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Melissa R. Ho
PhD Candidate, UC Berkeley School of Information
Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions Research Group
Information, Communications Technology, and Development
Mobile Computing for Healthcare Information Management in Africa
Telecommunications Policy and Practice in Africa

I do information technology for healthcare in Africa. Actually, I’ve also recently dabbled in solar powered lighting for a hospital in rural Nigeria, done some IT for education in Mexico, and helped out with wireless deployments in India, so I’ve been known to think about other problems as well, but my primary focus (i.e. my dissertation) is on information technology for healthcare in Africa. My motivation runs something like this: (A) I’m pretty good (compared to some, not so much compared to a lot of my colleagues in TIER) at computers and actually get pretty obsessed with them at times. (B) God has placed a special and specific compassion in my heart for the needs of Africa. Since I’m absolutely sure that (A) is not a coincidence, and because God has managed to do a lot of things in my life to make this possible, I’m using (A) to address (B).

On an academic end, my dissertation committee is Dean AnnaLee Saxenian (co-chair), Prof. John Chuang (co-chair), Prof. Eric Brewer and Prof. Jenna Burrell. My coursework and reading delves primarily into research methods, development theory, and healthcare and telecommunications policy. My work experience is in user interface and web application design, so my research also involves human-computer interaction, participatory design, and action research. By combining a theoretical approach with an experiential interaction, my work most closely approaches applied anthropology. My dissertation will be primarily ethnographic – although I am allocating six months (jan-jun 2009) to do a deployment, the remaining six months have been set aside in such a way that I will deliberately step back from my role as a technologist, both to ensure sustainability of the deployment in my absence, but also so I will have the time to observe social dynamics as they emerge around the deployment over time.

Admittedly, I had solved two thirds of this problem this past summer.  But I think it speaks to the rapidity of mobile phone coverage expansion that solving the last third was much easier than I expected it would be.

The problem: GPRS/Internet access on my various phones on all three of the GSM carriers in Uganda, MTN, Celtel, and Uganda Telecom (UTL).  (For acronym explanations see footnoote*.) 

Before I digress, here are the configuration options:

Celtel
Access Point Name (APN): internet.ug.celtel.com (alternate: wap.ug.celtel.com)
Username/Password: none
Authentication: none
Proxy Server: 192.168.100.10, port 9401 (wap clients use port 9201)
IP Address: dynamic (server-assigned)
DNS Address: dynamic (server-assigned)
Celtel will automatically configure some phones if you send an SMS to 175 with the message “internet” (Case-sensitive)

Uganda Telecom
Access Point Name (APN): utweb 
Username/Password: none
Authentication: none
Proxy Server: none
IP Address: dynamic (server-assigned)
DNS Address: dynamic (server-assigned)

MTN^
Access Point Name (APN): yellopix.mtn.co.ug
Username/Password: none
Authentication: none
Proxy Server: none
IP Address: 10.120.0.138 
DNS Address: dynamic (server-assigned)
^to use MTN, you also need to contact them to enable Internet on your account

I managed to get the Celtel configuration from a local office here in Mbarara, mostly by poking around on my phones and switching SIM cards until they pulled out the configuration manual and handed it to me. For MTN and UTL I went to the respective offices in Kampala to get the configuration instructions.  This is the type of info I think would make sense to provide on their web sites – but generally the most information I can find is that they offer the service, with no information on pricing or how to connect them.

This trip I have three mobiles with me, the HP iPAQ hw6945 (Windows Mobile 5), my Treo 650 (Palm/GarnetOS), and the HTC s710 (Windows Mobile 6). MTN I still have only working on the HTC phone – I can get it to connect on the Treo, but can’t actually access the Internet. UTL is by far the easiest to configure – just enter utweb as the APN, and you are ready to go. Unfortunately, UTL’s coverage isn’t as consistent – while I have so far always been able to get MTN and Celtel in the rural clinics I’ve visited, UTL wasn’t reachable in the two clinics in Rubindi. Since I’m planning to use Treos for the SmartForms project I’m pretty relieved I managed to get Celtel GPRS working on mine.

The trick was (since the automatic configuration didn’t work – my phones seem to always be too new for them to have customized instructions available) was that the IP address they gave me was for a proxy server, not the phone.  And proxy server configuration is moderately painful. On the Treo you can set up the GPRS connection through the “Prefs” app; click on “Network” for the GPRS settings.  The nice thing about this one is that you can connect there and test the connection.  Also in the “Prefs” app, click on “IBM Java VM” to  set the HTTP Proxy to “192.168.100.10:9401″ (server:port). Then you also need to configure the proxy for Blazer, the web browser.  Launch “Web” and cancel the download. From the Options menu select Preferences. You’ll see three tabs – click the Advanced tab, then click the “Set Proxy” button on the bottom right of the screen. Check “Use custom proxy” and enter 192.168.100.10 for the Proxy Server, and 9401 for the Port. From there you can go back to the browser and try to load a web page. (I generally use http://m.google.com.)

On the HTC, you configure one proxy for all of the applications. Go into connections (Settings->Connections->GPRS), configure Celtel as a “WAP Area Network”, and then set up a separate http proxy (Settings->Connections->Proxy) that connects the “WAP Area Network” to “Internet”.   There are a lot of backwards things about configuring GPRS on the HTC.  At first it seems straightforward – just add a new GPRS connection.  But when you are like me, and you use the phone on lots of networks in lots of countries, then you also have to go in and set all the connections you aren’t using to connect to a non-Internet network (I use “Secure WAP Area Server”, since I don’t normally need that connection), and set the one you actually are using to “Internet”, or in the case of  Celtel, to “WAP Area Network”.

What boggles my mind is the fact that people still need a book with individual instructions on how to set up GPRS for the phones.  Even for the windows mobile phones, every phone has a different configuration – I still don’t know why MTN works on the HTC s710 wm6 phone, but not on any of the wm5 phones.  The only possible reason I can think of is that its possible to specify “None” for authentication on the s710, while wm6 requires you to specify CHAP or PAP.  I think, though, that the non-smartphones, especially the basic Nokias, work just fine.

So!  Now you know how to get Internet service on your phone in Uganda. Happy surfing!

* General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is the protocol that allows you to access the Internet through a GSM mobile phone network.  For those of you in the Bay Area, AT&T/Cingular and T-mobile are GSM networks – you can recognize a GSM network because they issue you a smartchip to put in your phone, also known as a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card. Your phone number is tied to the SIM card than your phone, so to switch to a new phone, you just need to remove the chip from your old phone and put it in the new one. As long as the new phone is not “locked” all your calls will be routed through the new phone.

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