a fee services that companies such as Google and
        Facebook now want to provide for free. And they are big
        local employers (in Ghana, I was told Vodafone was the
        largest private employer), as well as taxpayers.
        
        [...] Essentially, these companies are trying to reap
        the reward of encouraging more people to use their
        services, such as WhatsApp, without doing the messy
        work that carriers and handset makers such as Nokia and
        Samsung do; that is, actually setting up businesses on
        the ground, paying taxes that help fund development and
        social services, employing and training that nation’s
        citizens, not to mention building real relationships."

~~~
pjscott
Then let me amend my statement: I have not heard any mention of this being
free _from a credible source._ And yes, I've looked.

------
qq66
I'm pretty sure the "Internet access" idea is just a pleasant cover story for
whatever other aerospace/UAV research projects Google and Facebook want to
invest in.

~~~
pjscott
Don't be so sure. If this turns out to be a cost-competitive way to get
internet access over the last mile (or last several miles) to customers, then
there's some real money to be made.

------
igl
Spreading mind numbing american media is libertarian?

~~~
pjscott
Are you implying that increased internet access would somehow reduce the
diversity of media people are exposed to? That has not been my experience.

