Hi,
Well, for Ghana, we have these networks: tiGO, MTN, Airtel (Bharti Airtel), Global Communication (Glo), Vodafone, and Expresso.
Majority of Ghanaians are connected to the internet via these service providers. Majority of Ghanaians use the "Pay as You Go" means of subscribtions, of which the user is billed per Megabyte of download or upload. The cheapest cost per megabyte download is provided by Airtel which currently stands at 0.6 Ghp/MB download. I don't know how to take that to dollars since its gonna be in much decimals. But, on average, for a monthly subscribtion, with a 1.5G data bundle cap (both upload/download should equal the total cap) cost precisely $15. The subscription has a 30-day expiry period. There are much smaller divisions of these data bundle subscriptions. However, personally, I hardly use less than 1.5G monthly which means more cost involved. This is for the prepaid mechanism.
Another means is contract billing whereby the user pays fixed monthly price for a dedicated bandwidth. This ranges from $20 per month up to about $70 per month depending on the dedicated bandwidth (or if i can use speed for that) required.
It is not possible to get connect to the post-billing mechanism since not all areas of the country are reached with cable connection (about 70% nationwide don't have access to the cables, roughly). Therefore, the simplest and fastest means of connection in Ghana is to use the USB Modem. Almost all the networks mentioned above in Ghana has their own Huawei manufactured modems for use by subscribers.
The minimum internet connection speed currently is 3G, which isn't nationwide (but reach some remotes areas depending on how extensive the particular network provider reaches). Airtel currently has the fastest, 3.75G. For the 3G, we enjoy up to 7.2Mbits per second with the 3.75G running up to 14.2Mbits.
Universities connected? Hmmmm... For now, I don't know of anything of that sort. University campus have their own internet connections, normally called the cloudnet. There is NO academic networks currently in my country. All in whatever university use online tools like wikipedia for research, and get in touch with their friends for academic discussions via facebook or Google+ or or any other social media platform.
These on-campus service providers networks on campus are normally dominated by self-owned enterprises simply because the state- or university-owned network might not have the needed speed to help students do their researches on time the way they like it.
I think i've written enough. Well, I don't know if I answered your questions. Thanks
Rexford
On 7/8/2012 10:12 AM, rupert THURNER wrote:
hi,
somebody here is aware how ghana is connected to the internet, and about the internet providers and the cost? do you also have some "academic network" which connects the universities (state owned, and maybe students residencies)?
the only thing for africa in general is the current and planned sea cables where are some outlets for accra as well: http://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables/
rupert.
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