Slammed by Technology--But Why???

With tele-medicine and the world wide web transforming the way business is done across the globe, including patient care, access to such marvels is of course of interest to us. Our own access to world-wide communications is multi-media: not really, it just seems that way. Actually, all our eggs are in one basket. It’s name is Zain, and for us it’s three cell phones.

One of the larger cell phone groups here in Malawi, advertised in a daunting hot pink color, offers a variety of services. First, the usual cell phone package. Though I’ve been told monthly contracts are available, almost everyone buys time as they go and adds it to their account via the self-same cell phone. The cost of a local call is not too bad, but calling the other end of the country can be costly, and calling the U.S., it’s prohibitive.

When I tried to call the States a few days ago, I went through most of my $10.00 allotment in just a very few minutes. We didn’t put a stop-watch to it, but we estimate the rate at $2.00 to $4.00 a minute. And when we called our colleague on the other end of the country (we’re talking about less distance than LA to San Fran.) the same sum disappeared in about 20 minutes. We were thus relieved to learn from that same colleague, Mark Thiesen and his wife Era, of a service in the US whose rates are about $0.27 per minute. I think we can live with that.

GlobalPhone pulls it off like this. You call on your phone to a US number and let it ring once, and only once, and then hang up. Detecting the “missed call”, the machinery on the States-side calls you back (at low-due-to-competition U.S. rates) and asks for the number you want, and then proceeds to connect you. They deduct up to a pre-authorized amount per month from your credit card at a fraction of the cost we’re now paying.

Zain, our current one for all, also sells modems which plug into your computer with a USB connection, but actually are their own little cell phones. When you connect to the internet you first plug in the modem and “activate” it via your computer, and voila! You’re connected! The neat thing is that it appears that the machine only counts units when you’re actively down-loading. So, connection is not a costly thing unless info-packets are actually coming down or up the wire. But you have to watch your account balance. Again, we buy about $10.00 worth of units (about 1,000 units) and “load” them via our computer. But they can run out. And the modems are decidedly not fast. (The estimate on downloading a printer driver for the printer, which was already here and driven by another computer e’er we got here—was 4 hours. No thank you. We’ll be talking about a disk with the next visitor, Jeremy.)

Needing to contact several of you whom we’ve invited to partner with us in our our project around transportation, and hearing of GlobalPhone, we fired off an application via internet, received a confirmation request asking for photocopies of identity documents to be faxed in. We got that all ready, ran down to the airport and sent those in last Saturday afternoon (at almost $10.00 per page, mind you!), and wondered when they’d get it up and going. Well, GlobalPhone apparently honors the Sabbath and Sunday too, because it wasn’t until sometime Monday that our e-mail came in with some important little access characters. We were in business, at least for a while.

So, we dashed off a test call of a very few seconds to our missions minister, and it worked! (Mark wasn’t sure that cell phones would handle it.) Then we called “one of you”, only to find you out to lunch, but coming back in 30 minutes. It’s bed-time here, mind you, but around noon where you are, but we’re going to get this communication thing worked out. We had some questions about our tax return, so we rang up the accountant and hashed through all that. Wonderful, though near the end of the call a pleasantly haunting voice chimed in: “You have only one minute remaining.” And then it got dicey.

I’d promised your assistant I’d call “you” back, and I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for weeks. We last talked three weeks ago, two weeks before I left the States, and we’ve played quite a bit of phone tag, so I didn’t want to be cut off in the middle of the call. Beth and I searched for the paperwork about the system. Somewhere it seemed I’d read something about security systems and “pro-rated rates of use”. Never found those explanatory papers, but did find an invitation to call a U.S. 800 number or fire off an e-mail if ever we needed a little more cash on our account. Now our internet modem is down to 37 units, about out of gas. We finally got into the new telephone account's information over the web. We’d spent four dollars of our fifty for the month, but we had only $0.31 available. (And only 3 units left of internet.) Security!!Call "you" and risk getting cut off . . . or call customer service for GlobalPhone. We chose the latter.

I heard the ring indicator sound on the other end and I hung up. About 10 seconds later the phone began to vibrate and ring. I answered, dialed the 800 number on prompt, and then that haunting, sweet voice: “You have less than one minute.” A menu is presented, another menu.Surely they won’t hang up while I’m asking them for access to a few more of the dollars I’ve already paid them! A voice comes on the line, “How can we help you?” overlapping at the end with the haunting lady: “You’re out of time. Click.”

Tomorrow I can run by the airport, literally, unless the driver brings the other key fob back in the morning. The keyless entry/security system on the pick-up has a dead battery. We got into the car, but can’t start it without a working “clicker”. (Now you see why we need transportation.) (As it turns out, though the keyless entry is weakening, I had left the lights on Sunday, draining the battery. Someone else is lamenting shared transportation.) At the airport I can pick up internet minutes and contact GlobalPhone, and maybe I can call “you” tomorrow night. Or maybe not. We’ll see. And we hear broadband is coming this year.

[We finally got in touch with "you", and you sent sent us $1500 toward the vehicle we will need. Thank you so much for your generosity, your patience, and your care for what we are doing. And, we've talked with folks who think they can reach us in six weeks or less with 1 megabyte/second internet speed at rates comparable to the U.S. Yes!]