Edition 3 of “Guide Post” is out. For those that remember, it is the current English language community newspaper published in a form similar to the “Timor Sun”.

It contains social news, the odd re-print of news articles and press releases and lots of advertising.

But this week, I learned that :

• “vasco da gama” restaurant has a new menu – I already knew that

• The British Embassy has closed its doors here – I knew that too.

• Plaza Hotel has internet in all rooms (like Hotel Dili) – also knew that one.

• Com resort is open again.

• The property section is getting bigger.

• But the big one was the full page ad for US$2 per hour internet at 2 Timor Telecom (TT) outlets thus under-cutting all of the internet cafes who have no alternative but to buy bandwidth from TT.

And there is more.

It is now available by email by request to :

guidepostadvertising “”AT”” yahoo “”DOT”” com “”DOT”” au

You will then receive a PDF file of about 2 Mbytes in size so make sure you can actually receive attachments of this size before subscribing.

Good morning, I am Reverend Squatter and my sermon today is internet connectivity and the computers used to connect to the internet here in Dili.

I am really preaching to Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) and to those techies who have 24 Mbps (mega bits per second) broadband links piped into their homes. When you have a whole country running on a single 2 Mbps link to the world, (Houston) we have a problem.

I have several different email addresses, only one of which do I pay for. For reasons I dare not guess, the worst of them for spam is the paid one. About a month ago, I was being assassinated by spam emails and when you are on the end of a modem link, this is not good. Even though they did have anti-spam software in place, it clearly was not working too well. Then they announced they were stepping up the aggressiveness of their anti-spam strategy. Spam emails dropped to about a tenth. I was mighty pleased. I know there are people out there who insist that every single email addressed to them MUST be delivered. I guess these are the 24Mbps guys who want to train their anti-spam software to be on the cutting edge of accuracy. But I am more than happy to see this stuff culled before it is delivered over the wire.

With my blog, I have discovered the brave new world of spam blogging. This arrives as “comment spam”. Over the last few weeks, comment spam has been slowly increasing to the point where it cracked over 100 per day. Over a slow link, each and every one of those comments is downloaded for me to decide which one is from a human. This was blowing me out of the water. I have sinced mucked around with anti-spam stuff and I do not get any comment spam anymore (neither do I get any comments from anyone !).

I am pretty anal when it comes to keeping my Windows system up-to-date with Microsoft updates and virus signature updates. Didn’t I just love the last Microsoft Tuesday – 41 Mbytes of updates. Took 4.5 hours. Although it depends on your modem access plan through Timor Telecom, at about 5 cents per minute, that’s US$13-50 just to do the Microsoft updates. So in any month, the Microsoft updates and virus updates (and anti-spyware updates for that matter) are costing not only 4 to 6 hours of time, but probably cost as much as a monthly broadband connection charge in other parts of the world.

The best you can possibly do here is pay over US$700 per month for a permanent 128kbps connection.

Most businesses/organisations with a connection will go for either one of these permanent connections or insanely, get a digital service through Timor Telecom at a rate of over US$2000 per month. Basically, no-one gets more than 128kbps or in a few cases, 256kbps. Because of the monopoly position that Timor Telecom holds, only foreign embassies (and probably the UN and the like) are permitted to get around this monopoly. They go for satellite which I understand is significantly cheaper.

The point is that there are a number of organisations with say 50 pcs networked through a 128kbps connection to the internet. Now, if you have every pc doing automatic updates of everything, you have a problem. And if you were trying to save money, you would have them all turned off overnight. You would only leave them on if you had the money for the electricity and a generator to fill in for the many power cuts and UPSes to manage the cut-over time to the generator and to smooth out the erratic voltage. All that generator stuff raises the bar financially.

Far easier to turn off all your pcs and at 8:30am each morning, everyone gets onto the internet to get their mail and everyone’s updates start kicking in and you end up going for early morning tea. So you either put running your business on hold or turn off automatic updating. Microsoft Update Tuesday could become a national holiday here OR you just don’t do it.

Mr. 24Mbps probably says “ha ha, what you need is Microsoft’s update server”. Well, no-one likes paying Microsoft anything here and adding yet another layer of complexity is probably beyond most organisations here.

Need steak knives ? There’s more.

So the well run organisation probably has someone running around all day with a USB memory key applying updates. The not so well run one has probably given up. The next problem is the user. If organisations had “acceptable use policies” for use of the pcs and the internet AND they were adhered to, then another big problem would go away.

Your typical Timorese can not afford a pc and to be on the internet at home, would need a fixed line phone just to get started on the internet. Only the elite have this. So for many, a pc is either at an internet cafe (ie gaming parlour) or at a workplace. So you do all your private stuff at work if you can. (Note that there are many expats in this category as well.) You download email, porn, music, video and inevitably piles of viruses. Timor is virus heaven (but thanks to my analness, I remain clean as a whistle at home).

In a country where thanks to the telecomms monopoly, internet charges are actually going up, what is it going to be like when typical monthly updates are running at 200 Mbytes per month. And who knows just how much the spam load is ?

I welcome any comments on anything I have raised here over tea and biscuits on the front porch where I will be conducting “how to be anal” lessons.

Here endeth the lesson

With the demise of the “Timor Sun” back in May, there has been a long absence of English language local news.

Just recently, 2 new options have surfaced. The first was the online-only “Timor Times” and the second, a replacement for “Timor Sun” called “Guide Post”.

Guide Post looks quite similar to the old Timor Sun and I suspect the old production team have reformed under the new editor. The new editor is Leith Carroll who has taken over from the Bradridges. Leith did photography work and was a regular contributor to the Timor Sun. Then he became a driver and local can-do man for some overseas media during May and June.

Edition 2 has a nice up-to-date map of Dili with some key business (ie advertiser) locations such as restaurants.

The Timor Times is a more home-grown effort but has its own share of useful information. But surely (you ask) there must be more going on than Pilates, Quiz Night, Hash House Harriers and Floorball ? 🙂 If you want to subscribe to the Timor Times, just email [email protected]

I discovered Jinha’s internet cafe via the Timor Times and it is the best in town on price and speed (except if everyone knows this, then the speed will not be so good). No air-con but views of the sea out the window. At US$3 per hour, a few peaks out the window won’t go astray.

[2 Nov amendment]

It appears I omitted to say that Timor Times is a monthly and Guide Post is a weekly. They are both very much local news (ie community newspapers) and information and do not run national or international news.

I was whizzing down “banana road” yesterday and realised that something was missing.

“Banana Road” is the very expat name for the back road that parallels Comorro Road out the west of town. It starts from around the Vila Verde cathedral, out past Care International and hits semi-rural stuff with lots of bananas by the side of the road until it hits the Comorro River.

But I realised that one of those things that I found very quaint had gone – Mr. Download. Imagine a banana tree lined rough bitumen road with dirt verges and numerous twig huts with banana tree roofs and the sign to Mr.Download’s little computer shop.

Alas, it is no more. No shop and the sign has also gone. Burnt to the ground courtesy of recent events. I have a picture somewhere along with a number of other “computer shops” that I was going to pull together into a photo album. (Note to file : must do !)

Anyway, thats my rambling introduction into computer shops around Dili. Firstly, computer shops DO exist and you can buy computers, printers, paper, printer cartridges, hard disks, network cards, USB mice, external hard drives, cabling etc. I am not sure that it is even possible to buy legal software but you can always buy that over the internet and get it shipped to your … well, if you have an address that is.

Network gear is available with hubs and switches being no problem. Fancier routers are scarce. I imagine big hulking servers with fancy RAID disk arrays may be harder to find. But in general, it is all here. BUT, it is expensive by world standards. Apart from small items and emergencies, most people who can, will get stuff shipped in or bring it in. Bali is cheap enough (eg Rimo Bali Computer Centre in Jalan Diponegoro, Denpasar has 4 floors of computer shops) and probably a better bet than Darwin.

You do have to watch out for warranties, because most of the time, if you buy locally, warranties will not exist. And some of the stuff is clearly older stuff passed on from the rest of the world or I suspect, stuff with a dodgy reliability. I know as I bought a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) locally and it lasted 3 weeks. No warranty, no-one to repair it and no money back. (You will not survive without a UPS if you have a desktop PC and note that you probably only need a voltage regulator for laptops.) I also have my suspicions about the genuine-ness of inkjet cartridges.

In general, Lorosae Computers is said to be the most clueful, Mr. Bram may have the best range (& the surliest staff), Global Computer has often been cheaper if they have what you want and ???? (temporarily forgot) can be cheaper than the others as well. There are a few smaller shops with limited stuff and other general electrical shops that all seem to sell USB keys which must be everyone’s fashion accessory.

On a good day, things are pretty good here. However, when it comes to internet access, it is ferociously frustrating.

I actually took some steps to see just how much decent internet really costs. My understanding is that there is one ISP in TL, going by the name iNet. It resells Timor Telecom bandwidth and is the only player. It is a slim, sleek organisation with limited overheads but it too, is beholden to Timor Telecom’s telecomms monopoly.

As far as I can tell, so-called broadband internet here means 128k and 256k DSL links which cost over USD1,000 in initial set-up costs and over USD700 per month. Most of this really goes to Timor Telecom and I was told that TT were about to put internet access prices … wait for it … up !

I now know that most of the internet cafes really have only 128k connections. This explains why a full 10-person cafe is almost totally brought to a grinding halt. And it makes a mockery of the thought that going to an internet cafe might be significantly faster than a modem connection. And it makes the 5 minutes of downloads/updates that I did in a real world internet cafe in OZ a few months back look absolutely sensuous compared to the weeks it might have taken to get it done here.

Internet cafes … sensuous … time for a holiday ?

One of the things I did while back in OZ was do all of those downloads that are just too painful to do here. I knew there was a reasonable chance I could bludge off one of my hosts (ie the multiple households I bludged off while away), but the first crack I had was at an internet cafe with super-fast broadband.

I had a large list of bits and pieces to download (eg software updates, Windows patches etc.) and I blitzed through that list in next to no time. I was actually gob-smacked at how quick it was.

So instead of growing older doing big stuff via dial-up here, I decided to hit a few big downloads (funny how Windows updates always seems to be on the list) at a Dili internet cafe. I had forgotten that there is broadband and there is not broadband.

At the 1st internet cafe (US$6 per hour), I was slowly crunching my way through when a squad of OZ troops bowled in and bam, everything hit the wall. Initially, throughput slowed then my system complained that someone else had nabbed my IP address so internet traffic stopped. I tried to complain but got nowhere so left. I moved onto another internet cafe (US$4 per hour) and after 5 minutes, the Microsoft update server had still not responded. There was muttering around me suggesting that throughput had ceased. I packed up and left, concluding that my dial-up was faster than this anyway.

So I go home and find someone has sent me a huge (apparently) amusing email with pictures. I think I aged 5 years after all of this.