Subject: Burundi goes on-line, elite hail end of isolation Burundi goes on-line, elite hail end of isolation Excerpt from the CSS Internet News (tm). Email=20 jwalker@tor.hookup.net with SUBINFO CSSINEWS for subscription information. http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/info/080297/info10_14973.html Copyright =A9 1997 Nando.net Copyright =A9 1997 Reuter Information Service=20 BUJUMBURA (August 2, 1997 02:21 a.m. EDT) - Consumers in Burundi on Friday received a lifeline from cyberspace, ending years of isolation from the world's information revolution. Barnabe Karorero, director of Burundi's sole internet service provider, Centre National de L'informatique (CNI), said his company officially began offering customers in the capital, Bujumbura, full access to the internet on Friday, with a public launch planned for later in August. Karorero said his company had been offering the service free to customers since May on a trial basis to filter bugs from the system and get people interested. "We now have about 80 people who are connected. If the situation becomes better in the country, we hope to have between 500-1000 subscribers," Karorero told Reuters. Karorero said the tiny Central African country had been under an "intellectual embargo," and hoped to work with the University of Burundi to enhance research, information access and academic contacts with Western counterparts. But CNI's potential market is small. Most of Burundi's six million inhabitants are peasant farmers living in huts made of sticks and mud. And officials at Onatel, Burundi's government-run telecommunications company, said there were just under 19,888 telephone subscribers in the country. "Before they didn't know anything about internet," Karorero said. "We've had to explain it to them. But now, day by day, people are becoming interested." Charles Nteqahorigwa, director of a leading coffee house in the capital and a recent subscriber to the service, said the internet was good for business, allowing links to suppliers and news otherwise unavailable. "For us, it's exciting. We are entering the world. We were land-locked mentally. But now we have to learn how to "surf," Nteqahorigwa said. About 50 percent of CNI's internet subscribers are foreigners working with aid agencies, while the remainder are local businessmen and government officials, Karorero said. CNI charges $150 per month for unlimited service and full access to the World Wide Web, and $50 for 10 hours per month, with each additional hour costing 20 cents. But such fees are prohibitive for most consumers in Burundi, where recent World Bank statistics put annual per capita income at $150. Experienced expatriate users, however, say the system works well and the speed of connections is comparable to those in western countries. CNI has two generators on standby to keep the system running during frequent power outages. Last year, rebels attacked electricity lines interrupting power to Bujumbura for several weeks, and in June, rebels knocked out an electricity pylon in the province of Bubanza, briefly cutting power to a neighbourhood of the capital.=20 By TODD PITMAN, Reuters=20 --------------- Also in this issue: - Wells Fargo hangs its wanted posters on the Web=20 - SETTING GUIDELINES FOR WEB NEWS - Netword lets you surf with keywords=20 - Cancer genome Web site to aid research - Gossip Tabloid Invades the Web!!!