Albania
- Date: Fri, 22 Sep 1995 20:50:30 +0200
Oh great, just 10 minutes after Daniel left for Kazakhstan I get this
message...
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 95 17:01:12 UTC
From: MHolman@localhost (Mike Holman)
To: billing@localhost, dfk@localhost
Subject: Re: Problems in Albania
Okay, look - I'm sweating my balls off in Albania trying to
get a network going by myself. This is not Germany, this is
not France, this is a charity effort in a technical
wasteland. We get water 3 times a day, where many in the
city get it once, I haven't been able to get a fax in in 3
weeks, and my phone often goes out for over a week at a
time. They have fewer than 100,000 phones *nationwide*. As
far as finding sponsors, I went out and found three, Soros,
USIS, and UNDP. I haven't seen a penny from the latter two,
despite all the good intentions in the world, which has
completely screwed up my planning. I'm now trying to get
this net started on $19,500, which if you think about the
cost of just buying one Cisco router is ridiculous. I
offered $1500 out of this measly budget, which is going to
be quite painful, I assure you (especially since that was
going to come from some reimbursed money, and I found out
today that those people want to hold up the payment for some
typical bullshit), and I told you it's in the UNDP budget if
that ever gets signed. If you can find other sponsors,
fine, go ask them for money. I've had it. I've been
working on this project for a year, and you really can't
believe all the difficulties of getting something working
here. As one person, I get to be network engineer,
designer, secretary, market analyst, presentation man,
professor, shipping coordinator, proposal writer, radio
operator, etc., etc.
I leave on October 1, the satellite upgrade is supposed to
happen at the end of next week. You're welcome to forward
this letter to the mailing list. That's all I have to say.
Bill Eldridge
Albnet
Tirana, Albania
----
Dear Bill,
I'm afraid I cannot do much for you.
Quoting minutes from the RIPE NCC Contributors Committee meeting:
5. Procedures for Waiving of NCC Fees
The committee has discussed issue on the mailing
list. Daniel Karrenberg circulated the list of
options he had developed together with a short sum-
mary of pros and cons.
Discussion & Decisions
After a short but intensive discussion there was
consensus that NCC fees should not be waived fees
for anyone anymore. Every LIR should pay the appro-
priate fee. The rationale being that sufficient
sources are available for those in real need of
sponsorship. It was agreed that it is not the task
of the contributors as a group to sponsor networking
activities nor is it the task of the NCC to evaluate
requests for sponsorship.
I heard a suggestion from Daniel Karrenberg dfk@localhost that you can
always try to contact him for suggestions - e.g. finding sponsors. No
guarantee on the timescales of replies from him, though.
Regards,
Roderik Muit
RIPE NCC
MHolman@localhost (Mike Holman) writes:
*
* Hi Roderik,
*
* What I wanted to avoid has happened - UNDP isn't paying
* the Albanian internet project until/if the government signs
* it, a process which has already dragged out for some months,
* and will certainly take another month or more.
*
* What this means is that my budget is now a total of
* $19,500 to pay for the router, wireless modems, dial-up
* connections, a Linux machine, and to pay an engineer who's
* been helping me unpaid for the last 2 months and was
* supposed to be hired to replace me when I leave October 1.
*
* This means I have maximum of $1500 to pay for RIPE
* membership, and even that's going to be painful. The
* satellite upgrade goes in at the end of next week. Please
* pass this on to your subscribers and see if this is
* acceptable. The original 3000 ECUs is in the UNDP project,
* so when/if that gets signed, you'll see the rest of your
* money.
*
* Considering the backwards conditions of Albania and its
* telecommunications, the extreme difficulty of getting
* anything done here, and that this would be the first
* internet connection for the country, I hope this will be
* acceptable.
*
* Thanks,
* Bill Eldridge
* Tirana, Albania
*
------- End of Forwarded Message
