When I started doing aid work (about ten years ago now), ‘the field’ really was ‘the field’. People were often very isolated, and communications were limited, whether to head office or home. I remember being very impressed by UNHCR‘s satellite telephone in Ngara, although I was more impressed by the fact that their satellite comms could also be used to watch the football on Saturday afternoon.
One of the interesting things about this assessment in Sudan is seeing how many people are using Skype - often against the wishes of agency IT departments, who don’t like Skype’s tendency to gobble bandwidth and breach firewalls. Keith Doyle of UNJLC commented to me yesterday that he was adding a new contact every day as more and more people were coming online. Now that more people in the field have access to satellite communications – whether their own or other agencies’ – it makes low-cost communication with friends and colleagues a possibility.
The general trend is towards increased connectivity, which means that in a few years, those massive satellite telephone bills (yes, I’m looking at you, RBGAN) will disappear. Otherwise, instead of low fixed cost purchase and high variable billing, we’ll have higher cost purchase and low (if not zero) billing. This will clearly change the way that we manage programmes, making distance management much easier and ensuring that staff in the field get better and quicker support.
The one problem with using Skype in Sudan? If you use SkypeOut and you want to purchase more credits, you can forget about it. Apparently the sanctions on Sudan also apply to credit card purchases made over the internet; all you get for your troubles is a message that says:
We’re terribly sorry, but we could not obtain clearance for the transaction of your recent order with Skype… When we can’t clear a transaction, it can be for various reasons — among those are… purchasing from a country which is restricted by our payment provider….
BUT I’M A HUMANITARIAN AID WORKER, AND I NEED TO CALL MY MUM.
