IN PAKISTAN, the bandwidth of an average landline is about 32 kilobits per second (as of 2011, the average broadband speed in the United States was 5.3 megabits per second). It can take more than 20 minutes to download a five-megabyte file-assuming the connection doesn't drop during that time, as it frequently does. To help relieve the frustration, Umar Saif developed BitMate. The software lets different users in the same area pool the bandwidth of their connections to reduce download times, typically by half.
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