Infrastructure

Liberia has an infrastructure deficit. It is being addressed with huge investments for its main port, major roads and in telecommunications.

The telecommunications market is robust and much further along than other infrastructure. 4 major companies offer services and they have very competitive pricing for basic service. For prepaid voice services, the cost of entry is low. You can purchase credit in $5 USD increments and a sim card only $5 USD as well. This is a few day's pay for many in Monrovia, but it also makes it well within reach of nearly all families in the city. Even in interior towns, the phone service is adequate. Calls to the US are $0.05 to $0.10 per minute. The rise of mobile voice communications has been a good first step in modernizing Liberia and a path that other infrastructure can follow.

Data services, the other half of modern telecom, is well behind its voice counterpart. This problem is commonly known as The Digital Divide. The January 2009 Report of the ICFA-SCIC Monitoring Working Group places Africa as 16 years behind North America in its Internet access. It also states that the gap is widening due to common problems of developing nations like protectionism, inadequate human capital and unreliable electricity. Finally, the last mile, or how individual users connect to the telecommunications system, is also a great hurdle. These problems are all common to Liberia, but the country has taken steps to remedy the issues.

Liberia's internet access is mostly through 2004 era mobile phone technology with slow speeds that remind me of late 1990s dial-up service. This connects to satellite service that is slow compared to land cables. The service is prohibitively expensive at $60 per month for basic service and doesn't include voice service. This is only enough for a single user, not enough to share. The speed increases if you are willing to pay $100 per month or more. This gets you speeds that should be similar to mobile internet speeds currently available in the US. This is considered business class service, but is insufficient for anyone who has experienced broadband service in a developed country.

This situation should improve by late 2012 when the ACE, Africa Coast to Europe, submarine cable comes online. It should reduce the cost and time it takes to send data from North America to Africa by more than half (Internet End-o-End Performance Monitoring). Liberia has signed an intent to be connected to the cable along with over a dozen other countries and will pay $25 million of the $700 million cost for the cable. This is one of several major submarine cable that will go online in the next two years. Although the ACE Liberia has purchased access, it must physically connect to the cable, a process that has not been resolved. So, while the African market should support a respectable profit over the next several years, Liberian could still be let out if its internal market isn't organized internally.

While this should end the frustration of Westerns adjusting to life in Liberia, it should allow Liberians to become more acquainted to modern western communication. Currently, Liberian university students don't have email accounts and lack computers. The Liberian government doesn't have standard email either. Even ministers list Yahoo.com accounts on their business cards. Less expensive access should allow these groups to afford service and offer it reliably thanks to the ACE cable.

The ACE cable appears to lessen the gap between Africa and The West, but The United States is already rolling out its next generation of technology. The gap extends beyond the physical technology to the innovation that comes from making productive use of it. Moving to a culture of producers instead of simply consumers is a great challenge. The first steps toward great advancement have been laid.

Resources:

• The future of African Telecom
  African Undersea Cables
• Internet End-to-End Performance Monitoring
• New E. Coast of Africa Fibre
• PingEr project