September27, 2008:
The U.S. of phone cards (to
pay for telephone calls home) in Iraq has fallen from 12 million minutes (at
about 20 cents a minute) a month last Fall, to about half that now. The main
reason for this has been the introduction of high-speed internet at military
bases. This was made possible by the construction of high speed internet links
into Iraq, where the there was very little access until Saddam was overthrown
in 2003. With high speed connections, troops can make voice, or even video,
calls to back home, at no (or very little, like a penny or two a minute)
additional cost. This has proved to be a big boost to morale.
In 2004,
AT&T was asked to set up pay phones throughout American bases in Iraq and
Afghanistan. AT&T set up 64 calling centers, with nearly 2,000 pay phones.
The phones were connected, via a satellite link, to AT&T's international
fiber optic network. The fiber optic part of the system is cheap to operate,
costing a penny or two per minute for phone calls. The satellite part is more
expensive, as was the cost of building the call centers and installing the
phones. To cover the costs, AT&T was given an exclusive deal. You could
only use AT&T calling cards on the AT&T phones. It cost about 21 cents
a minute to call someone back in the United States on this system. When first
installed, this was a good deal, because the phone systems in Iraq and
Afghanistan were still in a shambles, with many people using satellite phones
(which cost 50 cents to a dollar a minute.)
By 2005, the
telephone systems, particularly in Iraq, were largely rebuilt, and
international calls were a lot cheaper. But even as the Iraqi phone system was
being rebuilt, the U.S. Navy got a contract to build several hundred Internet
Cafes in Iraq and Afghanistan. These would have fast enough Internet
connections to allow the use of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phone
calls. These cost 4-5 cents a minute. But the PCs at the Internet Cafes were in
heavy use, and many troops were stuck with the AT&T phones. There was much
agitation in the ranks for change.
In the last
three years, high-speed Internet access has spread in Iraq and Afghanistan, at
least to the Internet cafes set up for the troops, and this has led to the pay
phones getting much less use.