[WSIS CS-Plenary] RTC access in Tunisia

[Meryem Marzouki]

Hi all,

I don't know of any public place where there is Wifi in Tunisia, except 
in some _very_ high level hotels.

However, if this could be of any help, last time I used Internet access 
in Tunisia, this summer, I bought an Internet card (like the low cost 
phone cards), sold by hexabyte, a private Tunisian ISP. It costed me 10 
TND for 10 hours of connexion (in fact 9 TND, but perhaps this was a 
summer special offer). On the card there is a login and password, that 
you use for RTC Internet access, through a normal telephone line. The 
price includes Internet access and communication cost, i.e. it may be 
used from any direct phone. I don't think it's usable through hotel 
room phone, since generally it's not direct line, and there are 
additional charges from the hotel. It's also safer to have your own 
phone plug, normally in Tunisia it's not RJ11, but the French "T" plug 
(see http://kropla.com/france.htm), when it's not directly embedded in 
the wall (but this applies to old style phones I think).

So it worked well, though at RTC speed, and was at reasonable price. 
The only problem is that my pop server (of a French NGO ISP hosting 
some websites critical of Tunisia, including the online journal I'm 
co-managing) was blocked by the Tunisian censors:))). Even the webmail 
page of this ISP was blocked! In consequence, it worked well only with 
my professional pop server: I have been able to do my job, but for 
running my NGO activities, I had to circumvent censorship through 
another webmail:) The web was, of course, filtered.

Filtered in the same way, the publinets (cybercafes) are publicly 
accessible for an average price of 1 TND per hour.

Speaking of blocking and censorship, I appreciated a lot part of a 
report from a meeting between CONGO and the Exec Secretariat (sent to 
plenary on Oct. 9), saying that:
"-	Connectivity: Charles Geiger asserted that non filtered access is a 
major
priority for the WSIS ES, and he guaranteed that Internet connection 
would not
be filtered both in the Kram Center and in the Hotels."

Is this an incentive for the Tunisian population to come to the Kram 
Center and to the hotels during WSIS, so that they may experience, once 
in their life, a non filtered Internet access ????

Or do some people find normal to benefit from non filtered access in a 
protected enclave, while the entire population of the country they are 
currently visiting (speaking, among other things, of Freedom of 
expression), are considered as second class citizens ?

Best,
Meryem