Baghdad resident Usama Kamil Al-Sharqi paid a taxi driver $50 in 2001 to smuggle him a copy of Yahoo Instant Messenger on a CD-ROM from a friend in Jordan.
It was a high price to pay for a program that has been downloaded for free by millions of people around the world. But Al-Sharqi says he would have paid an even steeper price had the regime of Saddam Hussein, which banned the use of instant messaging software, found out about it.
"If the government knew what I was doing, I am sure they would kill me, because they would think I was a spy," says Al-Sharqi.
Today, with Saddam toppled, Iraq's State Company for Internet Services has lifted its prohibition on IM. At Internet cafes around Baghdad run by SCIS and its newly launched competitors, IM has become -- figuratively rather than literally -- a "killer app."
No longer required to sneak virtual visits with his brother in Amman, Al-Sharqi now talks openly with him over the Internet nearly every evening. Many times, they converse not by typing but by voice, using an Internet telephony feature built into Yahoo Messenger called Voice Chat. The technology enables users with a microphone and speakers connected to their PC's sound card to talk by voice with other users around the world for the price of their Internet connection.
International phone calls are impractical and prohibitively expensive today in Iraq, and some tech-savvy Iraqis say the voice-over-IM technology has emerged as the best way to stay in touch with friends and relatives abroad by voice.
"It makes me feel that my brother is not far from me," says Al-Sharqi, 22, an editor and graphics designer for a media production company.
Today, in Baghdad's Internet cafés, it's not unusual to see many people sporting headsets and yakking away with someone across the world using IM software from Yahoo, or Microsoft's MSN Messenger program, according to Ala'a Harif, lead system administrator for SCIS.
At peak times, the traffic from online voice chatters can almost completely tie up the government-run ISP's limited network bandwidth, says Harif.
While the technology isn't perfect, the economics of voice-over IM make it attractive for users in Iraq. Internet cafes in Baghdad charge around $1 per hour for connect time, versus a going rate of about $1 per minute for long distance telephone service.
Still, the technology is unknown in most parts of Iraq. Many Iraqis have never used the Internet, much less advanced features like voice chat, which requires relatively fast computers equipped with audio gear.
Instead, when they want to speak with someone abroad, many citizens of Iraq currently rely on borrowed satellite phones, according to Bassam Al-Hussani, a California-based representative of the Iraqi American Council.
Such phones, almost exclusively from United Arab Emirates telecom provider Thuraya, are scattered throughout Baghdad. Some are available as long-distance pay phones that Thuraya refers to as "public call offices." Others are owned -- and rented out by the minute -- by individuals, some of who acquired the phones by looting former government ministry offices, says Al-Hussani.
When he wants to speak with his family in the western suburbs of Baghdad, Al-Hussani first calls his mother's neighbor, who has a Thuraya phone.
"I sweet-talk him and ask whether he could bring the phone to my mom and I will call again in about 15 minutes," he says, noting that incoming calls are free on Thurya phones.
While Al-Hussani's mother has landline telephone service in her home, he says outbound long-distance calls are impossible over Iraq's state-run phone company, the Iraqi Telecommunication and Post Company.
However, the ITPC is expected soon to roll out pre-paid phone cards that will allow Iraqis to place long-distance calls, according to Harif. In addition, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority is in the process of taking bids from firms interested in offering cell phone service in Iraq.
Some rogue cellular providers have already started offering such service in a limited capacity, and the CPA has recently begun issuing phones using MCI wireless services to some government employees.
While they may have hit on a great stopgap solution, fans of online voice chat in Iraq are not immune from the flakiness of the country's telecommunications infrastructure. Osama Allose, a structural engineer in Baghdad who recently started using Yahoo Messenger, says his voice conversations with friends in Jordan, the U.K. and Sweden are frequently interrupted because of modem disconnects.
Then there's the audio quality itself. Echoes and latency can make conversations over voice-over-IM technology halting and unnatural, although a troubleshooting wizard provided with Yahoo Messenger does a good job of attempting to smooth out audio setup problems.
Some technically savvy Iraqis like the technology so much they say they'll stick with voice chat even if the country's long-distance phone service gets better. In northern Iraq's Kurdish region, Mohammed Ahmed Sito, technical manager for Dalya-Sat Telecom, a satellite ISP in Erbil, says he uses the technology for work as well as personal communications "when the other side doesn't have local telephone or international mobile" service.
Besides Yahoo Messenger, many Kurds have been using a voice-conferencing system from New York-based PalTalk, according to Sito.
While Iraqis in Kurdistan such as Sito were unfettered by Saddam's Internet restrictions, the fall of the Hussein government has opened up new lines of Internet communication for many Iraqis in the south.
Allose, 27, says he has been using computers for the past 12 years and is among the lucky few Iraqis to have an Internet connection at home. Since the war, his father's road construction business -- where Allose works -- has nearly dried up. So he spends several hours each day online. He says Baghdad is "a big mess" today, and he doesn't expect it to improve anytime soon. Power outages often abruptly interrupt his voice chats with overseas friends.
Allose wanted to use instant messaging before the war, but the government ban stood in his way. Now, despite the glitches, he has become a big fan of the technology and has used voice chats to rekindle old friendships with expatriate Iraqis.
It's mostly "I miss you stuff," he says.
