Re: Tanzanian ISPs move closer to establishing an Internet exchange

[antonio at nambu.uem.mz]

Yep, risky but it's damn good profitable.
getting African ISPs together to do that is not as easy as it sounds 
due to all the political stuff that it has to go through. It is all political 
in the end rather than technical or financial.

Cheers,



On 14 May 2003 at 9:57, Brian Candler wrote:

> On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 09:08:11AM +0200, antonio at nambu.uem.mz wrote:
> > I don't know about numbers but I know that we aren't profiting from 
> > it and the satellite providers are overprofiting to such an extent that 
> > now you get thousands of satellite providers coming to you 
> > everyday to offer you their services. They get a transponder which 
> > will take up to 45Mbps of traffic, they will sell portions of 1Mbps, 
> > 2Mbps, 5Mpbs and make a huge profit on that transponder. As I am 
> > told, a transponder costs about US$45,000.00 a month and they 
> > charge as much as US$15,000.00 for 2Mbps. So per transponder 
> > they can get as much as US$360,000.00 a month..... That's what I 
> > am told....
> 
> Sounds like there is scope for a consortium of smaller African ISPs to buy a
> transponder and divide the bandwidth (and costs) between its members - if
> there is sufficient trust between them to achieve this.
> 
> It does sound like these resellers are making excessive profits, but then
> again they are also taking some risks. If a client ISP folds or stops paying
> their bills, then the reseller ends up paying for the segment anyway; they
> also pay for unused portions on the transponder.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Brian.




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