The hard and perhaps unsurprising truth is that despite some amazing end runs by poorer countries, experts say the gap between plugged in and shut out is widening every bit as fast as the gap between rich and poor. With only 2 percent of the global population online, according to United Nations figures, the Internet in 1999 is still more of a golden thread connecting the most privileged global classes than a true World Wide Web. In the E-phoria of the wired world, efforts by Third World countries go largely unnoticed. Most analysts who cover technology in the United States do not cover places like Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo that relies on Uganda for its link to the Net. Nor do many watch Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, a country that has less than one phone line for every 100 people.
Electricity is only available in urban areas, and then for only a couple of hours per day.
Although the site is in Creole, it can be switched to English. Having Web sites on the Internet is only half the battle. The real challenge is to provide access nationally in a country with very little infrastructure, said Talleyrand. Some Haitians are now using wireless connections and radio modems to connect to the service providers, also known as ISPs. Similar tactics are being used in Africa, where there are just 14 million telephone lines and 1.5 million users online, according to FreedomForum.