Cybercaff blues

Unless you're lucky to have VSAT in your office (costing your company around US$1000 per month for most often pseudo 'dedicated' bandwidth of 128kps), getting internet access in Abuja is increasingly difficult. Nitel's internet (both dial-up and ISDN) is out of action, with no solution in sight. The Internet cafe on Gana street many used to use has closed up; NIIT keep having problems with their server. Apart from a handful of cluttered/dilapidated rooms full of old boxes here and there about town, the only 'serious' cybercafe (uncluttered, you can use your laptop etc) is Cool Cafe. Owned by Lebanese, Cool Cafe takes the piss when it comes to service. It is N350 per hour (about £1.40 - which is v expensive by Nigerian standards). If you stay for an hour and ten minutes, they charge you for two hours. The staff are offhand and dopey. Its annoying that as they have no competition there is therefore no incentive other than to provide the atrocious service they provide. And its annoying to think the owners would never get away with this level of disdainful service back in Beirut. You are lucky if you get 20kps bandwidth. It took me two hours on Sunday to download all my emails. If only we had something similar to Accra's Busy Internet with a relaxed restaurant, broadband wireless, good quality printing services, meeting rooms for hire etc etc. One crummy cybercafe in the capital of a nation of 140 million! Its puzzling to think that with such huge pent-up demand for internet access, no serious entrepreneurs have stepped in with an Easy Internet or Busy Internet type model.

Meanwhile, the latest target for armed robbers in Lagos apparently are the mainland cybercafes. The '19 boys' like to parade their wealth (watches, chains etc) as they tap merrily at their caps-lock letters of help from Miryam Babangida etc. And so the armed robbers have spotted easy pickings. What comes around goes around.