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African ISPs Being Fleeced by the West
dipfan writes "African ISPs are forced to pay the full cost of their connections to western telcos and ISPs, rather than sharing the costs, as in the case of voice telephony: quote - "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 the African ISPs, totaling $500m a year for the continent, according to this disturbing article by the BBC."
... with all the spam that we get from there.
Say no to software patents.
I have a T1 for my business. I have to pay 100% of the bill for it. Sometimes my clients and I get email from AOL users. AOL doesn't pay for one cent of my T1, yet they expect to send me messages without worrying about the cost! This is annoying. Please, can someone tell me how I can get others to pay for my T1? Thanks.
In less than one year, I've received 19 emails from various Nigerian government officials, as well as several from the Republic Republic of Congo, each promising me at least $30 million if I store some money for them.
That comes to $17,100,000,000, more than enough to pay the paltry $500 million bandwidth bill.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
While this may be, and probably is, accurate, I think we might be missing something. Is it helpful to just measure the network traffic directed to Africa, or is that comparing apples to oranges? That is, is 1 MB of African Internet content equivalent to 1 MB of American or European or Asian content?
Let's look at other types of "content". For years (centuries!) Africans were locked out of the music industry using similar reasoning. At the turn of the 20th century, the only "black" entertainers were racist white men in blackface! But as soon as they were given a chance, the Africans gave us blues, rock, jazz, rap, hip hop, R&B, funk, and the list goes on. Pretty much everything except Kraftwerk!
And I don't need to point out the advances made by Africans in other media. Anyone remember the Oscars?
In short, if Africa had been in on the dot-com boom, maybe we would have seen a much higher level of competence. Africans have demonstrated time and again that they are up to the task of competing on a level basis with the white man. Not only that, but they have shown a tendancy to go one step better. If we take a small hit now by getting rid of these outrageous charges to African ISPs, we will all benefit as the Internet receives a much-needed infusion of black blood.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)