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Thursday, January 31, 2013

Wireless in Mwadui

Ever since moving to Mwadui Tanzania a year ago, I have lived in a void/hole/blank space as regards Internet connection. At the time I had days and weeks of frustration as I tried to access the Internet (not least to blog!) and to receive and send e-mails. Skype was not even an option. 

Our IT friend here on site, Wessel suggested I buy a specially designed mast,  which he'd mount onto the house roof and so be "in-line" with the Vodacom Tower which everyone connects to. He also said that the Nokia N8 Smartphone was much more effective than the dongle I was using. Back in South Africa in April, we duly bought the magic mast and the equally magic Smartphone and returned to Tanzania with it. Sure enough, after Wessel did all the necessary, I was able to connect to the Internet although it was still quite slow. Skype was still out of the question. 


In December, after nine months of reasonable Internet, albeit quite a few scares - and more frustration -  when my phone (a touch screen) froze and I didn't have Internet for about four days, Wessel once again told me he'd discovered and set up in his house a router. Now he was speaking my language (or rather I could understand his!) I have a router back home in SA and it works exceptionally well. He was in SA on leave at the moment, and after I'd transferred the required amount of the router to his bank, he ordered it for me.

In January he brought my new router back to Mwadui with him, set it up in my house and voila! I am now on 3G and life is good! Not only do I upload photos with ease and am able to publish my posts painlessly, I am also on Skype and can open You-tube within seconds.

The packaging showing the name and size of my router

The little magic box which has improved my Internet 100%

Thanks Wessel! 

I hope you're all having a wonderful week.


5 comments:

  1. Fabulous, Jo. I'm so happy for you. It's SO frustrating when we can't blog.
    We have our own wireless internet connection in the house, and it works fine on my husband's computer, but not on mine. I've learned to get him to turn off the modem for a couple of minutes, turn it back on, then turn off the router for a few minutes, etc.
    This works, but I keep forgetting to get him to show me how to do it, for days when my computer "is not connected to the internet" which happens more often than I would like.
    Thanks to Wessel for helping you!
    K

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  2. Seems there's always something new coming out to make internet faster. Glad you found a solution.

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  3. JO, sounds wonderful. It can be so frustrating having to deal with slow interent service. I am glad Wessel found a way for you to have a fast internet.

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  4. I hate it when that happens. My grandson fixed my computer when something had radically upset it and it refused to connect to the internet. I was off line for 12 days and although I found it hard to gather my thoughts enough to post, I felt dreadfully disconnected. Glad all is well again and even better than before.

    A pity you cannot exercise your fatcat the way I do Kookie. He runs up the hill following my car on our private road for almost a mile and the same when we return. I just let him out at the gate across the road and he chases me home. It has done a great deal of good for his muscle tone and trimmed him up nicely.

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  5. Hurray! It's so hard to be without an internet connection. How did we manage before it existed?!

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Thank you for visiting my blog and taking the time to leave a comment. I appreciate your feedback. Jo