Enedemer · እንደመር

Video chat that sips data instead of drinking it

Enedemer caps its own video quality on purpose. The result: about 125MB per hour of live face-to-face chat.

For most of the world, video chat data usage is a footnote. In Ethiopia, it's the whole question. Data is bought by the gigabyte, often day by day, and popular bundles cover Telegram and WhatsApp — but live video chat burns regular data, the expensive kind. So Enedemer (እንደመር) was engineered backwards from that bill.

How we keep it that low

• Video capped at 250 kbps and 15 frames per second. Most video-call apps happily climb to 1–2 Mbps when the network allows — four to eight times more data for sharper pixels you don't need in a casual chat. We cap the stream and it never climbs.
• Audio capped at 32 kbps. Plenty for a clear voice; a fraction of music-streaming quality you'd never notice missing in conversation.
• Phone-sized resolution. Streams run between 320×240 and 640×480 — tuned for a phone screen held at arm's length, not a conference-room TV.
• Peer-to-peer connections. Video travels directly between you and your partner over WebRTC rather than through a relay whenever the network allows, which keeps the path short and the quality stable. (It also means we never see or store your video.)
• A featherweight app. The interface itself is tiny and cached after your first visit, so reopening Enedemer costs almost nothing — and there's no 80MB app download in the first place.

What the cap costs you — honestly

Capped bitrate means the picture is soft, not cinematic. You'll see the other person's face and expressions clearly; you won't count their eyelashes. For a random conversation with a stranger, that's the right trade — and it's why calls hold up on crowded 4G and shaky Wi-Fi where high-definition apps freeze.

Night owls get a bonus

Enedemer's busiest hours start around 8:30 PM Ethiopia time (2:30 የምሽት) and run late — which happens to overlap with Ethio telecom's discounted night-time data window. If you chat after 10 PM, your birr stretches even further.

Who this matters for

If you're in the diaspora on unlimited home Wi-Fi, the data cap simply means smooth calls. But it decides whether your cousin in Hawassa, a domestic worker in Beirut on prepaid mobile data, or a student on campus Wi-Fi can afford to be in the queue at all. A random chat app is only fun if the other side can show up — the low-data design is why they can.