Wireless in Egypt

May 12, 2006

During my time in the Middle East I have never lacked e-mail capability. The routine was simple: keep an eye out for internet cafes where I could pay a small fee and be able to write e-mails and read the news. These internet cafes have ranged from the palatial to the squalid.. but they all got the job done. This regime of internet cafes was in place during my first trip to the Middle East when I lived in Fez, Morocco during the summer of 2001.. and remained strong when I spent the summer of 2004 in Damascus (during those two months Emily and I racked up 180,000 words of correspondence over the computer.)

For the first time I have begun to see cracks in this regime. Most telling is the fact that Emily and I have not even looked for an internet cafe during our time here.. We have instead kept an eye out for places that have wireless connections, where we can sit down and use our own laptop computers. This form of connection to the internet makes unnecessary any investment in actual computers.. one simply needs that little black broadcast box sitting somewhere to allow visitors to communicate. Nearly all the western-style cafes seem to offer wireless connections.. and even the McDonalds here in Maadi has a prominent sign in English announcing its free wireless connections.

It gets better. For about $30 a month we can get DSL service in our apartment. This is the breakthrough that we are eagerly awaiting.. at which point we will have non-stop access instead of having to wait for an afternoon visit to a local cafe. That will be yet another nail in the coffin of internet cafes, which will undoubtedly survive in poorer areas, but their western clientele will slowly disappear..

As Emily used the computer I contemplated the little orange sign on the left: "No Wires, No Worries, No Frontiers." This is the kind of odd English usage that always tickles me in the Middle East. "Frontiers" is obviously wrong in this context. The company wants to advertise a lack of borders or boundaries.. but hit upon "frontiers" instead, a word which connotes expanse and exploration to us.. certainly not something to be escapes from (like "worries"), but something inviting. That misuse however made me think about just how difficult a word like frontier would be to explain to someone.. it is not a border, but it is a border.