Somone Has To Pay For It All

It's not always just consumers who can't pay their bills. At least, according to a Reuters newsflash today on Zimbabwe, this seems to be the case. "Internet traffic in Zimbabwe has come close to a standstill after an international satellite firm slashed its bandwidth because the cash-starved government failed to pay the bill," the wire reports.

Government-owned TelOne, which owns the country's main satellite Internet link, said satellite firm Intelsat had cut its international bandwidth because it failed to pay the $700,000 fee.

"The link is slow because they reduced the megabits on our satellite link until the payment is made," TelOne spokesman Phill Chingwaru told Reuters on Wednesday.

... "It is a nightmare because of the congestion and we are getting calls from desperate clients, some of them who can't even access the Internet," said an official from a private ISP, which uses TelOne's satellite link.

As the report further points out, Zimbabwe's 1200% rate of inflation and 70% unemployment are the principal drivers behind such calamaties. The story is a great reminder that technology - and indeed any scientific development - is not free of charge, even when its infrastructure has already been implemented. Too often in developed economies we tend to think that no matter what happens, as long as we remain relatively protectionist and guard our assets sufficiently, the chances of any kind of real reversion of development is minimal.

Zimbabwe is a great counter-example to this over confidence. It is precisely liberalised trade that has brought us the technological developments which improve our lifestyles, and all asset guarding tends to do is create a barrier towards growth of commerce. Granted, Zimbabwe is also run by a dictator who hoards many of the country's assets himself, but even then, was the country open to foreign trade it is highly unlikely it would be in the kind of mess it finds itself in now.

The key difference between the world of the twenty-first century and the one of the centuries before is our high degree of interdependence. Intelsat - the company which cut off Zimbabwe's connection - is a Bermuda-based global providor of satelite communication, a whole two oceans away from Africa. It's a story worth remembering - especially in light of current talks of protectionism in response to other fast emerging  powers, which again, are a couple of leaps of the pond away.

Comments

[dodster]

Interesting thought - the question is has interdependence now rendered true protectionism impossible?