RE: Tanzanian ISPs move closer to establishing an Internet exchange

["Badru Ntege" <ntegeb at one2net.co.ug>]

If I might add something to this.  I think we get too pre-ocuppied with the
actual IX and forget the other variables that make it a viable commercial
option.  An IX in a country that does not do any local hosting in the scheme
of things has limited value. We have to look at other aspects that create
local content and local value.  In most discussions I see about the IX's the
value of creating local content seem to take a low priority.

Untill there is local value it will always be of value for African nations
to connect to the us and europe. (we need them more than they need Us)  It's
amazing that even most african nations host their government websites in the
US and Europe, our own communications commision in uganda is hosted in the
US. Any idea where www.nepad.org is hosted ?  So what is the imperative to
get a connection to other ISP's ?.

We need to actually identify other commercial values than the fact that my
email has to go to the US then Europe before it gets to the guy next door.
If he is using a dial-up and his email takes an extra 10 mins to get to the
ISP which he will check once a day what is the value.

Please do not get me wrong I'm a strong proponent for IXP's but I believe we
need to look at and sell the actual business value like business to business
connections, local webhosting etc to actually give more tangible value to
the IX.

More and more the people who actually make the IT decisions especially in
africa are not the generation that is IT aware some of these folks do not
even have a computer on the desktops, most of them if they do it's cosmetic.
Let's not forget that the Internet is not that old on the continent, so we
need to actually deliver a message that can be understood.

My worry is to get an IX in place and after some time no commercial value is
realised, I know it's an uphill struggle but let us design the message for
the audience and then build in all the other variables.  That way we will
deliver a solution that works and is sustainable.

badru


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-afnog at afnog.org [mailto:owner-afnog at afnog.org]On Behalf Of
John Tully
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2003 4:17 PM
To: afnog at afnog.org
Subject: Re: Tanzanian ISPs move closer to establishing an Internet
exchange



It seems a difficult number to estimate, but you can be sure that the
dollar cost of not having a local IX in Africa is much much more expensive
than the same issue for a US or European ISP.

If you take into account the prices that the local telephone companies
charge for leased lines to Europe and the European Internet prices, then
the cost for bandwidth in Africa is many multiples of what US ISPs pay for
bandwidth.  Plus, consider if you don't have a local IX, then the waist of
bandwidth is going two ways -- all the way to Europe or the US and then
back to the local server...

John



>On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 12:53:32PM +0000, ALAIN PATRICK AINA wrote:
> >
> >
> > > could you give us the basis for the $400m figure?
> >
> > Do you also want to know the basis when WHO said " MALARIA KILLS ONE
> PERSON
> > EVERY 20 SECOND IN AFRICA"? ;-)
>
>That statistic can easily be checked: it equates to about 1.5m people dying
>per year, which sounds plausible to me, and I trust the WHO to count the
>death certificates.
>
>But the $400m figure seems ludicrous. Surely all the ISPs in Africa
together
>don't even spend that much on transit and link costs? And then only a small
>fraction of that can be saved by peering.
>
>Regards,
>
>Brian.
>
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