Africans pay $1800 for 1GB of data

A very shocking statistic indeed. Density of backhaul PoPs has always been a problem just about everywhere. I remember that when the ERNET backbone was being laid out, there were just 5 PoPs in the whole of India. Africa seems to be facing a similar problem at the moment, but increasing the density through fiber can be very expensive, simply because of the hugeness of the land mass. Satellite systems can be an answer, but only if the licensing costs are reduced. Meshes of microwave towers can be another possibility to route traffic locally instead of backhauling it externally, but there is much work on routing and fairness in wireless meshes that remains unsolved. But surely, anybody who solves this problem, is surely going to be a great winner. I wonder if our systems based on mechanical backhauls can prove useful here for certain key applications.