Business | African mobile telephones

Ain't no mountain high enough

Ringtones from jungle to mountain top

|KINDU, CONGO

AFTER hours flying over unbroken forest, an aircraft crosses the Congo river and lands in Kindu, a ramshackle town from which roads are impassable and few homes have electricity or piped water. But switch on a mobile telephone and you can talk to the world. Vodacom, a South African firm part-owned by Britain's Vodafone, recently set up operations there to serve a garrison of homesick South African peacekeepers. Now, as in dozens of other remote sites in the country, it also has many eager Congolese customers.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Ain't no mountain high enough”

Vlad the impaler

From the November 1st 2003 edition

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