About Ethiopia Online

A year has passed since the last update of the informative pages here (late 1996) and the Ethiopia Online service has evolved dramatically in this time. Most notably Ethiopia Online now has its own domain name:- EthiopiaOnline.Net. And most tragically Ethiopia Online no longer exists within territorial Ethiopia! Apologies to those who were mislead by the outdated materials residing here for so long -we've been so busy adding new sites we couldn't update our own pages!. We would like now to discuss what Ethiopia Online offers and explain as well why change had to happen.

Web Hosting Services

Ethiopia Online is a web hosting service of NetNation offered to the small businesses and small NGO community in Ethiopia. Ethiopian based organizations, institutes, and businesses eligible for publishing at Ethiopia Online are those that would not be able to afford web hosting costs. NetNation does offer specially priced packages for Ethiopian establishments that would like to use their own domain name (ie WWW.YourName.Com instead of YourName.EthiopiaOnline.Net).

The local mirror service once offered in Addis Ababa is no longer possible (see below) though it is hoped that it might one day return when a new hosting organization is found. Until then Ethiopia Online would like to acknowledge the spirit of those individuals and organizations who would let their materials be shared with community here that can not afford the high cost of local Internet access service.

Contact Webmaster@EthiopiaOnline.Net for inquiries in the publishing options at Ethiopia Online.

The Fall of The Hornet

The Hornet ceased to be on January 6th of 1997. The Hornet (a contraction of ``Horn Net'') was Ethiopia's first computer BBS system started by Ben Parker and maintained by Lishan Adam and later Daniel Yacob. The Hornet offered users in Addis Ababa the capability to electronically exchange information and software. In the first part of 1996 Lishan migrated the Hornet to a Unix BBS service. Daniel added web service support to the BBS and the door was opened to the community to begin web publishing. Just before the middle of the year Joseph Kibur appeared and offered NetNation's services to mirror local content for the outside world. A two way mirroring service was started.

The Hornet vanished from the virtual landscape when the dial-up phone lines allocated for the Hornet mysteriously stopped working. The hosting organization, Pan African Development of Information Systems (PADIS), was unable to resume the phone service for the Hornet and so it ceased to be. The Hornet hard drive now sits on a shelf in PADIS. At this time Ethiopia lost both its first BBS and web server and Ethiopia Online would only exist through NetNation in Canada.

In the past year Ethiopia Online has been able to support and assist local companies in the online migration while the Ethiopian Telecom Corporation begins its web hosting services (we expect to see the first local homepages appear in early 1998) and while local entrepreneurs (look soon for EthioMall) get up and running. Ethiopia Online will continue to service those organizations and business that would otherwise