Filthy Capitalists

They're at it again:

Did you know you can fit a whole cellphone network in a box the size of a small carry-on suitcase? That’s what a tiny startup called Endaga is doing, to bring mobile phone services to remote villages in Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Philippines. It may not be legal, but it’s working.

Endaga, based out of Oakland, Calif., sells its boxes for $6,000. Local operators use them to connect to backhaul, or underlying wired or wireless networks — in Indonesia, it’s satellite Internet; in Pakistan, long-distance Wi-Fi — then install the boxes on trees, set their pricing and hand out SIM cards. Customers bring their own regular phones. They don’t need to invest in expensive satellite phones.

In a 1,500-person town in Papua, where the very first box was installed in February 2013, the school with the box is bringing in $2,000 in revenue per month, with 400 subscribers.

The school is now having an easier time retaining teachers, in part because they’re able to communicate with friends and family back home without driving four hours to get cellphone reception. Two-thirds of texts and calls are outbound.

Disgusting, is what it is.  How dare they work hard to produce something that improves the lives of people?  Especially without making the appropriate obeisances to the UN and various NGOs who have had so many "working conferences" in Switzerland to discuss how hard the problem is!  You know, the conferences about how much they need more funding so that they can have more conferences to establish the need for more funding...