[afnog] Challenges in the African Continent

[Mark Tinka]

On Friday 27 March 2009 09:27:00 pm Shaheel Luckoo - 
Personal wrote:

> As such, I would like to know whether there are certain
> strategies in place to overcome this pressing challenge
> and if so what are they and how us the community can
> help.

The high level strategies that I see going on (in order to 
reduce the cost of Internet access + increase penetration) 
are:

a) reduce dependence on expensive and non-scalable satellite
   infrastructure by transferring traffic to sub-sea and/or
   terrestrial optic fibre.

b) increase growth of national and regional optic fibre
   infrastructure in the ground in order to take full
   advantage of international capacity while reducing local
   loop costs.

c) deregulate the market for increased competition, which
   will lead to better pricing and higher quality services
   for end-users.

d) other strategic economic activities governments would
   undertake to encourage investment in rural areas where
   the existence of Internet access is minimal at best.

There could be other strategies, seeing as I'm not directly 
involved in these kinds of government/private activities. 
However, their efficacy may be worth arguing.

Cheers,

Mark.
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