[wordup] The great African internet robbery

[Adam Shand]

This is really interesting.  Having run one of the first ISP's in New
Zealand I always took it for granted that to "get the good stuff" you
had to pay to connect to the USA, it's interesting to see that
challenged.  

However, I'm not sure I buy their argument that equates internet traffic
to voice traffic.  With voice traffic there is an assumption that the
desire to talk is two way, both parties are directly benefiting from the
transaction.  Internet traffic tends to be asymmetric and I'm not sure
that USA based ISP's or telco's should have any responsibility to bear
the costs for other groups to connect to them.  Though, once again that
does put the most privileged country in the world at an advantage
because everyone has to pay to connect to us rather then the other way
around.

As for intra-African traffic going via the USA that's, to be blunt, just
poor (in both senses) network design.  It's  not the USA's fault that
traffic between Kenya and Egypt goes via the USA.  This is a growing
pain that all of the Internet has gone through, and now it's their
turn.  They are right that if we are serious about bridging the digital
divide we should help them fix it, but it's certainly not the
responsibility of the ISP/Telco's to do so.

Good lord, I'm not spouting anti-corporate/capitalist propaganda for
once.  Maybe there is an American inside of me after all. :-)

Adam.


From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1931000/1931120.stm

The great African internet robbery
Monday, 15 April, 2002, 15:20 GMT 16:20 UK

Africa is being ripped off - to the tune of some $500m a year - simply
for hooking up to the World Wide Web, say Kenyan internet company
chiefs.

And this extra cost is partly to blame for slowing the spread of the
internet in Africa and helping sustain the digital divide, they contend.

According to Kenya's Internet Service Providers (ISP) Association, the
continent is being forced by Western companies to pay the full cost of
connecting to worldwide networks.

Chairman Richard Bell says this has led to the unfair exploitation of
the continent's young internet industry.

He says the problem is that International Telecommunications Union
regulations - which ensures the costs of telephone calls between Africa
and the West are split 50:50 - are not being enforced with regard to the
internet.

"British Telecom doesn't spend one single penny... America Online
doesn't spend one single cent in sending emails to Africa." 

The total cost of any email sent or received by an African internet user
is borne entirely by African ISPs, Mr Bell said on the BBC African
service programme Talkabout Africa.

Despite the relatively high cost of using the internet in Africa, growth
has been rapid in recent years.

All 54 countries are now hooked up to the internet, and there an
estimated four million subscribers across the continent.

In Kenya alone, there are more than 100,000 subscribers and some 250
cyber cafes across the country.

Bandwidth

Mr Bell said that their association had calculated that the current and
latent demand for bandwidth in Africa cost about $1bn per year. 

And he said that if data network operators in the West were forced to
adhere to the same regulations as voice operators then they would have
to pay half the cost.

"The only reason this doesn't happen at the moment is that European and
North American operators are not prepared to pay their share of the
costs."

"This is exploitation... These networks are raping Africa of half a
billion dollars a year."

He said that the G8 group of leading nations were responsible for this
inequitable trade and at some point had to act to halt it, if they were
serious about trying to bridge the digital divide.

And he said that they as an association now planned to push for this
change.

Action

They are also calling on African countries to take action by getting
together to reduce their costs.

A proposal called the Halfway Proposition urges fellow African countries
to create national exchanges and then interconnected regional ones - as
has occurred in other parts of the developing world.

This would at least mean that the communications costs for intra-African
emails stay within Africa - rather than the West benefiting from the
cost of an email.

Mike Jenson, who runs the Africa Interconnectivity web site and is
surveying the current utilization of broadband on the continent, agrees
that this could make a difference. 

"No one really knows how much intra-African traffic there is, but it's
sure to grow and become significant if it isn't already," he told BBC
News Online.

"If only 5% is intra-regional, it would add up to a sizable amount," he
said.