Electronically Obsessed A tech addict's guide to using the Internet to streamline your life

Streamline your workday – Telecommuting comparison 2003 vs. 2009

My friend Charles and his wife just became parents recently.  However, their recent trip into parenthood included some interesting twists.  His wife is from Peru, and because of various decisions detailed in this post, they decided to have the child in Peru.

Telecommuting from a small town

Since the child's birth, Charles has been telecommuting from Paijan, Peru.  He details some of his experience in this post.

Using Skype, I am able to make phone calls from a Dallas, Texas number at no cost (for my previous post on Skype, click here).  And the broadband internet service, provided by Spanish telecom giant Telefonica, is generally quite reliable, though the speed is a little less than what I am used to back home.  (Still, even the suggestion that rural farm towns in Peru would have high-speed internet access would have seemed absurd just a few years ago...there are still pockets of the United States that are without high-speed service, for crying out loud!)

Tripped up by an old technology

This, however, made me laugh.

As it would turn out, I needed to fax a signed document back to the office -- ASAP -- and we didn't have a scanner in the house.  It also so happened that the wife and in-laws had driven into the city, Trujillo, which is a good hour away, and I couldn't wait for them to get back.  So, I left the ranch, documents in hand, and made the short walk into town in search of a fax machine...

But after a few wrong turns and after asking for directions in Spanish that I barely understood, I managed to find a 1940s-style children's toy store that also sold pirated DVDs and copy and fax services.

The shopwoman was pleasant and offered to fax the two pages for 10 Peruvian soles (roughly $3.50).  I found out later from my wife that this was a shameless gouging and that she had jacked the price up by at least 300% after judging that I didn't have a clue (and I most assuredly didn't).

Charles was living in the 21st century with his laptop, broadband, and Skype, but was tripped up by a dying technology, the fax.  His telecommuting experience got me thinking about how far laptops and broadband access has come.

In the fall of 2003, I spent a semester studying at the University of London, Queen Mary.  I brought my then state-of-the-art Dell laptop with me to London, but was hard pressed to find any sort of broadband access outside of an expensive Internet cafe or university facilities.  Voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls like Skype?  Forget it!  I was still using pay phones and expensive calling cards to call my parents in the States.  Charles's long distance calls to American landlines cost him nothing, after a $60/year subscription.  All this, from a small town in rural Peru.

These days, if you have the right job or business, all you need is a laptop, broadband Internet access, and (maybe) a fax machine to do business.  What will the future hold?  I don't know, but I know that I can't wait to see it!

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