Sad but true, this is what is going on in Bolivia nowadays

Drug dealing has always been a problem in Bolivia, but this below, is unheard of.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/19/bolivia-cocaine-bar-route-36

Wireless Carriers in Bolivia, some basic facts

There are three wireless carriers in Bolivia:

VIVA
http://www.viva-gsm.com/
This is a privately held company, which however has a stakeholder which is a local communications cooperative in Cochabamba (COMTECO). This carrier uses GSM and provides GPRS/EDGE access. In general this carriers works with the 1800/1900mhz.

TIGO
http://www.tigo.com.bo
This is a privately held company, which provides GSM with EDGE/3G services and also Blackberry services.
This carrier works with 850/900mhz

ENTEL
http://www.entel.bo/
This is the recently nationalized carrier in Bolivia, previously owned by TIM. It provides GSM with GPRS/EGE and also Blackberry services. It also still has a legacy TDMA network which is still supported. This carrier works with 900/1800/1900 mhz.

If you visit the websites of any of these carriers you will find an option which lets you send free SMS to any mobile phone in he country.

Bolivian Paintings: Jose Castro, Humberto Jaimes, Moises Chire, Antonio Mariaca

Bolivian Paintings: Luis Luksis, Julio Cesar Tellez, Armodio Tamayo

Small tremor in Cochabamba, no earthquake.

Yesterday in the afternoon at around quarter past there was a tremor of 4.4 in the richter scale. I say tremor because I was actually walking on the street at that time yet I didn't feel it. 

The epicenter was in the province of Capinota, 5 km to the northeast of Santivañez, about 15 km to the southeast of the city of Cochabamba. 

Boliva gets third place in Microsoft 2009 Imagine Cup IT Challenge

Not bad at all considering we only had one participant in the IT Challenge competition.

Worldwide Competitors were:

300,000 registered

59,000 students competed from 142 countries

148 finalist teams

Miklos Cari from Cochabamba, Bolivia got the third place in this Microsoft 2009 Imagine Cup IT Challenge. You can see him in a video receiving the award here:

IT Challenge

First place: Romania, Cosmin Ilie
Second place: China, Wu Chang

Third place: Bolivia, Miklos Cari Sivila

More information here:

http://imaginecup.com/Support/exploreimaginecup.aspx

Bolivian Sculptures - Nuñez del Prado, Zapana and Magallanes

Mobile Facebook in Bolivia promoted by wireless carriers as a plus for them

I saw a VIVA ad on the Los Tiempos newspaper on Sunday and and another one of TIGO at a nearby store today, it 's funny that they promote mobile web access to Facebook as if it was a plus of their service. This is probably due to the fact that many young people in Bolivia are Facebook addicts. No joke, I have Facebook contacts in their teens which have 500+ contact easily. For a country where about only 75% of the population has access to electricity and where from 10 million tops about 1 million people have access to internet, believe me 500+ is a lot.

In Bolivia Facebook use has grown very quickly, nobody uses MySpace or other social sites, basically everyone who has a social account is using Facebook. Twitter use is reduced, the other day I had a friend who was at what they called a "Twitter Party" in Cochabamba (he told me there are about 30 users of Twitter he knows in Cochabamba and close to 200 in Bolivia), with similar events going on in La Paz and Santa Cruz at the same time.

Bolivian Sculptures - Nuñez del Prado and Zapana

iPhone in Bolivia

If you have an iPhone and you live in Bolivia, this probably means that it is a jailbroken/unlocked one, since Apple has not made the iPhone available through any of the wireless carriers in Bolivia. Sad but true.

All our neighbors have the iPhone, we're the only ones that don't:

This doesn't mean that we don't see people with iPhone, actually I know about 10 people with iPhone, and some  have payed hefty prices for their Apple precious.

People have had to go through different ticks and ask favors to relatives in the US or in Europe in order to get an  iPhone, you can also buy them from people or small shops which bring them in small quantities and have them jailbroken/unlocked locally. But if you don't have a geek's heart it's really difficult to keep up with the upgrades. Although I know quite a few people who would be ready to buy one if it was offered by a local carrier.

Those in Bolivia who have the iPhone 3G (I've got a 2G myself, don't need an upgrade for now although the 3GS looks veeeery cool), don't use in general the 3G service since there is only one wireless carrier which provides this service, TIGO, and I've used a chip from them for a year and I was really upset with their service it was really bad. I returned to my VIVA (another local wireless carrier), although they only have GPRS.

Wifi hotspots are not easily found in Bolivia, as you can guess. But there are a few (many public places have them).

Below a shot of Apple's next countries to have the iphone, are we're still not there. C'mon carriers in Bolivia do you really believe there is NO market for the iphone in Bolivia? We need more technology than other countries in order to work ourselves out of this poverty hole.