mog-pharau

Hey! Wow, I used to be in this business. It's a tough one, so kudos.

Questions:

Do you climb the towers to place the distribution antennas yourself? I ask because, the first time I climbed a 200' tower, I was terrified. They couldn't get me on the 300' towers.

You mentioned you're using AirFiber for the distribution points. TBH, that's a product I have no experience with. Have you ever considered making your own with Mikrotik Routerboard based radios? Back in the day, we found it extremely cost effective and flexible. Are the AirFiber products better when you consider cost/performance/ease-of-setup/management? I bet the Mikrotik board solutions only win on the cost part.

How big of an area are you serving? I may have made an assumption that you had to set up multiple towers.

Thanks for this AMA!

Exactly! To be a good guy in this field, you have to already think like a bad guy. "Look at this lovely system, how would I break or exploit it?" is a kind-of default for us security people. Then we have to think about how we would stop our own ideas.

Once again, kudos to you. That's a hell of a lot of work.

How are you doing the CPE installations? Do you do it yourself, or are you sub-contracting local installers? In other words, who installs the customer radios?

Are you ready for customer support calls and complaints? I know you're only trying to serve your community, but have you thought forward to the burdens of tracking trouble tickets for customers who register complaints, etc.?

I know next to nothing about hostels. In my mind I've always thought of hostels as a kind of barracks sleeping area. Is it possible to get a private room in a hostel? Your own (non-shared) bathroom?

Do you write travel guides for Africa assuming no-one has been there before, or do you write in a style assuming they already know a lot about the areas you visit? I ask because it seems that someone so familiar with the vast area may overlook some obvious things that first-time visitors might not expect. Thanks!

(I know you're a travel writer, but you mentioned you work for a travel guide company. If I waaayyy misunderstood, I'm sorry.)