Ask HN: Connect to the Internet the old way during next Ethiopian lockdown?
As the war is reaching Addis Ababa, the Internet will be shut down there, too, pretty soon.
We personally need to be connected to the internet (mainly just IMAP email) during lockdown: is it possible to use our mobile to call an internet provider somewhere (Kenya will be best) the old way?
(Normally in Ethiopia they shut down the Internet, but leave voice/TEXT mobiles and land phones working)
98 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadWorks if you have a landline and a modem on your computer. For mobile you'd need a modem and some way of connecting the modem to your mobile phone, or a phone that can be a modem, and a data cable. Not sure how possible this bit is though.
thanks! we could try this one once we reach Ethiopia.
Otherwise ring me and give me your password and I'll read the emails to you.
btw: does Twilio have some tools to send data splitted in text messages (with a proper client to re-compose the whole message)?
uh, this is smart and very KISS! really!
So YES: somebody read our emails and in the meanwhile get rid of useless content!
out of curiosity: if our friend who reads our email create ad audio file while reading, I guess we cannot send the super compressed audio file as DATA (to save on international phone costs)?
You could have emails relayed via SMS, either manual or automated. There are such relay services. (It'd get pretty expensive if you pay per SMS message.)
If you have voice only, you could have someone record a reading and play it to you at high speed to save on minutes. You'd record and play at slow speed.
Is it this one https://www.starlink.com ?
She was a journalist covering the conflict in Syria when she died. It is rummored that the local forces triangulated her location using her satelite signal and shelled the building she was in which led to her death.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Colvin
"Journalist Jean-Pierre Perrin and other sources reported that the building had been targeted by the Syrian Army, identified using satellite phone signals."
"Reporters working in Homs feared the Army had "locked on" to their satellite phone signals and targeted the buildings they were coming from" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/...
no, no. I am a sys-admin and developer: I just need to keep my job running while having to be there for awhile.
The national unique telecommunication operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethio_telecom is owned by the Ethiopian government and, btw, I just discovered in that page that "Under a 2012 law regulating the telecommunication industry, attempts by journalists to circumvent Ethio telecom surveillance and censorship of the internet could be interpreted as a criminal offense carrying a prison sentence of up to 15 years"
(we are not journalists, not either NGO)
omg!
https://blog.4psa.com/africa-skips-landlines-goes-straight-t...
Last year the landline we had where we where living was transformed to a VOIP when the internet connection was converted from ADSL to optic-fiber, but the majority of land lines are still on copper.
So yes!, a landline with a modem connection to an internet provider operator.
Now:
- need to find an internet provider for incoming modem connection: any idea? I've searched the internet: did not find anything but I guess I am not using the correct mix of keywords
- I guess I need to purchase a dedicated modem (hardware), or best would be to use a mobile phone (the Jack headphone the article is talking about) with proper software.
https://kikuyumoja.com/2006/10/31/how-touse-gprs-in-kenya/
I'm also afraid during the actual Ethiopian re-declared "state of emergency" we risk to hit some prohibition.
https://www.cruiserswiki.org/wiki/Email_at_Sea
or, more generally, amateur band based radio links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winlink
The radios themselves get less and less expensive each year, especially with software defined radios, but unsure how easily/quickly one could get their hands on the required gear in Addis.
Addis Ababa is a significant way inland, and indeed Eithiopia is landlocked.
Keep in mind that anyone who has access to the mobile operator can easily determine that you're doing this, so make sure to take proper precautions there too. Use a brand new phone that's not associated to you in any way from a location that can't be correlated with you, so that if they review call logs and see your suspicious long-lasting data calls they won't be able to find you.
I have heard of multiple countries targeting airstrikes or artillery using triangulated cell phone signals
There are legitimate uses for this, but it's frustrating that we have to feel opposed because it will definitely be abused. I for one would like to be able to implement my own presence tracking for rooms in my house without needing additional hardware.
I just don't want Facebook to do the same thing.
At the high end of the price range, some of the satellite internet receivers aren't outrageously conspicious, like this [1]. I mean, it's odd looking, but you could probably pass it off as something at least semi-innocuous like a proprietary wireless receiver for audio-video gear or something. From a naive perspective, it screams "wifi" to me, rather than satellite. I'd just tear the silver regulatory label off a consumer wifi router and replace the one on that box with it.
1. https://satellitephonestore.com/catalog/sale/details/thales-...
Also good luck. My friend used to be in Addis Ababa, when the war was confined just to Tigray, and he said it's a great place, but he was (rightly) afraid that it will spread and escaped. It does not sound good.
If people move around, they relay the messages along their route, thus considerably extending the range.
I had a nightmare two nights ago of being stuck in a neighborhood downtown Addis during a conflict without any phone connection: with my stunning super powerful phone in my hand, but with NO way to communicate to somebody else around me: completely useless peace of hardware (using even too much electricity).
sorry, once again.
Internet disconnections are not uncommon in Ethiopia but it is far from the end of the world. Despite the alarmist nature of some of the press currently, I don't believe that Addis itself will be significantly impacted. There's just too much shared interest in keeping Addis functioning for anyone including the residents to let things devolve too far.
It may be uncomfortable at times (stock up on movies and shows before you get there to keep you occupied during internet hiccups), get a generator or live in a building with one, make sure you have enough airtime on your SIM card to call internationally if necessary, and remain low-key during the tougher moments should they crop up.
Also, stock up on supplies like water, fuel, snacks, etc. (supply chains in Addis have never been great to begin with), Build a small network of people you trust and can communicate with (domestic help, favorite cab drivers, etc.) Like in most places, don't be an jerk, treat people well (tip well also) and they'll reciprocate.
TLDR: Regardless of what happens, Addis will be fine. It might be uncomfortable at times but Addis tends to swing toward stability despite what's happening elsewhere. Even IF the city gets captured, those doing the capturing will need it too.
Source: been through situations like these in a number of places (including Addis)
> and remain low-key during the tougher moments
this is probably the best, so I even regret my request here tbh.
I'm not certain, but i think it's unfortunately not possible to use a modem over a cellular connection.
I'm putting this here calling out "model"/"dial-up" specifically, in case anyone else knows for sure.
[edit to add] My memory was off, it was 300 baud. quick search yields things like this: http://www.gsm-modem.de/M2M/m2m-faq/how-to-send-data-over-gs... https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1497979 https://github.com/quiet/quiet-lwip
Looks like it's a bit of a tricky thing to set up.
See https://dspillustrations.com/pages/posts/misc/using-your-sou...
The way it works is, you call a number and give them a number you want to dial, and hang up. They dial that number, and then dial yours on a second line, and bridge the two. This gets around high fees on outbound calls from, say, a tiny nation with a telecom monopoly. We used them back in the day in small island countries to cut the phone bill in half. Might also be useful for connecting to dial-up services that are restricted.
If you can't find one of those services, you can pay someone in another country to install a phreak box on two landlines that will do this for you. You build the box and hook it up to two phone lines. When someone calls the first number, the line immediately picks up and feeds a second phone line into the first (giving you a dial tone). You can either make it two-way or one-way. I can't remember the design (I built it 20 years ago) and I'm shit at electronics, but it was really simple, so hopefully another old head can reply with a schematic (I think I used photodiodes/photoresistors for some of it?).
And now that I think of it.... If you can't find an international dialup provider, you could just pay someone to run a dialup server for you. Just a computer with a modem and one phone line, and a broadband connection. Set up a DUN server on the computer (old Windows machines could do this) and NAT connections out on the broadband line. Your own private dial-up provider.
Oh, wait I sec, I've got a possible solution here: the UK service ZEN cited by thinkingemote https://support.zen.co.uk/kb/Knowledgebase/DialUp-FAQs plus a callback triggered by a text message: form Ethiopia I send a message to a SMS in twilio, this will trigger an API that with a Twilio (or cheaper Dellmont) provider which will call ZEN in the UK and me in Ethiopia: then I need to answer with a modem (I need the proper hardware modem I guess..... uh. it's really a shame I cannot use my mobile phone!!)
https://mycelium-mesh.net/category/about.html
- get sd cards and usb drives ready, so if all else fails you can institute a sneakernet like they do in Cuba
- consider using radio
- consider using scuttlebutt and/or briar, manyverse is a good android scuttlebutt client
Make sure you have shortwave radio and know frequencies for things like BBC, that will give you general information on what's going on across the country if nothing else.
Be aware even if you have internet access, not many people in country do, so things you read will likely be exaggerated rumours at best. It's this sort of environment that things like genocide can thrive.
The best bet would be something like an inmarsat bgan, which do work, and are fairly small, but obviously aren't cheap.
Do they turn off their 2/3/4G services at the tower, or do they just stop passing traffic to their upstream providers?
If the latter then it may mean that devices on the same network can still communicate with each other. I don’t think this will solve your problem, but it may still be helpful in some cases.
Ethiopia only has one AS/provider apparently: 24757 ETHIO-TELECOM
During one of the many internet lockdown I've experienced there I know Ethiotel allowed some Embassies to have their ADSL restored (the lockdown lasted almost a month): there was no internet even in very expensive western hotel: a couple of manager where telling me they were about have the internet back, but then this did not happen.
As for internet on mobile (which, btw, has becoming really fast last year: 4G with easy 100Mb up/down, in central Addis only, of course) I expect some people close to the government may still have internet access (the country have strong socialist background, and is not Nigeria, but power and money can move a lot as everywhere).
Technically I think it should be pretty easy to selectively lock the internet by working on the APN: you can lock the ordinary one that is pushed on every phone, and have another one for "friends".
This leaves you with the GSM voice channel which is only 9.6 kbps. The voice channel is further impaired by the audio compression which makes it rather unsuitable for data transmission. You should probably not expect data rates of more than 2.4 kbps.
However, a voice channel is a voice channel. If nothing else you should be able to use a modem via an old school audio coupler to your head phone jack using a very low bitrate modulation. Theoretically you could do the same with an app if you can find or make a softmodem app.
Failing anything else, there are a number of TCP over sound libraries that you could hack to work over a telephone call.
Tried to revisit this approach last year, but Android security restrictions now make tapping calls impossible
The question is also "by who and why". Could they grant an exemption to your IP range for business reasons?
If not and international texts are working, it might be possible to modify a lot of android handset to basically run TCP over Text Messages and use that to connect to IMAP. The local warlord might see the traffic but he might not care about plain business emails.
I really doubt this: during last year one month lockdown we really struggle to get it (embassies, hotels....): and due to covid we where not even able to go to Kenya
Figure out which outside country or countries are going to be least expensive to call (possibly through a dialback scheme), and then find a dial-up ISP in there and try to get an account setup.
A problem you'll have is a lot of free community access dial-up systems have shut down, and setting up an account in a foreign country where you have to pay for it, may be difficult. A lot of commercial dial-up services have also shut down too.
If you can make inexpensive calls to the US and/or Canada, you might be able to find something. I've seen references (in this thread and elsewhere) to "free" UK dialup, but it's using special rate phone numbers, so it's more like billed to your phone account dialup, and that may not be possible through whatever carrier you have available. Similar, I think for Germany.
It's worth sending a mail to xs4all; they did something for Libya, but they were also planning to shut off their dial-up service in October 2021. https://boingboing.net/2011/02/22/free-dial-up-isp-for.html (contact form https://www.xs4all.nl/klant/welcome-to-xs4all/ )