Bhutan Telecom Internet woes

Surfing out-of-Bhutan websites came to a crawl this morning (accessing .bt websites is speedy). Internet outages are not uncommon in Bhutan, and most Internet-addicted consumers can survive a few hours without updating their Facebook status (usually not without withdrawal symptoms).

Sabzi bazaar serendipity

Although beetroots are not used in the Bhutanese diet, from time to time these sublime roots pop up in the sabzi bazaar. This happened to be the case in the last couple of weeks, where a bunch of purplish, hard and very fresh beets were discovered among the ubiquitous chillies and carrots. Heaven!

Beets are a versatile vegetable. I usually pickle the roots, but they can also be roasted, boiled, or grated into a salad. The leaves of the root (known as beet greens) are also used in the kitchen, but they went missing. When choosing beets, pick ones that are firm and attached to fresh stems.

Mobile broadband for closing Bhutan's looming digital divide

Mobile broadband is an amazing technology. I recently spent a few weeks in Laos, and needed Internet access when roaming around the country. In Vientiane I got a few 3G-enabled prepaid SIMs with the different operators, which together gave me excellent coverage all over the place, including some remote provinces. Bandwidth was excellent, usually with download rates exceeding 1Mbps. It is not uncommon for locals to use 3G as their only Internet connection.

Back to Bhutan: 3G is available only with B-Mobile, and only in Thimphu. Even in the capital, download rates are disappointing, and hiccups are common, so you cannot depend on 3G as your sole Internet connection. Many people outside of Thimphu and the bigger towns have no access to broadband Internet. I wonder: Is it time to take mobile broadband seriously? With B-Mobile soon covering all gewogs - an impressive achievement by itself - a solid, reliable 3G infrastructure will enable access to broadband Internet all over the Kingdom.

"Bring me 3G before I turn into a goat"

Google ignores Bhutan's national dish

The ever-innovative geeks at Google have recently launched Recipe View, an advanced search service which helps find recipes on the web, with options to filter results by ingredients, caloric value and cook time. Pretty nifty - at least in theory. While the new service is able to find almost anything, from falafel to pavlova, it failed miserably when I searched for ema datsi. Too spicy?

Accelerating photo uploads (K2 #9)

Question of the Week
When I'm trying to upload a photo to Facebook, it takes a very long time. Sometimes it fails completely. What am I doing wrong?
-- Pema T., Thimphu

Protect your privacy online (K2 #8)

Question of the Week
My friend told me that any Facebook user can see my photos. Is this possible?
-- Rinchen Pem, P/Ling

Will we change our SMS habits?

The average teenager in the United States sends more than 100 (!) text messages a day. Voice calls in the U.S. are on the decline. Apparently, many Americans prefer texting to talking. Some sociologists assume different types of people prefer different types of communication, so the trend might reflect changes in the U.S. culture. Anyway, In Bhutan SMSing never really took off. In an effort to make text messages more attractive, Bhutan Telecom is reducing the price of a single SMS from Nu 1 to Nu 0.45 (B-Mobile to B-Mobile) and Nu 0.70 (B-Mobile to TashiCell). TashiCell is offering 50 free SMSs for Losar.

Will these promotions jump-start SMS in Bhutan (one of the more profitable streams of revenue for all telecom operators), or will Bhutanese keep refraining from SMS in favor of voice? Time will tell.