BUSHMAIL OVERCOMING DISTANCE

The drawback of Bushmail is that it is generally slower and a bit trickier to use the first time around -as it works via radio waves, which are bounced across the horizon. The fact that the system is so much more robust than anything else on the market more than makes up for the limited speed. All you require to send email from anywhere even a vehicle whilst driving is a HF radio, modem and HF antenna. Most of the time this means a wire over a tree, 12 Volt batteries and a Laptop plugged into a cigarette lighter.

Bushmail is quite rightly called the frontlines of the Internet in Africa as most of its users are pioneer business people in very remote and challenging locations. The recent influx of Pioneer farmers from Zimbabwe and SA into countries that are opening up their agricultural sectors- such as Zambia and Mozambique-has meant that pioneer farmers can access their email even though they are out in the Bush under the tropical convergence zone in the peak rainy season. At $500 per annum most farmers prefer to have instant contact with their loved ones in the first world and use the system extensively for logistics, orders and marketing purposes year round. The fact that the cost is fixed means that the person who pays the bills does not have to lock up the system in a safe or keep the teenagers away -as often happens with $1 a minute satellite phones.

Bushmail employs technology that has been around since World War one and has been in use by Sailors and Yachts from the days of Marconi, the inventor of the wireless radio. Recent improvements in modem technology and the advent of the Internet has meant that the ability to send simple text messages from a remote location in Africa to an Email address globally, or a GSM cell phone anywhere has greatly improved. Bushmail has also had a dramatic impact on the family lives of remote camp managers and lonely “Bush men” and has raised the calibre and frequency of love letters substantially in areas where Snail mail literally could take months. The fact that users are in daily contact with family and loved ones means less time off site on R&R trips in order to battle loneliness which result in substantial cost savings at lodges, mining sites and remote cattle ranches. Bushmail has been around for 7 years. The successful renewal of African agricultural Industry, the railway system and rural electrification may depend on effective and cheap outside communication through Email in places where GSM towers do not reach and where Telecommunication cost are disproportional to the needs.

Mr. Justice Malanot CEO Bushmail

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