RE: [afnog]Satelite Bandwidth Purchased by ISP's in Africa

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

There is currently a proof of concept project being evaluated on the merits
of interconnecting african ISP's. That will help on the intercontinental
traffic but what I want to evaluate are the merits of a African centric
Carrier with the vested interest of the continent in the long term.  Please
note I do not want a charitable organisation I want an African focused
business looking to make Bandwidth affordable and expand the penetration of
internet access on the continent.

-----Original Message-----
From: S Woodside [mailto:sbwoodside at yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 10:03 AM
To: Badru Ntege
Cc: afnog at afnog.org
Subject: Re: [afnog]Satelite Bandwidth Purchased by ISP's in Africa



On Monday, September 22, 2003, at 06:37 AM, Badru Ntege wrote:

>
> Greetings All
>
> During some discussions at Iweek in south africa last week a number of
> hot
> topics were discussed, one that I thought needs to be explored is the
> price
> at which we buy bandwidth on the continent.  With close review the
> cost of
> this bandwidth is in some instances overpriced.
>
> I'm carrying out a small survey to understand how much actual
> bandwidth is
> being purchased by African ISP's, and then how much we are paying for
> this.
> As the price for international bandwidth falls we seem to be paying
> more for
> this relative to the other users arround the world.
>
> One of the discussions or line of thought was what would it take for an
> African organisation to become the usptream provider and finally
> charge the
> right prices.
>
> If we gather all the data we could also be in a position to go to the
> providers and demand fair and reasonable pricing.  The Fiber debate I
> know
> will also kick in but this seems like it will not be sorted soon and I
> don't
> think we have the time to wait for organisations that have no vision
> but had
> the money to invest in the SAT3 fiber project to wake up.

The political actors don't even understand the topological issues. Even
just using the word topology leads to closed ears IME. I wrote up a
short paper that uses a metaphor to describe the IXP local/regional
advantages of a continental mesh-like topology
     http://simonwoodside.com/projects/ict/parable.html
     The Parable of the Net
Ties a knot between fish nets and networks.

simon

>
> We need to start acting as a body with an imense buying power.
>
> Please send me your info, I will collate it and present it on this
> forum,
> Those worried about confidentiality please send the data offline and I
> will
> treat it in confidence.
>
>
>
> Badru Ntege
> One2net Ltd
>
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__________________________________________________
This is the Africa Network Operators' Group(AfNOG) 
technical discussion list.
The AfNOG website is: <http://www.afnog.org>