Summary

  • In October 1994, a FidoNet-compatible Intermail system at the University of Sierra Leone’s IPAM node was reported running, but it depended on GreenNet in London to poll it twice a week; the update said IPAM had no international direct-dial line.
  • Securicom’s commercial service used another path: customers dialled its local gateway, which exchanged Internet email through Baobab in Washington once a day. A separate SierraNet network was still in feasibility testing, and its four-day external-mail schedule was conditional on full operation. The October 1994 network update is the contemporary record for this route.

The first dated report does not describe a country plugging into the Internet through a permanent line. On 19 October 1994, a network update said an Intermail system compatible with FidoNet was running at IPAM, a node at the University of Sierra Leone. GreenNet in London called it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The report said the university node lacked an international direct-dial line and was still considering how to pay for further polling. A working mailbox therefore depended on a remote computer making the call.

By March 1995, Securicom Consultants was offering a commercial email service in Freetown. Its owner described a store-and-forward system: a customer computer dialled Securicom’s local machine by modem and telephone, exchanged messages, then left Internet-bound mail for that machine to forward. Baobab Communications in Washington polled Securicom once a day. The quoted basic setup cost US$600, including a 14,400-baud modem, installation and training; sending was priced at Le 250 per kilobyte and receiving at Le 150. Those were posted rates, not evidence of a typical bill or a customer count. The March service description supplies the path and the stated charges.

An April update showed why “the Sierra Leone gateway” would be too simple a description. The university’s IPAM node had little activity and its director worried about cost. The US Information Service ran a FidoNet node whose Internet mail went directly through Baobab, not through Securicom. Meanwhile, Fourah Bay College Library arranged to send and receive email through Securicom; staff would type messages for people without computers and print replies for a modest fee. A local computer could be the endpoint, but it was not the only way to reach the mailbox. The April network update describes these different arrangements.

In September, Securicom’s Feyi Asgill said the service had exchanged mail with Baobab daily since November 1994 and had more than ten connected points, including the Sierra Leone Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service and the Fourah Bay College Library. He also wrote that global Web services were accessible “via email.” Read narrowly, that is a provider’s account of email-mediated access, not proof that subscribers could browse the whole Web as they would over a direct IP connection. A local Web service was still a plan, and twice-daily polling was expected to begin later. Asgill’s September report is useful as a contemporary operator statement, not an independent usage audit.

At the same time, SierraNet was testing an academic network that joined local nodes to three gateways: CABECA at IPAM, HealthNet at SierraNet and Baobab at Securicom. Its October report described local message exchange and gateway loops as tests. The proposed schedule would combine the Tuesday-and-Thursday IPAM polls with up to two other HealthNet/SierraNet days. Four days of external email were a result users might get once the network was fully operational—not a service level already achieved. A companion message identified power cuts at IPAM as a threat to scheduled calls and weighed a US$1,000 UPS against solar batteries or a locally assembled backup. The SierraNet test report and its gateway-power proposal preserve the distinction between operation and intention.

Heng Lu Note 65’s “running-code” emphasis is an editorial lens here: ask which poll was reported as running, which routes were being tested and which timetable remained conditional. It is not evidence about Sierra Leone. A later NSRC notice recorded a responding Sierratel host and a full-IP route in April 1998; that later trace does not establish the date when public IP service first began. The 1998 trace is a useful boundary, not a retroactive description of the 1994–95 mail systems.