The robot is cool. The economics feel a bit off kilter for me though. With tongue in cheek, I raise the following points:
-/ Heaven forfend transferring wealth to the local laborers, to pay them to install this infrastructure. Why waste all that money by converting it into Ugandan wages when it can be spent on robots instead?
-/ Hopefully the fibre and connectivity is only leased to the Ugandans, for a more efficient return on the capital investment.
It's for safety. As explained in the article, it is not an option to shut down power to manually install the fibre because the power outage would be too long. The installation must be done with power transmission. This work is too complex for human to do safely.
-/ Heaven forfend transferring wealth to the local laborers, to pay them to install this infrastructure. Why waste all that money by converting it into Ugandan wages when it can be spent on robots instead?
-/ Hopefully the fibre and connectivity is only leased to the Ugandans, for a more efficient return on the capital investment.
Hmmm.