Mauritius to be the first country with nationwide WiFi
By Ryan Block 
posted Jun 20th 2005 9:52AM
posted Jun 20th 2005 9:52AM
Like most Americans, you've probably only heard of Mauritius if you were actively looking for a vacation spot
(actually, we were thinking of having our first Engadget getaway either there or Morocco). But the 1.2m island nation
is putting itself on the map so to speak by installing nation-wide municipal wireless Internet access—apparently
besting Taiwan to be the first. And we were all about it too, until they declared, "It is our
vision to transform Mauritius into a cyber-island." Which, as a single statement couldn't possibly turn us off any more
to the whole idea. Plus, is this even going to be free? Probably not.
[Via slashdot]
I can see it now: Ricardo Montalban is waiting at the dock to greet all new visitors
"Welcome to Cyber Island!"
Yea, just remember to bring your wireless ip phones
My wife and I spent two weeks at Mauritius for our honey moon, and had the greatest time. Fantastic place to be - plenty of influence from Africa, China, India, France and who knows where. The sort of place you really wish stand still ..
Poor people (literally). Mauritius is going through a lot of pain these days. Their textile industry is losing out to China, their sugar industry is going down the drain (due to overproduction in the world) and most of the sugar farms are being converted into exclusive hotels (and even to some extent being sold to foreigners, something that wasn't possible only a short while ago). In other words, Mauritius will never be the same..
We need this in all major cities in the US. I'm tired of paying for airtime with my Sprint card..
Ah, forgot to say : Mauritus has an amazing tea estate called Bois Cheri. They produce a REAL vanilla tea, which tastes heavenly compared to other certain 'vanilla' scented/perfumed teas... I know that Mariage Freres (Paris, France) carry it, but I haven't seen anyone else do so.
Highly recommended.
"But the 1.2m island nation is putting itself on the map"
at 1.2 meters, it won't take very many access points...
The wealthiest country in the world and we can't have this everywhere, what's the hold up? I just have a measly little section of Philly if I'm in a bind.
"what's the hold up?"
Same reason all the little asian nations migrate mobile phone technology faster than we do...same reason you can paint a closet faster than your living room.
They're smaller.
Japan is what, roughly the size of California with an economy just a little less than that of the entire US ? If you concentrated all those resorces to overhauling Cali's mobile phone service (or high speed internet)...you could probably do it every 2 years if you wanted to.
And since it WOULD take so long, no one wants to commit to a multi-year project deploying one particular technology when it will likely be obsolete before the project is even done...
Maricius only has 1.2 million people so I'm guessing even though it's an autonymous country it's probably not physically very large. So it wouldn't take long to thoroughly propogate one technology from coast to coast to coast to coast, bypassing both the mentioned issues.
Plus it gains them noteriety which will translate into $$$ for their aparently increasingly tourism based economy. The US makes/steals money along different lines, so for better or for worse, we focus our time elsewhere.
mars...
the moon...
Iraq...
etc, etc, etc...
Just my $0.02
"The wealthiest country in the world and we can't have this everywhere, what's the hold up?"
Mauritius area - 2,040 sq km
Mauritius Population - ~1,230,602
Mauritius Population density - ~603.24/km^2
US area - 9,631,418 sq km
US Population - ~295,734,134
US Population density - ~30.7/km^2
The US has 4,721 times the area, 240 times the population, and a little under one twentieth the population density.
Leaving aside, for the moment, all of the many and myriad reasons government should not be in the ISP business, paid or otherwise, people don't seem to get just how bloody big this country is and how, comparatively speaking, sparsely populated most of it is.
"Japan is what, roughly the size of California with an economy just a little less than that of the entire US ?"
US GDP - $11.75 Trillion
California GDP - $1.4 Trillion
Japan GDP - $3.745 Trillion
Japan Area - 377,835 sq km
California area - 410,000 sq km
The Japanese GDP is aprox 32% that of the US and roughly 2.675 times that of California alone. The Japanese land area is aprox 92% that of California.
Roughly the size of California, yes, but with an economy, while substantially larger than California's alone, that is substantially smaller than that of the US.
"In other words, Mauritius will never be the same..."
That's the whole point - an agrarian society, while satisfying tourists hopes of finding a reminder of yesteryear, will not lift Mauritius, like most island nations in the region or on the African continent, from poverty. Tourism is the short-term ticket and industrial evolution is the long-term. Bridging the digital divide is a huge step in this direction - education via information.
Thanks for the stats 'Myria'. I thought Japans economy was closer to the US's than that.
My mistake ! :)
So the ratio is not as high as I thought, but I still think my main point is valid, that being the more $'s per square mile you have (whether that's by increasing funds or decreasing the coverage area), the faster you can integrate technology nationwide (which, all stats aside, is kind of a no brainer)...
Thanks again!
Quite frankly I find that depressing actually. Cali is THAT close to Japan money wise and is as backward educationally and technologicaly as it is...just plain sad... especially when you consider that Cali's population is roughly 36 mil and Japans is rough 128 mil (This time I looked it up :) ). ~39K per person in cali vs ~30k per person in Japan. We should be AHEAD of them...not abysmally behind them...
Argh!
Well there's always the chance I am simply a prime example of the poor american educational system and my figures are completely wrong instead of just very rough, meaning things aren't really as bad as all that...
*sigh*
Hi, i'm Burt, daily reader of Engadget and living in Mauritius.
Well, our country in on its way to become a Cyber Island and this is one of our steps.
Please note the The Ebene Cyber Tower has been awarded Intelligent Building of the Year
In a year when Africa was well represented among finalists for the Awards, Ebene Cyber Tower, a 12-story commercial building in Mauritius was selected as the Intelligent Building of the Year.
The tower is considered one of the most advanced technology buildings in the region and is indicative, according to ICF, of the relationship between commercial real estate and the development of an intelligent community. The building is the only one in Mauritius with fiber optic connectivity directly available to tenants within their offices. Further, the 38,610 square-foot building caught the eye of the selection committee because it is an integral part of a broader and integrated intelligent community project, known as the Ebne Cyber City. The tower and Cyber City project are part of a national strategy to establish information and broadband communications technologies as the "fifth pillar" of the economy.
Ebne Cyber Tower was completed in a record time and has attracted technology-oriented tenants from across the globe, including those in industries such as data entry, image processing, call centre, financial and medical back office operations, software development, data and disaster recovery. Ebene Cyber Tower reported to ICF that in 2005 tenants included Infosys Technologies (India), Teleforma (USA), Cendris (UK), Theo Finance (Switzerland) and Accenture (France).
ICF noted that the building was acknowledged for serving as a base that is attracting businesses worldwide, and is a good example of how a community can design and build a commercial property, leverage the power of broadband communications and generate real growth for its citizens.
Executive Chairman C. Bhadain accepted the award on behalf of Ebene Cyber Tower. Mr. Bhadain was accompanied by the architectural team that designed the award-winning building. Mr. Peter Craig, the nation's trade commissioner to the United States, was also in attendance.
Source : http://www.intelligentcommunity.org/html/ICawards2005.html
Mauritius! I represented Mauritius at Harvard Model UN a few years back. Nice place. I hope this turns out to be a step towards better education and not towards commercial destruction.
Burt, is it true that Mauritius has four chickens to every person? Sadly, that's what I remember best about it... :)
Thank you for talking about Mauritius of which 99% of the USA population knows nothing about. It actually is not even on the Library of Congress world map and falls usually between page 32/33 on world atlas maps between South/West Africa and India. In 1982 we faced 46% inflation, 25% unemployment and a further 20% who were paid pennies to pull weeds from roads and had foreign exchange for 10 days food imports. Today we are talking of being a cyber island, are investing in many mainland African countries and are at the forefront of the economic relations between US and Africa. Don't take our smallness (our maritime area makes us the largest country in Africa - yes -99% is under water) for weakness. Mauritius won the 1st prize for its Cyber City building pushing out Taiwan and Ireland at the IntelligentCommunity Forum in New York 2005. Not to overuse a cliche "small may be beautiful". Peter Craig (Trade Commissioner, Mauritius Embassy, Washington DC)
I live in the country..... Only WIFI network there is by a private company and it covers only 5 SQ kms in the city... There are a few other access points provided by the government owned ISP that cover just about 500 SQ mts... All of these are NOT free.. :-(
Been scanning the island for WIFI connections... Nothing like a nationwide WIFI network... YET...
Yep, I live in there.
WiFi is going to be available all over the country? Wow, that's news to me. Currently, the price of ADSL through the main ISP costs a little bit more than 30-35 US Dollars a month. And that too, the connection is a crappy and unreliable 512k.
I can't see the whole island being covered by WiFi in the next one or two years. That might again be one of the government or ISP's publicity stunts. Like the cybertower and cyberisland bullshit. Those who don't really understand business and informatics have absolutely no idea what the cybertower is doing to the national economy. True, we're having new investors and companies coming over, but we're still being marked as a nice outsourcing destination by some major companies. Meaning that companies find it cheaper to give jobs out to programmers or telemarketing agents (telemarketing agents get approx. US$320 a month, programmer earns between US$400 and US$550 in one month) and reap most of the benefits. You get special discounts on taxation over here if you're a foreign investor. Heh.
In an island of more than one million people, what difference does it make to have ten more foreign companies popping up here and there in the cybertower? 1000 new jobs? 5000 new jobs? Duh.
Yes, they'll erect cybertowers and spray the whole island with WiFi costing you more than US$50 a month. Yep. Cyberisland indeed. The people will be happy, the economy failing, and well, I'll still be around to check out engadget.
Rowan