Mauritius Aims To Be First Wireless Nation

hattan writes "This tropical island off the east coast of Africa is best-known for its white-sand beaches, its designer clothing outlets and its spicy curries. But tiny Mauritius is about to stake a new claim to fame. By year's end, or soon afterward, it is expected to become the world's first nation with coast-to-coast wireless Internet." From the article: "An undersea broadband fiber-optic cable, completed three years ago, gives the island fast and reliable phone and Internet links with the rest of Africa and with Europe, India and Malaysia. Many of the country's 1.2 million people--a mix of French, Indian, Chinese and African descendants--are bilingual or trilingual, speaking French, English and either Chinese or Hindi. The country is democratic, peaceful and stable."

The Vatican

[ari_j]

How in the hell can anyone be faster than the Vatican to reach this level? Seriously, that's a nation you could get wireless inside of an afternoon, but maybe wireless networking is a sin like sausage was at one point. I don't get it.

fast internet links?

[cgenman]

gives the island fast and reliable phone and Internet links with the rest of Africa and with Europe, India and Malaysia.

I don't think it really counts as a reliable phone or internet link if it doesn't extend to South America, Asia, and the US.

Re:It's a very historic place.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to see the Holy PGP Key, though.

Would such "sealed" e-mails be considered God's encrypted word? Would they do a destructive write-over of it from the papal server when he dies and generate a new one, generating it from bible passages?

Re:It's a very historic place.

[kaens]

Bless the bits?

Geeks in Paradise

[axonal]

Excuse me? Excuse me, senor? May I speak to you please? I asked for a mai tai, and they brought me a pina colada, and I said no salt, NO salt on the margarita, but it had salt on it, big grains of salt, floating in the glass...

a new low for /.

[IchBinEinPenguin]

peaceful? wireless? tropical?

Every geek in the workd is going to move there.
We just /.-ed an entire nation

Re:It's a very historic place.

[CyricZ]

It is not humorous to joke about the Holy Seal.

Re:It's a very historic place.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a little known fact, but the Pope's hat is actually a mobile wireless access point, 802.11g I believe...

Re:Oh yes it is..

[rzbx]

"I wish I could move there, but I doubt there's much work for a software developer in a country nobody's heard of until today."

I think the bigger news is the undiscovered island of 1.2 million people.

Re:It's a very historic place.

[strider44]

A janitor walks into a bishop's office and sees white liquid flowing all over the desk. "Oh shit, bishop," he calls out, "you blew a holy seal!"

Re:It's a very historic place.

[myc_lykaon]

I just had an image of the statue of david... with a rather well endowed wireless transponder...

He would have to be bloody well endowed. The statue of David is in the Uffizi in Florence and the Vatican is 280km away...

Re:Sealand is NOT a country

[raju1kabir]

Oh, don't be so harsh on them. It's easily as independent as the country I started in my parents' basement when they wouldn't let me go sleep over at my friend's house one time. Out of historical interest, I will reproduce its Constitution in its entirety here: "No grownups."

As far as I've been able to tell, that's the same law that governs Sealand.