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Unfortunately, we were beset by two tragedies that prevented Robert Miles from both coming to play, as well as streaming his set from London. Firstly, the air ticket sponsor pulled out at the last minute without warning - leaving us in a panic trying to find a second sponsor within 2 days. We were not able. Secondly, we were not able to stream because of poor service from our local (only) telecoms provider. We made enquiries as to availability of ISDN in the Tswaing area, and were assured that the local exchange was ISDN ready, and that the distance to Tswaing was within the permissible maximum distance from the exchange. On Thursday 11 October, we were informed by Telko that ISDN ports were configured on the exchange, and that cable had been run - all was ready an dthey were just waiting for a termination box. By Friday evening it became clear that ISDN was not possible in the area - Tswaing was too far from exchange, and the local exchanges were hopelessly outdated. So we were lied to on several counts over three weeks leading up to the festival. An emergency meeting was called on Friday evening, and a VSAT dish was proposed for use, initially for 35% of the service at more than 200 times the cost!!! Internet Solutions was kind enough to agree to this cost of (at least) R10 000, so that we could bring both Robert Miles to the stage, as well as stream our message of peace to the world. Thank you to IS for doing this. Well, the dish was installed and ready to go, but unfortunately the network on the Land Earth Station side was not configured correctly as requested, and the support call center informed us that our problem (a very simple one) could only be sorted out the following Monday, as all the brains drain out of telko on the weekend. Sad but true - we really did try our best to get things working. Internet Solutions and Antfarm can provide robust and effective streaming services across practically any networks, although in this case there was no recourse to sort out the issues due to lack of support from the Telko we all love so much. Pending permissions, IS and Antfarm will make the set Robert played, while waiting for the connection to run, available on the Earthdance.org.za site. Watch this space. |
