Water? Electricity? What’s more important?

Another notable moment (and there were many) that I remember from my last ride through the Terrai districts was the never-ending road construction. Roads and more specifically along the road side, mounds of earth were being ripped up for various pipe line developments.

I asked my driver Saron-dai what the long ant-line of construction workers were doing (it’s was an unbelievable sight),

“Are these pipes for water? electricity?”

Saron-dai flat out said no, and simple replied with the utmost confidence that what was really going was very important…

“These pipes are for Internet!”

“What? For the Internet?”, I was completely surprised, and to think, why would I ever think it could be for water or electricity!?!?

Of course, I had to check so when I had the opportunity, I quickly examined the pipes that were going into the gutters. One of the marked PVC pipes were actually encasing fiber-optic cable owned by Spice Nepal.

Oh how the Internet has grown….

Only a mere three years ago, dial-up internet connection was (and still is in most less developed districts) the latest and greatest telecommunications technology to hit the Nepal landscape (a far distant second to mobile phone networks of course). My colleagues Neil and Gerry mentioned to me that when they arrived during that time, dial-up Internet was just taking off (talk about going back in time to the mid-90’s). Today, high-speed cable internet access is bursting into the scene, rapidly bypassing dial-up (thank goodness) and cyber cafes are madly popping up like Tim Horton stores in southern Ontario.

…re: mobile phones

I’m still getting used to seeing Buddhist monks and villagers walking around with mobile phones that are 10-times more advanced than my antique Motorola v551 phone.

Mobile phone use etiquette in Nepal still needs some work.

Related side note: thanks to Cody for posting this article link about Solar mobile phones on my Facebook wall. Here is another related post.

Looking up

So I guess things are staring to look up in Nepal (hence the photo of the baby). Without a doubt, Internet access and mobile phone networks will continue to develop in Nepal, more than anything else…

…and you can probably gue$$ why that is.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

*