[afnog] Challenges in the African Continent

[Mark Tinka]

On Sunday 29 March 2009 04:37:26 pm SM wrote:

> My question is about determining whether there is a
> business case for additional bandwidth.  If there isn't
> any demand, the ISPs won't recoup their cost.

You must be kidding, right... there is always demand for 
more bandwidth, and a great deal of demand for the same in 
most African countries, particularly those currently not 
using any submarine infrastructure to reach the rest of the 
world.

The issues limiting growth (not demand) are:

a) lack of submarine infrastructure that lowers operators'
   opex.

b) insufficient high-speed national/regional infrastructure
   that both operators and users alike can use.

c) sky-high per-Mbps prices that leads to a barrier to
   growth (not demand) for both operators and users.

Those are the real problems... 

> Hong Kong is next to China.  That country has a sizable
> market.  I'm not including other Asian countries as there
> are cultural barriers to take into account.

I guess what I was trying to say is regional comparisons may 
not be absolutely necessary. The issue the OP is stressing 
is, "why is HK better off"? He might as well be asking, "why 
is South Korea better off"? Or, "why is Finland better off"?

The real question is, what is holding Africa up?

> We cannot
> consider Africa as one region as the continent is not one
> homogenous group.  It would be more appropriate to
> consider cultural and geographic factors as well as
> inter-connectivity.

Agree, but like I said, we don't have to break it down into 
regions to get it. The issues faced by most African 
countries regarding Internet connectivity are well-
understood. The question is, how do we fix them?

Particularly more so as proliferation of submarine capacity 
into landlocked African countries will require the co-
operation of several governments at a technical, economic 
and political level.

> One of the disadvantages of Africa is that it has English
> and French speaking countries.  In my opinion, such
> markets tend to access content that is outside the
> region.

This doesn't make any sense to me, and does not answer why 
Africa is lagging behind in terms of connectivity to the 
rest of the world.

> The continent does have some advantages.  For
> example, it has not yet experienced an explosion in
> connectivity.  It is a nascent market.

And this is a good thing?

I'm sorry, I really don't get your logic here. Growth in 
connectivity is generally seen as a good thing, across the 
board. Not even sure whether I need to explain this, and how 
the lack of growth is a "bad" thing for Africa.

> This is the Internet after all.  Locality isn't the
> determining factor.  We should analyze whether it makes
> business sense to host locally.  That encompasses more
> than the financial aspect.

My jaw is touching the floor with this one, mate.

Since when was keeping local traffic local bad for business?

Mark.
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