Our Internet Lifestyle:
Our pleasure for Internet freedom and lifestyle all started some four years back when mobile web browsing was just a novel experience and mobile broadband a non-existing idea. Have you ever come to think of the factor that gave a stupendous rise to the mobile-phone market among youths? Your guess might not be right. It is not in the airs of sophistication it constantly adds to us. No! Mobile phones began gaining conscious popularity when a more social feature it could always perform was integrated into it – mobile web browsing! This was the particular thing that made me and my friends to start believing that internet connection might soon cease to be something we walked miles to get access to anymore. At first, it was how to get the money for the phones with compatible simple web function that overrode our thoughts. We heard Nokia 2626 was economical to get and that Nokia 3110c has larger memories to manage multitudinous apps for computer-like internet surfing. The glee this new discovery gave us was beyond boards. We spent our feeding allowances and some of the cash gotten from the kindness of relatives and friends on the newly found trove. Though, we always instinctively condemned Mutiu whenever we found out he had ‘reshuffled’ his father’s money (Mutiu called it ‘reshuffling’ rather stealing, because he said he was only helping himself with the money to satisfy urgent needs), we wouldn’t reject it when the money was meant to pay our internet subscription. But when our activities on our mobile web began to weigh down more than what we could pay for despite Mutiu’s constant ‘reshuffling’, we devised other means…
***
The other means was when we sought ways of circumventing the service of our network providers. For this cause alone, we got ourselves on the network that was porous to accommodate our means. Our normal contact became unreachable. It was different sims every time. We migrated to and from different lines we could bypass. It was Tobiloba who first brought the solution that very boring day when we fidgeted with normal downloaded gaming applications on our phones to contain the drabness of the mood we were thrown into for lack of money to buy more expensive internet bundle plan. What was annoyingly unbelievable about these bundle plans was the measurement in which the internet connection was given out to customers as a groundnut oil seller would make sure little tickle of her oil does not get to the brim of your bottle. They were in MBs (Megabytes). Various sizes of MBs came with different costs; 100MB for #1000, 500MB for #3,000 and so on.
Tobiloba hopped in that day and galloped around like a demented possessed priest of Ogun, the god of Thunder. We all knew something as different from the usual had happened. We needn’t be told. This was the same thing Tobiloba always did before he announces any news or something no one else knew about. Such was his act when he caught Mutiu’s downward spirited piece of man feverishly glued to the fleshy posterior of Bisi, our street’s orange seller, in the diffused darkness that was only welcome whenever bulbs become mere scientific invention made useless by incessant power outage. Tobilola was the bringer of odd happenings, the ears of the king at homes and at farms.
Tobiloba detailed how he had met a friend who also has a friend that knew somebody who could get the issue of our internet lack solved with meager penny. That paved the way for the unbridled access that followed. We only paid the hacker, so he was called for the skill he has in altering communication and data codes, two hundred naira for each of the phone he configured with his strings of generated IP addresses, Proxies, Access Points and pre-customized Opera Minis, which he said would cast a cloud on the detecting machine of the service provider we were on. We browsed freely, downloaded music of larger file memories and replaced previously installed applications with updated versions.
The Departure:
I started it first. I knew I did, though I only thought things were meant to be done rightly in order to be able to reroute the course of things that weren’t orderly. The idea was mine and I was the origin of the divide that got my friends’ backs turned against mine. It was no debate the network providers were exploitative in their internet plans, I also knew standing against what is bad couldn’t be done with soiled conscience.
Only a deranged person will still pay for things that could be given as freebies, right? But the free booty was not satisfying as it should anymore. Sometimes, we paid for a configuration and the next couples of hours it would be blocked. Our pleasure never took us long, we paid for browsing-cheats for our mobile more than the price the normal connection was bought for. I was fed up. My academic performance was worsening for the lack of Wikipedia and About.com to read.
That peculiar evening, I lobbed the words that caught my friends’ off-guards, how deadly they blew the gaskets afterwards!
“I want to start subscribing again.” I told them
“I’m not all in for this shady cheats of a thing. After all, it always sent us going back to pay more illegal money to that guy who wouldn’t tell us that the cheats might be blocked in some minuscule minutes from when it was configured.”
I deleted the customized Operas on my phone, browsed the Internet in the crammed café room we ran away from initially, and pulled through pages of different Internet providers. My hard-saved penny catered for the modem whose sole means of recharge came from forgotten changes of money used to buy random items like Maggie and salt for the home.
Mutiu and Tobiloba were always in the habit of snatching at me when they learnt I had started paying for internet again. I was on 100 megabytes subscription that would only last me to download few pages of gmail, facebook and Naijastories. For Mutiu and Tobiloba, system upgrade of network providers meant one thing: the blocking of free internet access. One who knew not my friends before now, would easily pass them off as sim card retailers. They had stacks of them. When MTN blocked them out, they took solace with Etisalat. When Airtel’s gprs crawled; for them, Glo’s 3.5G network might work the speed. It has been three years now since we have gone our separate paths for what they misconstrued as my puritan streak of legality. I got a group facebook request from them few days ago. A group they created for distributing free internet Access codes online. Solving Internet Accessibility for the Masses was the group’s name.
I couldn’t have toed the same track they followed. Doing so, would mean always escaping from the internet noose of my network provider.
I only wish access to the internet were cheaper and available, where a month subscription wouldn’t cost more than five hundred naira. I only dream…
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Joseph Omotayo @strongself
Give me a book and I will give you a Review. Read me more at; www.criticalliteraturereview.blogspot.com and www.josephomotayo.blogspot.comGo to Joseph Omotayo's profile, and read more of his/her posts.
@joseph, very nice one you have here…a few mistakes but its all good…as for the internet becoming cheap…hope against hope bro…iits happening already MTN one 05Gb plan is now 8000, we’ll get there
@xikay. Thanks for reading. I will look into the few mistakes. How ridiculous that sounds, 0.5Gb for #8,000!!! For now, I think the CDMA networks are much cheaper than the GSM carriers.
Lol. Very nice. This is the reality of so many Nigerian youths. But as @xikay sai – we’ll get there.
Thanks for going through the story, Lade, it is indeed the reality Nigerian youths are facing… As for xikay’s view, I hope we get there too. What a hope that is…
Well written; I also love the diction, reminds me of my first browsing moments when I would go out of my way to browse.
@Adekunmi. I’m glad the story was able to put you to remembrance. Whenever it comes to Internet accessibility and affordability, our stories are always the same, right?
Thanks…
written like a true ‘convert’, redemption is near. lol…
@Scopeman. Really a true convert man. A convert without the quote you gave it. Thanks for reading, man.
Good one. Some good points too. Sometimes it’s cheaper to pay the normal internet fees than depend on the cheats. Glad you’re wiser now, lol.
@Jaywriter. Yes, sometimes it could be affordable, but just sometimes when you have got to calculate the stress you have to go through in searching for cheats. GSM providers (MTN, Etisalat, Glo and Airtel)make it more worser when they ridiculously measure out internet access at various expensive subscriptions. It will only take a strong personal will coupled with the fact that one wants unrestricted internet access without fearing what happens next to be able to bring one’s purse under the pressure of those Internet Bundles…
Yes, I’m wiser now. But, I still always work towards paying the price even when my allowances have got to suffer for it…
I like the way you write. Your use of descriptive language is very good. One of the best lines of this piece was…
“…Such was his act when he caught Mutiu’s downward spirited piece of man feverishly glued to the fleshy posterior of Bisi, our street’s orange seller, in the diffused darkness that was only welcome whenever bulbs become mere scientific invention made useless by incessant power outage. Tobilola was the bringer of odd happenings, the ears of the king at homes and at farms….”. Really brillaint!
I think you should however take care with the few typos found in this piece…
@Ld Otakpor. Thanks for the comment. I’m reading it over now to check out for the few typos and correct it in the main document on my computer. I appreciate your candid observation…
Different strokes for different folks, indeed. I actually found that particular part the one part that I did NOT like in this piece; the descriptions so convoluted and wordy that I had to read it twice to understand what was going on.
As to the rest of the piece, I found it very informative about the story of the internet in Nigeria.
@Tola. What particular part didn’t you understand? Thanks for concluding that you found the piece informative.
Just to explain further, you say
I truly had no idea what a ‘downward spirited piece of man’ was. I thought it meant that Mutiu was depressed, because his ‘manly’ ‘spirit’ was ‘down’.
Then I read on…
and it became clearer. But when you say ‘glued’, I’m confused still. ‘Glued’ implies that there was no movement, yet if I’m correct in my interpretation, there should be a LOT of movement.
As for this bit:
Again, I wasn’t sure what you were saying. Why should darkness be welcome when bulbs become ‘mere scientific invention’? Is it a bad thing for bulbs not to be ‘mere scientific invention’?
@ Tola. My choice of diction in that part was to engage the creative thoughts of my readers, I never wanted to lay everything bare. It was crafted in way that only one’s reasoning will be what will determine what deep meaning one is able to come up with…
I used ‘glued’ because Mutiu caught them ‘in the act’ (static posture) not ‘doing the act’ (continuous).
Second, ‘whenever bulbs become mere scientific invention made useless by incessant power outage…’ means bulbs are rendered to serve below their function of providing constant illumination because of non-ceasing power outage – which makes them uselessness or ineffective…
Thanks for engaging me, Tola.
@Tola. My Correction: I meant ‘Tobi’ not ‘Mutiu’
They say ‘sometimes the shortest way around is the longest way home’…
I do message over style…this is cool.
I doff my cap for message too. But I believe little creativity helps spread the message faster.
‘sometimes the shortest way around is the longest way home’… Hmm… That’s just one of the thoughts and words that keeps tugging at your brain when you are taking a turn from the mainstream…
Oops! Nice story, i was in the same situation that u were in, but the difference is that i never used to pay for the cheats, i always sourced for them by myself and actually became a phone guru myself. Then suddenly the codes started crashing every three three days and i started getting frustrated. It was then that i opted for the data bundle, and God, how they exploited me, i spent money and got tired, yet i couldn’t stop. I was in this situation for a very long time till got in contact with cast opera and for over two months now i have been flowing smoothly whithout headache. BUT TO BE VERY FRANK, AM LOOKING FORWARD TO THE DAY THAT COMPETITION AMONG THE SERVICE PROVIDERS WILL CASCADE DOWN THE DATA CHARGES SO THAT WE CAN ALL HAVE AFFORDABLE AND LEGAL BROWSING.
@emmanuel. I agree with you; the prices for these bundles are not only expensive but damn too exploitative! I don’t think mere competition between these service providers will resolve the issue, since the recent past competitions have only affected the charges on Call-Making alone. For transparency and price-uniformity to be introduced in the way Mobile Internet is ran, NCC will have to step in and see to what yardstick the mobile network providers are using for their Internet charging plans. But it is a pity that NCC only focuses and preoccupies itself with the main issues of call-making, issuance of broad-band spectrum and the rest… I only hope someone whispers it to their ears that mobile Internet is also rivaling, in user-popularity, the major call-business that these networks are known to provide.
For now, my redemptive succour is in the charging flexibility of the current Internet provider, though a CDMA carrier, I’m subscribing to. I’m on a plan that allows me to recharge daily at a cheaper pay for unlimited bundle rate. You could go for their plan too, I could recommend their service to you.
An honest piece…
Thanks for reading Raymond. Yeah…, honesty was the apt word that made this piece up. Thank you.
I never was comfortable with those cheats..i used them for only two hours n i just hated it…it’s fulfilment to pay to browse..i hope they reduce it though..nice piece *thumbs up*
@Clinton Ifeanyi McDubus. I was never comfortable using it either. It was like something was making me feel ashamed whenever I loaded a page with it. I sincerely hope NCC see into the prices too.
Thanks for reading…
Good write up, serious and entertaining too, wish for the day that our internet services will be affordable and reliable, so as to avoid illegalities and what have you.
@Elly Turtoe. I hope that happens too. I maintain a positive heart that it will be soon. Thanks reading…
A man of integrity…I hail you. I found this very difficult to read as there’s a lot of technical jargon but I persevered and I like the message. Perhaps you could streamline it a bit so the prose flows better.
Thanks for reading, doubleespresso. The technical jargon you find distasteful in the story are just the common words internet users read and see everyday, even as most Nigerian internet users always do migrate from mobile-browsing to normal computer browsing that one does on a laptop or a desktop. By the way, let me ask you some things: Can you relate with the story? Have you ever had such experience before? Do you live in Nigeria? Does this experience sounds new to you? Your answers to these questions will determine how ‘technical’ those words in the story could really be to you.
Thanks for reading….