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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.
"This is exploitation... These networks are raping Africa of half a billion dollars a year."
:)
Just goes to prove, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Europe and the west has kept Africa under one bootheel or another for about 500 years now...happened all the way through the industrial age. Now, at the dawn of the information age....nothings changed.
AOL/BT/WorldCom/all big telcos ought to be ashamed. On the other hand, their stock prices are probably embarresment enough!
This also happens with Traffic to OZ, and I'd guess most other countries.
The bottom line, is most English content providers are in the US (like slashdot), and if you want to see it you'd better pay.
I'd guess that China and other non english countries would have the best change at getting costs equalised, as they don't need the US site to the same extent.
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.
You forgot about the slave trade and the child labor too. Fact is that people who live in developing countries exploit each other just as much as the developed countries exploit the developing countries.
Ahem. I get a fair amount of those yes. But guess where most of my spam comes from? And that are scams, all of them. If the nigerian scam letters had said something like "laundry our money, or we'll disconnect you from the Internet", you would have a point.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
"Fact is that people who live in developing countries exploit each other just as much as the developed countries exploit the developing countries."
And this is supposed to make it right? When resources are scarce and people are desparate, they exploit each other more. What a lovely vicious circle.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Email isn't like the telephone call scenario they mention; each ISP pays the "costs" for their subscribers' usage (and then recoup the costs from the subscribers). AFAIK, there's no "terminating minutes"-type agreements for email in the US.
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The article didn't mention one specific rule or regulation about how costs are split up. Only thing that was written was how bad the western corporations are and so forth. Not one fact. So can anyone tell me how exactly is the west raping african ISP's? How are their payment schemes different than what network providers charge other customers?
Just because the ITU makes voice telephone companies subsidize traffic to Africa doesn't make it necessary or right for everyone to have to do the same. Every ISP I know of has to pay for its own connections (barring a swap of some kind).
The local/regional exchanges are the best way to deal with this; if the exchanges generate enough traffic, then they will be able to peer with other backbones for a reduced (or no) cost. That's the way the internet works.
So in essence, the entire Continent of Africa is paying the salaries of 3 or 4 executives. Now THAT ladies and gentleman, is pimping at it's best.
D
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Internet in Africa is not taking off because the price is too high. And they are the continent which an least afford the too high price.
Reminds me of the banking axiom: those who don't need loans get.
So low internet prices are only given to those who don't need them.
For years this was true of Europe (And to a degree still is). The bulk of the transatlantic connectivity is still played for by European companies. This is the underlying reason why broadband and leased lines cost more here in Britain than in the states.
The situation has been gradually changing because there is demand in the US for some of the content being hosted in Europe, it will take a lot more time for the playing field to level out but it will eventually do so.
The African question is interesting, for the time being they are going to need to like it or lump it. I can't remember ever wanting to access an African website but my websites show quite a few hits from African domains. The situation for Africa is very much what it was for Europe a decade ago, they want to access the internet as it exists outside there country, it would be outright wrong to ask the rest of the world to pay for it.
As the African countries gain a larger online presence I'm sure people in the west will want to get at African sites, then they will start to go down the same road that Europe is now heading down.
Is this a tough barrier to entry into the Internet world? Yes. Should relevant authorities consider help and subsidies to help developing world deal with it? Yes. Is this a blatant attempt to rip of the Africa's of $500bn? Not even close.
maybe Im not reading the article correctly, or understand anything correctly(it is early)...but if an African Telecommunications company could actually hook themselves up with technology, maybe build their own servers(ie mail-sendmail on linux isnt costly), provide their own services--would this not cut the cost to connecting the whole country to the global telecommunications infrastructure?
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
At the risk of sounding politically incorrect...
How are these African ISP's being "fleeced" when they're simply being asked to pay what everyone else is paying already? What entitled them to special treatment in the first place?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Sure..
The reason Africa sucks is because of fraud, corruption, and lots and lots of ethnic wars.
The 3rd greatest source of income for Nigeria is from fraud. (the first is oil, I wonder what #2 is?)
Many countries have gone from backwater who-gives-a-fuck to industrial powerhouses.. Look at Japan or China. Japan, in barely 2 centuries, China will do it faster than that. Then there's south america.. Wow, that was under Europe's bootheel for centuries too, and they're getting better.. Not great, but improving.
If Africa has managed to remain a backwater for 5 centuries, unlike most other places.. Maybe there might be a reason? (A claim of 'racial inferiority' will be met with uproarious laughter.
If Africa wants to make money, let it turn into a place worth investing in.. Get rid of corruption, ethnic wars, and widespread fraud.
They have plenty of money. Here is a good cause. Let them pay for it.
Even worse is the fact that since Worldcom bought Embratel (the big Brazilian carrier) two years ago, they've cancelled all regional IP links we used to have. Now they want to force us into buying BW only to the US.
So, people living on the Uruguay-Brazil border have to go to USA to ping their accross-the-street neighbors. Quite an optimal network design in my humble opinion :-)
Western ISP's generally have peering arrangements - because the traffic between them is more symmetrical. It's still not free - it's just that they absorb the costs themselves instead of writing checks to one another that wash out. Anyplace where the demands are asymmetrical, there will be money paid from the smaller ISP to the larger one for the interconnection. Duh.
If and when Africa as a continent has resources that are compelling destinations for Western internet users, then the traffic loads will balance and the ISP's will come to arrangements where they peer with them instead of just billing them. Right now (at least according to my inbox), the biggest thing the African continent contributes to the Internet as a whole is "419" e-mails.
It's not a Western conspiracy to keep Africa subjugated. It's just math, folks. When two parties have roughly equal assets, they will work out a deal to trade with one another. When one has all the assets, the one without pays. Are you willing to subsidize another continent by having another buck or two tacked on to your cablemodem bill? They'd probably do better by deregulating their national telecom providers and cooperating with one another.
Nothing is stopping African nations from interconnecting and peering with one another, as the article kind of points out. If they rely on Western ISP's to interconnect with each other, they'll pay for the privilege.
The whole point of this article is that the head of Kenya's ISP association wants a handout. Not gonna happen.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
theres nothing new in such sort of exploitation. it happened in the 16h century and it is happening now.
The deveoped world industry is taking the position that it is doing the developing world a great godly favour by enabling them the email and internet.
And frankly speaking tommorow this will be forgotten. Nothing is going to be done about this, after all world has much larger issues to take care off!
It reminds me of that movie "honey I shrunk the kids". The kids were so small that nobody could hear them. Africa is in that situation its to small to weak not rich enough, and we cant hear it
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Yes, phone costs are split 50-50... but No, internet costs are not! You pay your ISP how much per month for that cable modem? Do you think AT&T cable should be paying for half of it? What makes you think that is right? What if I open an ISP here in the States... a big one, as big as AOL, let's say. Now, when my users send email to AOL, who's paying for the bandwidth? Well, I pay while it's on my network, they pay when it's on theirs. Not their fault that my network may tend to end at the limits of my most distant customer, yet theirs may reach halfway across the country to meet me...
Ok, all I'm saying is, all this "abuse of Africa" aside (which may or may not have historically been the case with their interations with the Europeans et al... that's not the point I'm here to comment on) this IS NORMAL. WHY SHOULD I PAY THE COST OF RUNNING CABLE to where THEY WANT IT? Yeah, we had a big strong government pay for it for us, and they have no such luck. Sorry, but there ARE BENEFITS to having a rich powerful government. It does not make it unfair or wrong.
"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. "
This "idea" has been around for quite a while, I've heard it from N. American, European, Asian, and Australian ISPs. Everyone would love to have someone else pay for part of their connection, but no one ever comes up with a workable connection agreement.
Imagine this, lets set up a connection between our two Internet networks. You pay me for every byte you send me, I'll pay you for every byte I send you. For simplicty, it can even be the same rate (even though we may have very different coverages, costs, etc). This is not unlike the voice world type of interconnect agreements.
Now lets play the game. Guess how much email AOL is going to send to Africa/Australia/Europe if they have to pay additionally to do so? How much web surfing will you do in Africa/Australia/Europe? Oh wait, I have to pay to send you the contents of the site? No thanks.
This is not exploitation (isn't this essentially trying to place the race card?), it's market economics. As these markets grow and mature they will be able to strike better deals w/ other providers, today they cannot.
Don't know, they're pretty selective about what political views they like and what ones they dislike.
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I was not aware that all the countries in Africa have joined and become one country! Wow! This is huge!
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
Hey, no suprise there.. Telcos are the biggest scumbags of all industries (next to Oil companies... they sill hold King scumbags title)
China and these other countries will just simply build their own internet and probably just simply mirror popular US sites and seperate themselves from the gouging west.
Sadly, there is nothing to fix this.. American citizens could care less, and they wont go bitching or even boycott anything (Hell Enron is still trading on the NasDaq.. what the hell is up with that?)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Let's say you have someone living out in the middle of nowhere. And they want cable. Should the rest of the subscribers have to pay so that they can get their connection at the same price as everyone else? Or, should they have to foot the bill for the extras, like extra cabling, extra service costs, etc? No matter if they DO or not, but in my eye, it would seem only right that people with special needs like that pay their own way. Otherwise, move closer to town or go without cable.
Africa is the same way. Like it or not, but as far as the Internet is concerned, it's still a very small number of people in the middle of nowhere, as far as cabling and backboning goes.
As others have said, small ISPs don't get paid by the big ones for each email, do they? Then why is it special when an ISP in Africa is treated in the same fashion? At this point in time, by necessity any ISP in Africa is small, compared to almost any ISP in America.
According to the article, there's 4 million people hooked up to the Internet, across 54 countries. This doesn't seem to me to be a big enough population to even able to begin to think about dictating prices and policies. The person in the middle of nowhere is complaining.
The article claims that International Telecommunications Union regulations ensure that telephony costs between Africa and "the West" are split 50:50. Unless this arrangement is universal, Africa's telephone system has clearly been heavily subsidized. There's NO mention made in this article if ITU regulations apply to the Internet in other places, yet it's simply assumed that they should apply in Africa. A blatant omission, and poor journalism.
And another comment; how is Africa defined? Do ISPs in Casablanca and Cairo have this same problem? What differentiates an ISP in Cairo from one in Tel Aviv or Istanbul? The only country named in the article is Kenya, and no mention made at all of the countries that are physically close to Europe.
I, unfortunately, do not truly know what the economics behind all this are, and others can handle whether or not this is even a plausible argument. This is simply a critique of the article, and a suitable analogy.
A politically correct article designed to elicit appeals to repair the 'digital divide.'
"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" -Dostoevsky
I live and work for a telecoms co in South Africa, but have been to Tanzania (mid-eastern Africa) twice recently and I have seen this. These people still have to battle for basic survival , but they're being exploited in all possible ways by the UK, Japan and even the US. They pay more for their mobile calls or internet access than most other countries.And like the article say: Ussually the costs get shared between connecting telco companies, but that is not the case there. That is really terrible.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
So African ISPs pay for their own overseas connections, so do Asian ISPs, European ISPs, South American ISPs. It's the cost of doing business. Why should other ISPs pay for somebody's transit links?
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
Hey, most of the "underdeveloped" countries, including Africa have to pay full price for everything, from cars to internet connection while people make extremely low salaries for a lot of work. This has been the case for many many years and that's why our countries will never develop fully.
While in America you find everything at "bargain" prices and people make a shitload of money for less work.
...that Nigerian gold from those offers I get in my email. Gotta support African ISPs!
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
This article doesn't make sense. (or maybe I didn't understand it), but it's talking about cyber cafes and most of the people there would use something like free hotmail accounts, which wouldn't cost any more or less due to the fact that they are in africa. The article also failed to mention how any ISP Might charge for said emails. (did I miss something?). I don't see how email can cost any more or less based on the information in this article.
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The Governor-General and the Chairman of the BBC have strong links with the Labour Party, and surprise surprise, the BBC supports the Labour Government in virtually everything they do, and virtually everything they say.
If you had actually followed the BBC, you would have known what kind of coverage they do of the labour party. And, surprise surprise, it does not differ from the others.
This would include old-fashioned Marxist anti-colonialism.
...which is completely illogical in your stream of conspiracies - Labour in the UK is a modern half market-liberalistic social democratic party. Very far from Marxism. They even changed colour (from red to dark purple). Labour is not a socialistic party - and very not a Marxistic party.
They are very good at highlighting and exagerrating news which fits their agenda, while suppressing news which doesn't.
Unlike Slashdot, who provides all the different reports and stories which show the superiority of Microsoft products.
I suspect that many in Zimbabwe would be very pleased for the UK/US to send the soldiers in, simply to sort out the criminals they have in government now.
I think I'd rather listen to BBC than what you suspect. I don't know about the rest of the world.
Please people, can we be a little more objective and a little less emotionally-charged? I am not saying that this article is a complete lie (far from it, I can easily imagine AOL doing something like this), but let's look at both sides of the story before coming to a decision.
Obviously, you are slightly hypocritical here. Can't say your rant looks like you have considered both sides of BBCs alleged political agenda.
I'm not necessarily saying that I totally disagree with all your opinions. I'm just saying they are presented in a reactionary and completely black/white way.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
if i'm correct no one gets email for free, they get it included in their internet hook-up cost. I pay my ISP to send email, and then they in turn pay their uplink, where email is included in that cost. To my knowledge the only time you're getting "free" email is when you use something like hotmail, but even then it's not totally free, it's supported by adds.
ahh, the egg in the basket..
From what I can see, the unfair costs seem to be Microsoft-related ;-)
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
It's foolish to listen to both sides of a story,
when one of the sides is a fabric of lies. You
only risk being deceived.
For that matter, where is the proof that for every
story, there are N sides where N=2? It may be true
if every story is 2-dimensional, but a simple
topological proof will demonstrate that no story
can be less that 3-dimensional (reference previous
story on textarc.org).
But then, I'm just arguing for the sake of
arguing. I think there's something about slashdot
that creates this disputatious compulsion.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
And this is yet another case where people confuse business, profits and social good conscience. Africa has next to no Internet infrastructure, why would Western companies pay money to lay pipe and connect us to.. NOTHING? I don't see any sense in this article, this post in general and why it made to the front page. Why would I, as a customer, subsidize Africa's connection?
This is just a bunch of enterpreneurs complaining. Of course the world is a tough place, there's no such thing as free lunch.
If I was to build a fat pipe to connect my cottage in northern Canada to the rest of the world, can I reasonnably argue that UUNET shall pay for half of my connection?
Come on, this is nonsense !
Ten years ago a 14.4K dialup would run around US$35 a month. This was certainly expensive, but like anywhere, early adopters did pay the price, in turn this helped finance the infrastructures and now, many years later, I have broadband for $25 a month !
It's not the connection that is important, it's the additionnal content/information that you're able to obtain from making such a connection possible. So far Africa's content is mainly spam, Thawte and casinos. Are we willing to PAY for that?
Bunch of corporate spin-doctors.
What are you saying the bbc is the only idependant news source in the uk
and is generally regard as so over the entire world
they are not relliant on any advertising for funding they have there independance writting into law.
The problem with costing on bandwidth should depend on who wants to communicate. You would not enjoy me sending you a postcard... collect, but you wouldnt mind paying for the postage of your magazine subscription. Likewise, why should you pay collect for the fliers (snail-mail-spam) that get posted in everyones mailbox?
The only reasonable way to cost would be to cost the entire transfer to the persona that initiated the connection.
This would split the costs proporitionally.
Regretably, this would open up the networks to cost abuse. Possibly, setting up machines on a international customer which continually flood your local network to have balance of 'bandwidth'.
A real problem.
-Tim
This is simply selling content. No african ISP would be willing to spend any money if it weren't for the fact that they want access to the content we generate.
Thus the question becomes... since the content is generally copyright then how come the ISP's and Telco's aren't paying the copyright holders? That's right folks... if you run a web server and it happens to be popular then you ought to be paid!!!
This is what copyright law is all about! Its not the Africans who are being ripped off here...
This is a glorious socialist point of view where we the "haves" subsidize those who are the "have-nots." What's next on the agenda? I heard that Africans have to pay full price for the cars they by from the US and that keeps them under our imperialistic heel. We'd better make our car companies sell them cars for half price. Let's not forget their clothes. Lord knows the average African can't afford a decent pair of Levis. We'll have to cut them a deal on that as well.
This subsidizing of Africa would never stop if some get there way. Let not forget that When Egypt was the economic center of the Mediterranean they weren't exactly helping Europeans out of the meager life style.
Africa is in the miserable economic state it is in because of its people and politics. Those are issues they will have to solve for themselves.
"That's the sort of blinkered, philistine pig ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage."-Monty Python
I agree with other posters who say "Can someone subsidise my T1?" What this ISP operator from Kenya is saying is that he wants cheaper bandwidth. His business is doing fine and access is growing, but that isn't enough. I live in Zambia where we have about 4 ISPs (one of which is UUNet). A dialup here is about $20/month. Not bad? Can the average Zambian afford that? No. Can the average Zambian afford a computer or the education to be able to use it or the electricity to run it? No. If we make the bandwidth cheaper, will that get information to the masses? No. A dialup here is $20 a month because all bandwidth here comes from satellite uplink. That may be different in Kenya, but for many African countries it is the norm. It ain't cheap to have a bird up there bouncing the signals and a high volume of users to spread the cost we don't have. ANother reason is that African governments latch on to any enterprise that sounds remotely profitable like a pitbull. My ISP pays $40,000 a year in licensing fees to the gov and are further forced to collect something like $2/month per user in government fees. Of course the government owns the telco too (which is a competing ISP BTW) so extra dialup lines take forever to secure. I know from experience that the Kenyan telco is the same way. You want a leased line? Pay the right person and maybe it will happen this year. Why is African connectivity expensive? Like every other problem facing Africa today it is largely a result of corrupt governments leeching resources away from their people and then holding out their hand for more assistance. It is true that Africa has subsidised the development of the West, but it will take a lot more than subsidies back (in the form of cheap bandwidth or debt relief) to fix the economic damage done in the past 30-40 years since most countries have had their independence.
We're treating the African ISPs the same as we would treat the same sized ISP here in the states. You generate enough traffic, I'll peer with you and we'll split the bill. You don't generate enough traffic? Oh, well. You pay full rate for your bandwidth.
The gentleman was complaining that they're being gouged because the telecom companies are not giving them free money. The ITU decided to be nice and force all the telephone companies to give them a handout on telephone service, and this fellow thinks the ITU should require them to do so on data traffic as well.
My attitude is somewhere between 'Get off yer lazy ass and lay some cable, foo' and 'This guy is worse than the Pontiac street-people that think merely because they exists, the world, and myself by extention, owe him $5 so they can go buy crack or a bottle of Thunderbird.'
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If it used to be the case that Australia ended up footing the entire bill for traffic with the rest of the world and it is now the case that they split the bill, then
I'm sure there's a few African ISP that would like to know.Now maybe it's something they can't do much about, such as increased volume of secure electronic transactions (purchases) originating from their domains, but OTOH, it may just be a matter of hiring a good negotiator and lobbyist.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Nothing stops these guys from banding together within the continent, buying point to point T3s into MAE-East and MAE-West, and then reciprocal-peering with the majority of the backbones there. Just like any other ISP of a sufficient size threshold.
If it costs more to send that T3 under the Atlantic from Virginia to Africa than it does to send it the few miles to my office, well, this is neither surprising nor unfair.
Now, if collectively they can't get organized enough and put together enough traffic to sustain the cost of a point to point T3, whose fault is that? And if the local African telcos rape them so badly that they can't effectively band together, whose fault is that?
The thrust of the article seems to be, "We deserve and demand that you extend the 50% handout you've been giving us." Baloney. If you want to play with the big boys, you should expect to do so on a LEVEL PLAYING FIELD.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
/me stands up and cheers!
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
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)
Does anyone know what they are talking about? I've just read the article in question, and see nothing in it to say where exactly the imbalance lies. It sounds like someone is of the opinion that infrastructure costs should somehow be shared on a global scale. i.e. If your country has poor telecoms - upgrade, then insist that international users pick up the cost of the technology. It's a nice idea but haven't we already paid our share in the excessive prices we pay as the early adopters of the technology. I'm sure that Africa is being ripped of by Amercia on a daily basis. So is India, Pakistan, Afghanistan (controversial?) Bangladesh, Eastern Europe, Taiwan, Thailand, China, Indonesia etc. etc. Let's give them all telecoms services. Who cares who is right. In fact, why stop at telecoms, why not include energy costs like oil, gas even nuclear plants as global responsibilities. Then move on to transport rail and road networks - anyone who's travelled through India by road will know how poor such things are. Then again why stop at just primary services, why not extend social services so that unemployed everywhere regardless of race or country of origin are entitled to housing, food and medical care. In fact why not take the core doctrine of the American democratic system seriously. If all men are created equal and certain rights are held to be self-evident, how come this equality stops being self-evident once you cross the border into Mexico?
Capitalism may not have a conscience, but many people using the fruits of capitalism do. Although it may at times appear to be, the global economic system isn't self-perpetuating. It is in fact perpetuated by powerful people making decisions which affect the powerless.
So I am offend by all the posts saying, "It's inevitable, so boo hoo!" It's _not_ inevitable that Africa pays both ways, and technologically privileged users can make a difference. Slashdotters in particular have a responsibility to act on behalf of their less privileged counterparts.
How many of you have ever had to pay for an email which has been sent to you?
If you don't like this arrangement then consider this: If you run a web server in Australia then Telstra dings you mega bux per month. If you move it to the USA then Telstra pays a US carrier for the bandwidth required to move the content into Australia.
Since Telstra is willing to pay an American company for bandwidth required to provide content, then why isn't Telstra willing to pay an Australian company?
You know - if Telstra were to create a hospitable environment for Aussie content creators then US carriers wouldn't have the upper hand. Fix your own problems first!
I know a lot of small ISP have to pay the full price of the line, plus even usage, to send there egress traffic out to the internet via the big private providers. You could get along with public peering point, but they can be unreliable at time and difficult to troubleshoot and fix, because you aren't paying for them like a private peer. I am sure the cost isn't as great as an OC-X accross the ocean floor, but I am not in the least bit surprised, I bet ATT and UUNet could careless if africa had internet right now. Maybe when they have more buying power (more users), getting your traffic to Africa will be in the best intertest of the big partys..
-ZiN-
"This is exploitation... These networks are raping Africa of half a billion dollars a year."
So, the international community gives the African continent a break by agreeing to split the cost of voice communication, and this is the thanks they get?
How selfish can you be? By what divine right are they entitled to special treatment? Sorry, bleating about how you're lacking something when you're already being given incentives doesn't generate any sympathy with me. I'd love to see Africa get up to speed and be a competitive force in the world, but not by handouts.
Amusing post, but it gives a distorted image of what's happening. The point is that Africa is not being treated as an equal partner.
For example, if someone in New York sends an email to someone in Nairobi, the African ISP gets charged for the bandwidth.
If however someone in Nairobi sends an email to someone in New York, guess who gets the bill? Yep, still the African ISP.
The Western ISPs (possibly the US ones, not sure) are more-or-less using their dominance to take Africa for everything they can get.
Fair? I don't think so..
Phone costs aren't quite shared. They are set by the local countries and the US prices are set close to that. Where you have goverments that insist on high taxes on calls (like Egypt), the rates to call there are high. In other places where the taxes aren't as high (like the UK), the rates are some of the lowest.
Ah, modded at -1 for a post which disagrees with slashdot political correctness. I love freedom of speech.
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Anyone actually have some facts on this? Does an ISP in an African nation face any pricing structures different from those of South America? It does strike me as odd that they are only *now* talking about setting up peering arrangements between themselves, but then it's always struck me as odd that many European countries seem to have better connections to the US than to each other (to the point where they gett better connections through the US than through what little peering exists).
I dunno, I don't suppose I can understand the politics between Europe and Africa any better than Europeans seem to understand our racial politics. And this definitely smells more like a political thing than an economic one.
--Dave Rickey
Tier 1 ISPs (such as the one where I used to work) had a set of rules for peering with other ISPs. In this kind of peering, costs are split between the interested parties. If you can't meet their criteria for peering, and you still want to peer with them, you have to become a transit customer. In essence, a downstream ISP.
This criteria is usually about the kind of connection, the networks injected via BGP, etc.
Perhaps said ISPs in Africa simply don't meet this requierements. It happens in a lot of countries in different continents, not just Africa, and I know this for a fact.
No sig
The Somalian people have found the solution to that: they deposed their western-style government and have returned to a clan system of governance. And since clans have no concept of taxation, it's an entrepreneurs paradise (modulo US Government threats).
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
This is actually the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a long, long time.
...which is completely illogical in your stream of conspiracies - Labour in the UK is a modern half market-liberalistic social democratic party. Very far from Marxism. They even changed colour (from red to dark purple). Labour is not a socialistic party - and very not a Marxistic party.
:-). But look at some of the atrocities being committed in Zimbabwe. (Barbed wire rubbed across the soles of your feet, anyone?) And I know several Zimbabweans who feel that Mugabe is the worst thing that's ever happened to them.
/. was being one sided, but perhaps I was a little naive expecting otherwise.
Perhaps you should read Mein Kampf, but let's see what you have to say.
If you had actually followed the BBC, you would have known what kind of coverage they do of the labour party. And, surprise surprise, it does not differ from the others.
Surprise surprise, yes it does. A quick look at Jeremy Paxman's interviewing will confirm that.
The leadership is not - in fact, the leadership is not really anything. The backbenchers and ordinary party members are. And as far as the BBC is concerned, the 'new Left' is as good as the 'old'.
Unlike Slashdot, who provides all the different reports and stories which show the superiority of Microsoft products.
Slashdot isn't state funded, and isn't relied on by millions of people for mainstream news. It is read by people in the know.
I think I'd rather listen to BBC than what you suspect. I don't know about the rest of the world.
Fine, can't say I blame you (we hardly see eye to eye politically
Obviously, you are slightly hypocritical here. Can't say your rant looks like you have considered both sides of BBCs alleged political agenda.
Well, show me the other. I was complaining that
I'm not necessarily saying that I totally disagree with all your opinions. I'm just saying they are presented in a reactionary and completely black/white way.
Maybe you're right - next time I'll be sure to read before submitting!
--
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
Why don't they just use some of that $75 million dollars that my long lost relative General Nobotu had amassed before being killed in a plane crash in Nigeria.
...the fleecing comes in where? or is that they are to not have to pay for the pipes that they use? after all no one is forcing them to use these services, or attempt to buy what they have.
--- C00l
I can remember when Ghana went independent, it was a nice country with a productive economy and a healthy future, Kwame Nkrumah did well, apart from some indulgences like putting his picture on all the currency, but all was well, then Ankrah came along and thereon out I saw a nice country being fucked by a bunch of people who thought democracy was a form of theatre, what amazed me was their capacity to paint themselves as victims even though their opulence and exploitation, murder, intimidation make the colonials look fucking tame.
It's not easy to appoint blame, realise your own shortcomings and fix real problems in your own backyard when you can just go and blame it on someone else, amazingly this is what keeps complete despots in power, it's desperately sad. This is why I do not view money provided for education as a handout, it's the only way democracy can function, however I've seen regimes keep the money for themselves in what appears to be greed and an attempt to keep their own populace uneducated and therefore malleable, it's a way of staying in power, what is needed is for the West to say to these countries "this isn't fucking on" but then said leaders scream "colonialism" and nothing changes.
I don't see the issue. That is something for ISPs to work out between each other. If they can't come up with a two way peering agreement, it's probably because one side doesn't really care if the other side is there or not.
You are so right. This should stop.
Oh, but then Africa wouldn't have *any* ISP service. Well, that's OK because at least they won't be exploited!
Viva Marx!
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Voice conversations are symmetrical. Roughly equal traffic goes in both directions, which is why a 50/50 split is used in pricing. This story focuses on email, which obscures the fact that total intercontinental Internet traffic is wildly asymmetrical. North America serves a vastly disproportionate amount of content, especially compared to Africa or South America. For that reason, US carriers don't split costs.
As others have noted, this applies in varying degrees to ISPs in other continents.
It may not be 'nice' but it's hardly as arbitrary and unfair as the story makes out. It's a shame people don't grasp that Africans are real people with real political and economic issues -- not imaginary cartoons to invoke when arguing the superiority or evil of the West.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Perhaps the more open-minded /. readers might reflect on the fact that the industrialization of England and America would not have been possible without "Black ivory" (slaves) from Africa who for centuries provided the basic source of wealth of the plantation econonmy which in turn subsidized the industrial revolution? Or that the huge profits from the mineral wealth & exploited labor of the Congo under the Belgians (and after the CIA killed Lumumba, under the "independent" rule of the puppet Mengistu) served to massively increase the wealth of the developed world, and still play a key role in providing the raw materials for the high-tech "revolution" (see: for a NY Times piece on this).
When the colonialists were finally forced out, them made sure that the new elites would keep the profits flowing (with a nice commission for themselves, of course), and if the people demand niceties like democracy or an end to corruption, there will always be the military to straighten things out.
Am I oversimplifying? Sure, but so are many of the posts I see here, like the racist one I saw here comparing African nations to homeless people panhandling for crack money.
Ever wonder why so many people in Nigeria, say, regard Osama bin Laden as a hero? You can't rob, colonize and oppress people for centuries and insist it's a level playing field, folks. Read some history, get a sense of why Africa is so messed up, and how *your* lifestyle is related to all this.
tyco (didn't they used to make toy trians or was that someone else?)
Tyco Toys, Inc. was purchased by Mattel in 1997, and produced several notable toys including the Magic 8-Ball.
Tyco International Ltd. is a diversified manufacturing and service company (similar in concept to the conglomerate that is GE), with revenues of $38 billion and a market cap of $60 billion.
This Tyco is the one that runs undersea cables.
So will this be the latest threat to spread and take over in america? Mating with our ISPs and turning them all into Africanized IPSs...
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
This is a glorious socialist point of view where we the "haves" subsidize those who are the "have-nots."
In no way does that statement even come close to describing - or even criticizing - socialism. Most USians seem to think that anything to the left of Rush Limbaugh must be socialism. Well it ain't so.
But I agree that Africans aren't entitled to subsidies on telecomm. We can grant them if we wish, for whatever reasons, but I see no moral imperative to do so.
Edith Keeler Must Die
And this is supposed to make it right? When resources are scarce and people are desparate, they exploit each other more. What a lovely vicious circle.
He didn't say it was right or wrong, he simply stated the truth.
Why must people assume that when you say something you support the facts you stated?
Geeze
So let me understand this; ISP's want to be exempt from the regulation that the telephone industry suffers, but expect to reap the same benefits as the telephone industry were it exists?
And the Brits think this is a fleecing?
C'mon people, lets get real. There are already massive private sector and UN programs that bring Internet connectivity to 3rd world countries. What you have here is another example of big businesses trying to get welfare for themselves.
There's very little inter-country bandwidth within Africa. This presentation says there was only 7.5 Mbit/s between countries in Africa (including the Arab states, like Egypt), but 170Mbit/s from Africa to North America. "African ISPs spend a much higher proportion of their costs on telecom costs (esp. international connectivity) than ISPs in developed economies."
Also see BalancingAct-africa.com, which covers ISPs in Africa.
Overall, it looks a lot like US internet services circa 1990. High per-hour prices, low bandwidths, long latency.
You are comparing one continent with several countries, as noticed elsewhere. All you little "success stories" are from largely single-culture single-language states - China is completely dominated by Han culture, Japan is dominated by the Yamato, etc. Yet you sloppily paint an entire continent with hundreds of language groups, five major language families, hundreds and hundreds of tribal divisions, organized into post-colonial states that were given their independence only in the last 50 years, often divided into national units that only reflected the colonizing nations' needs and histories and have nothing to do with the ethnic natures of the people who lived there; whose ruling classes were, essentially, the "collaborator" classes from those years of colonialism. Just what mechanism is supposed to overcome all that and create a state that can build infrastructure, educate a generation (you might want to note the relationship between a healthy educational infrastructure and all those success stories of yours) and create healthy democratic institutions for an entire continent? As has been noted elsewhere, there are some stable, working countries within Africa, but unfortunately they get painted with the same crude brush you use by geographically-ignorant investors and partners, just as if the US' status as a trade partner was partially determined by the state of Central America.
Or, putting it another way, consumers in 6 continents are subsidizing Internet access charges for the residents of North America.
First of all, I doubt Antartica is doing much web surfing, so that only leaves 5 continents. Second, the other 5 continents aren't subsidizing anything. Now I'm the first to admit that the U.S. and it's citizens are fairly self centered and most really have no idea the rest of the world really exists, other than in the plot of a few movies, but by your own arguement, most Americans could give a rats ass if the rest of the world fell off the internet. The U.S. is simply refusing to subsidize your access to their network. If you don't want to access the U.S. network, don't pay the bill. I'm sure most Americans could care less. If you want to access the network, pay up. Sorry, that's the way it works in the U.S.
And you don't possibly suppose it's because the Internet's primary structure hubs around the US, does it?
Lets revamp history folks, the Internet was invented by the US, pioneered and accelerated by the US, and therefore is dominated by the US. With the exception of Europe, which has it's own competitive and impressively advanced telecommunications infrastructure, the rest of the worlds share of the Internet is primarily organized around accessing the US and European backbones which comprise the vast majority of the Internet's infrasctructure.
When Australia - and Africa, Malaysia, the Middle East, and Asia start launching their own billion dollar terabit satellites, laying their own massive fiber optic highways, and improving their telco infrastructure to support high bandwidths, then you can expect the US and European companies to enter into more aggressively competitive agreements for network access.
And that is, folks, what it's all about. Network access. The fiber, copper, satellite, and radio hardware costs money.
What debt? What theft? Can you possibly do us all a favor, spare us the leftist drivel, and actually cite examples?
I did'nt think so. It's the same tired line born of ignorance of history.
Hah! I'm from Africa, and this doesn't bug me. Parts of Africa have some very cool toys and are way ahead of the USA in some ways (Dropped any calls lately on your cellphone? *snicker*). Another example would be electronic banking in South Africa which is waaaay better there than the US. (Yes, I have lived in both countries.)
;-)
We just have to teach certain parts of our population that nothing comes for free, and you bloody well get what you work for. The people that just knuckle down and do things do some very cool stuff.
So I guess what I'm saying is: Don't stress. We'll handle, and when we take over the world, we'll be nice to you.
---
These African ISPs, or more likely the government ministers the put in their pocket (let's not forget folks, big business in Africa works the same as anywhere else), are going to go to the EU, the UN, Congress, the GCC, and whoever else will hear them bitch, and plead the case that they need to be able to split Internet costs 50/50 with the telcos in order to grow.
The telco's will then be forced by their respective governments and regulating bodies to do so, at which point the telco's will decide that the profit, if any, is not worth it, and they'll drop the lines to Africa like hot potatos. And all of Africa will be staring at each other once again, only this time through their own T-1 lines.
Try thinking a few steps down the road folks. If these people are going to be competitive, they need to compete.
Of course, I'm sure the USA at some point (along with the EU), is then going to be cajoled into sending billions of dollars each year to provide free porn, spam, and other such Internet perks to starving 5 year olds in namibia who I'm sure would rather have a bowl of rice than a box of computer mice.
The entire country is pissed because they have to pay their entire bill? They're being raped because they have to pay for the services that they use?
If that's the case, I'd better call the police right now. I get raped several times a month. Rent, gas, electricity, phone, cable, water, sewer, internet, etc. I have to pay the full amount every month. Oh, the humanity!
No, it doesn't make it right. It just means what they are doing is not news. It seems to be one of those unsolvable problems. Someone would have to give more incentive to assist the developing countries than there is for exploiting them to fix this. That doesn't seem very likely to happen.
Issah one moooa place whan dee whitey debbile is holding the black man down!
No, no it isn't.
And what moron rated the parent "Insightful" instead of "Troll"?
You wanker.
Sorry, I don't usually flame like that, but I looked at your website and you're an utter self righteous cock. You earned your internet connection? No, you (and I) were lucky to be born in a situation where internet accessible. Come to think of it, we're lucky not to have been born as the 6 million children who die annually. We're privileged to live where we live. Oh, but wait, I forgot, we earned our privilege. Now I'm not a socialist, more of a social democrat with certain libertarian leanings (make of that what you will), but how you can ignore mass suffering and exploitation?
* No, these are not ad hominem attacks against your logic, but personal attacks against what based on what you have said in the previous post.
Yes - but who can read a Chinese spam e-mail? :o)
Video Game cheats, hints a
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The issue at hand has nothing to do with socialism. Lay off the crack pipe, put down Limbaugh's latest diatribe, and re-read the article.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I regularly read South African news online. SA has, almost alone amongst African countries a fully developed infrastructure but the connections suffer because there is only one backbone for the whole continent. It is also difficult for them to get any return traffic due mainly to the simple lack of knowledge that there is anything worthwhile there and the slow connections. So following is my little contribution to increasing traffic to South Africa.
/. vein:
South African news sites:
Independant online
news24 online
Sunday times newspaper
More in the
linux.org.za
linuxuser.co.za
And for those who actually venture further south than Key West:
Southafrica.net
sa-venues.com
Southafricatravel.net
And for the banal:
IT Tabloid
Enjoy, the worst you can do is learn something.
Suppose we used African swallows?
Okay so what about the other 50+ countries in Africa? Miami is in the U.S., is the U.S. predominately Latin?
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
Some ISP's in kenya tried to set up an internet exchange point so that traffic local to kenya could stay local, rather than going to the US and back.
Their goverment prevented them.
Luckily it looks like commen sense is breaking through.
But with this kind of policy being laid down by african goverments it's no wonder the continent is in trouble.
Didn't you know, the cause of all the world's problems fall on the US. It's the "it couldn't possibly be our fault" syndrome worldwide. And silly me thought it was just videogames.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
[Richard Bell, Chairman of Kenya's ISP Association said,]"This is exploitation... These networks are raping Africa of half a billion dollars a year."
I think that the fairness of the current setup has already been discussed sufficiently.
What I want to point out is the incendiary language used by the quoted speaker. This is pretty funny coming from a continent where the victims of rape are subject to execution.
Kenya, the speaker's home country, has a lot worse problems than high telco charges. Of course, it's a lot safer to complain about the telcos than one's own miscreant government. Especially when that government, unlike the telcos, will actually kill and rape dissidents, and does so on a wholesale basis.
This article is a completely non-critical piece of crap, as is the accompanying slashdot write-up.
A better summary would be:
Africa sucks, it's their own damn fault, and the rulers like to use the West as a scapegoat.
evanchik.net
actually theere is no such thing as an indepenat news paper they all have bias
in the uk allmost apll papers are controlled by rupert murdoch who has a very fixed right wing aggenda (anti europe) remeber its the sun wot won it? after john major was elected? McCarthy was a loonie
hence "its better to have him on the inside of the tent pissing out than the outside pissing in"
and the wich hunts of people who had done no wrong
also the bbc gets critisied almost equally by the right for being too left wing and the left for being too right wing. This whist not proof that they are correct does go some way to show that they are not a left wing. There are famous occasions of tory ministers being interveiwed claiming that the interveiwer was a left wing loonie only to be told that the interveiwer votoed torie at the last election not that it was any buisiness of the interveiee. (radio 4 today)
if geroge@momandpop.com sends a message of uunet, momandpop gets charged. Yep, *still* the small american ISP.
Uunet is using its dominance to take american isp's for everything they can get.
:)
hawk
Of course we all know that it's OUR fault. We used to use these people as slaves, etc. We divided the continent to our wishes creating unnatural countries and causing neverending conflicts. Then we kept these conflicts going by selling them our guns and we exploited the situation to steal their natural resources.
And we never paid for it.
Even now we still don't pay fair prices for minerals used for making silicon chips
Kennedy once said "If we cannot adress the needs of the many who are poor, we cannot save the few who are rich."
The reason why africa doesn't have enough outgoing content is simply due to poor planning. Everyone knows that porn is always the first content of any new medium. They tried to skip this step and now they're paying for it.
They deserve no pity.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
1) the interest we're still paying on the debt for the Marshall plan to rebuild the economy you use to make your contributions?
2) the 1945-1990 expenditures for the U.S. for troops & materiel in Europe (including supporting infrastructure and retirement payments for the next 50 years)
3) Current U.S. spending for world security (believe it or not, we are still isolationist my nature, and don't *want* to be the world cop, but at the moment, we're offered plenty of "help" in deciding *what* to do, but (for the most part) token resources.
Again, I don't regret this spending, as much as I'd like to avoid it. Recognize, though, that this spending is a major factor in Europe's ability to spend elsewhere.
In short: this time, it's your turn.
hawk
Would you rather have .5% of 10 trillion dollars, or .6% of 2 trillion dollars?
It's mostly our fault that Africa is such a mess!
- We colonized them; (killing A LOT of people in the process)
- We forced katholicicm upon them
- We made them work as slaves in plantations and in mines
- We stole their natural resources (we never AND STILL DON'T pay(ed) fair prices.)
- We drew borders and created artificial countries
- Because of these unnatural countries confilcts and wars started
- We got scared of our own mess and ran away
- THEN we sold them guns so they could keep fighting (and it was good business)
And after all this you're saying It's their own fault???? Shame on you!The west should take some responsability fot their historic actions and help Africa to get out of this mess!
But that sounds like colonialism.. And we all know how *WRONG* that is.. How a backer with deep pockets and the ability to stabalize a region is only raping it for material wealth, and no good can ever come from such a thing.
and all these ISPs have to do is hold some money for this guy.
The phrase "Cry me a fucking river" seems to apply.
However, expect to see lots of idiots jumping on this bandwagon because it's A) Africa and B) they're black.
EVERYBODY pays. You could just as well write "Nova Scotia ISPs are being reamed by the west!" or "Bulgarian ISPs don't get a discounted rate!" However, it's also accurate to note that Orlando, Florida ISPs still have to pay 12-1500/month for a T1 to any of the "Big 3", just like everyone else.
Perhaps michael needs to pull his head out of his ass and spend some time in the real world, he'd be less likely to post complete crap like this.
--Dan
(P.S. Yes, at a certain point you get discounts due to what you're bringing to the table. If an Earthlink/AOL sized african ISP can't get a discount, they need to behead their IT people and hire ones that can negotiate beter)
I don't know, but I can tell you I'm mod bombing this profane motherfucker as soon as I get the chance... only I'm doing it positively. I just love reading his rants and even with all that profanity he is on target lots of times. He can expect a +5 next time I get mod points.
~ now you know
We don't have to pay for our e-mails. It's like health care, I guess our taxes pay for it or something.
--Dan
I have been stationed in Bangladesh and Uganda, working for a web company (and we were in the ISP business in Denmark as well before the telcos took over).
The main problem in these countries are, that they all are competitors, and the do not have a local Internet eXchange. So all national traffic goes across their slow satellite connection. They would gain a shitload of bandwidth if they started peering to each other, and got local providers of hosting services.
And if they could share some transparent proxy servers as well, their commom bandwidth would be more than doubled.
My experience, especially in Uganda, was that they were downloading music all the time. If Africa got better linked, they could probably also keep lots of that on a national level.
Their problem right now is not the price of bandwidth, but the usage of it, and the missing local peering. There is a reason why the american ISPs do peering between each other, rather than having it done in Singapore. And that is costs.
But these countries thinks too small. Way too small. And are afraid the competitor might also make money.
If we start funding the Internet connections of 3rd world countrie, where should we stop ? All the ISPs there are private sector companies, competing in a free market. They should work together, send up an african telecomms sattellite, and hook up to the Internet wherever they could get the best offer.
Cooperation is the keyword.
Ok, let's paint a picture. Every ISP owns equipment to pass packets around. Routers, Repeaters and so forth. If I'm on Cox Cable, and I want to send something to AOL (directly) that means that the two companies must have some sort of agreement by which they carry each others packets. They may make a deal whereby AOL will take 10 packets if Cox takes 15 (small numbers, yes) and on top of that the other company must pay a certain price, with Cox paying an initial 300k a year. Now, if I'm cruising to Slashdot to read up on today's news, I may go through Cox, then AOL, then Verizon, then 4 other companies before I get to Slashdot's provider. Because of this there are webs of deals on how traffic is passed around.
Now, obviously, every company wants to get the best deals they can. That means using their leverage to negotiate better trade offs. Now, if you're in Africa you need to access American sites much more than Americans need to access African sites. This gives the Bells and American ISPs an advantage. They can negotiate bitching deals because they have all the leverage. Yes, this isn't nice, but its business, and if it weren't worth it to the African companies, they simply wouldn't pay it. If they go out of business otherwise, then damn right they're willing to pay alot. So, American ISPs and such get good deals because they have superior wares; much more to offer. African ISPs get sucky deals because they don't. Its called business, good and fair. And $500m IS NOT that much in the long run for all of Africa (of the Africans who use the internet that is).
Although it isn't publicised as much as some of the other people making donations, the Gates foundation tends to invest a lot of energy in producing vaccinations and providing other medical care to underdeveloped countries. I remember an article from about a year and a half ago or so, where there were a lot of big people in technology talking about donating computers and whatever at a conference. If I remember correctly, Gates was the only person to really stand up and make the point that if they were going to do anything, they should keep people alive before giving them equipment and turning them into just another market to sell things to. I could be lying, since I read this a while ago. The news.com archives should have some relevent infomation, I'm really too lazy to search.
If I'm wrong, feel free to slap me upside the head.
how much for bandwidth?
I think the figure is presented in a misleading manner. $500 Million for a continent is not that high when you figure the percentages.
Truth in media....what a novel idea.
But the issue is that there is an international convention that telcos share the cost of international telephony traffic (just like postal services share the cost of international mail delivery) and in this particular case, the Western telcos aren't doing their bit.
This cost-sharing issue is not just a problem that's unique to Africa. Australian telcos share the cost of voice telephony with international telcos, but the same principle is not applied to internet traffic. Basically, American ISPs refuse to cost-share with Australian ISPs or if they do so, it's on really uneven terms. This doesn't happen in every instance but it happens a lot.
I imagine there are a lot more Australians or Africans accessing US websites than vice versa. So if you use the user-pays principle, the Australian or African ISPs would still pay more. But it's simply outrageous for the American ISPs not to pay for the small amount of email or web traffic they do send to these countries.
When someone from the US DOES access networks from overseas (probably rare considering America's infamous insularity) then the US telco should pay.
Australia can pay its own way, but we should cut developing countries like Africa some slack. We talk about tackling the "digital divide" but we never DO anything about it.
It's the World Wide Web (and was invented by a Briton) and .com etc are global domains. The US actually does have a country domain .us - just like Australia is .au, Canada is .ca etc - but they don't use it. That's the no.1 cause of the acute shortage in domain names. Perhaps all traffic between global domains should be cost-shared, whereas traffic between country domains should be user pays. That way, Americans would have to actually use their .us country domain (solving the domain name shortage) or pay half the costs. I'm being a tad facetious here, but it's worth thinking about.
The issue at hand has nothing to do with socialism.
It absolutely does. What it boils down to is what are individuals responsibilities to society.
From a capitalist perspective, an individual is only responsible for himself.
From a socialist perspective, an individual only takes what is needed.
The argument is that since Africa is more "needy," the capitalists should pay to support their "need."
Unfortunately, I cannot see how high-speed internet access could not be classified as a false-need so I think it is even hard to make this argument from a socialist perspective.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Notice that the blither that is this post gets a "4" rating (of course, since it attacks capitalism), but every reply against gets modded down as troll or flamebait.
Gimme an effin break.
Now that sllort has gone out in a blaze of glory, Profane Motherfucker is the new #1 most relevant and interesting poster on slashdot, IMHO. And not just because he's sending me a fuckload of books. Keep 'em coming PMF!
sulli
RTFJ.
It's time for a person who is black to stop looking for affirmative action just because of the colour of his skin. You want equality? You want to stop being a "boy" and come sit at the big people's table? Well quit whining about how the world is unfair and quit looking for a free ride. If it pisses you off that AOL get's to send $500 million of free mail to you (which I doubt since there isn't 500 million in most of this piss-ant countries) then turn off their pipe inbound till they pay. Oh, I see, you can't really do that can you, cause then you would lose the value this data stream is providing you.
"All you little "success stories" are from largely single-culture single-language states - China is completely dominated by Han culture, Japan is dominated by the Yamato, etc."
Firstly they aren't little; Asia is the world's most populous region.
Japan may be single-culture single-language (at least it likes to think so) but arguably this unanimity is one of the reasons for its problems over the last decade; there's no-one to think outside the square.
South Korea and Taiwan are largely unicultural, but don't make a fetish of it the way the Japanese do and have benefited in greater flexibility. Note that South Korea was a Japanese colony until after WWII, and Taiwan was a rural backwater until the Chinese Nationalists moved there after the mainland went communist. Consider also that South Korea was utterly devastated during the Korean War (I believe that at the end of the war its standard of living was equivalent to Bangladesh today) and like Taiwan spends massive amounts on the military.
China may be dominated by Han culture, but by no means absolutely. China is an incredibly diverse nation, with dozens of languages and ethnic groups, not to mention in religious terms large populations of Christians, Buddhists *and* (notably in the west of the country) Moslems. Indeed I'd argue that China is like a large version of an African nation in that it is a multi-ethnic state with artificial borders under the dictatorial rule of one specific enthnic group. And let's not forget that China was *the canonical* example of imperialism at its absolute worst, and since then has been wracked by civil war and Mao's Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Yet for all its faults it's not a basket case whinging at how it's been a victim, but a newly proud nation with the fastest-growing economy in the world and a superpower in the making.
How's about Singapore and Hong Kong? Both with small populations, multi-ethnic, both wildly overcrowded and both with *no natural resources whatsover*. And two of the greatest success stories of the last fifty years.
Or let's take a few older developed countries. Finland has three major ethnic groups, each with their own language (Finns, Swedes (20% of the population) and Lapps/Sammi. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are all ex-British colonies which inherited a "collaborator" class, and are now among the most ethnically-diverse nations in the developed world. Belgium is split down the middle between Flems and Walloons.
In most issues I'd be regarded as well to the Left of Slashdot norms, but nearly sixty years after WWII and over a decade since the end of the Cold War have shown that third world economic development is not only possible, but that third world nations can grow at vastly higher rates than the developed world until they reach parity. Imperialism may be a contributing problem but no more. We've seen most of non-communist Asia make spectacular gains, to the extent that several nations are now of first-world status. We've seen some of South America do reasonably (notably Mexico, Chile and Brazil) as is some of Arabia (notably the oil states and Dubai). India is finally getting its act together after realising that its experiment in national self-sufficiency through state socialism had failed.
On the other side we've seen Argentina, which in the 1920's was as wealthy as Canada or Switzerland, continue to shoot itself in the foot as it moves back to the third world, and sub-Saharan Africa lurches from one disaster to another.
You partly and rightly attribute the successes to "a healthy educational infrastructure", but note that the countries concerned when they were starting off *didn't have that infrastructure*! All they had was a strong *cultural* respect for learning. It appears to me that those *cultural* values are lacking in Africa.
Twenty years ago I rejoiced when black majority rule came to Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. I have watched in increasing dismay as a successful colony (in the 1950's Salisbury, now Harare, was one of the boom towns of the British Commonwealth), and then a nation that after UDI kept going under sanctions disintegrate over the last few years, as Mugabe appears to care for nothing except keeping himself in power and passing money and power over to his "war veteran" mates. What future does such a nation have in *any conceivable* global economic order? Would you call him a "collaborator" with colonialism? And then his sham election gets the support of his African peers, the same ones who were so emphatic about standing up to white rule there.
I have grave fears that South Africa, the remaining economic powerhouse of this wretched continent, will go the same way. And, yes, I'm sure black African leaders will blame it all on white colonialism, the same white colonialism that created and sustained sub-Saharan Africa's industrial heartland through years of trade sanctions.
In the meantime, spare me the 1970's undergraduate guilt trips. Yes there are obstacles to third world development that shouldn't be there. But they are not insurmountable and there are plenty of success stories now around, of which the major elements are far-sighted and ambitious national leadership, the determination to build universal education, hard work, patience, a largely though not exclusively market economy (with government guidance of industry and education) and at least lip service to the rule of law.
Forty years after McMillan's "winds of change" were blowing through Africa it's really time attention was focussed on the crass incompetence, violence, short-sightedness and venality of Africa's current, post-imperial, ruling cliques. I'm not alone; one of the Jane's subscription journals a couple of years ago mentioned in an article how appalled educated Africans were at this debacle, to the extent of wondering about the best solution being *re-colonisation*! Whatever, the much-trumpeted "right of self-determination" has been a catastrophe for most of Africa.
Are you blaming America for the Sep. 11 incident?
What you're doing is akin to blaming the rape victims for getting raped because "They ware short skirts", "They sway their butts too much", "They act sexy", et cetera, et cetera.
Those terrorists who tore down WTC are TERRORISTS, no more, no less.
NOBODY, and NOTHING can explain away their terror act.
3000 lives were lost because of the terrorists, not because of America. The United States Of America DID NOT kill the 3000 victims, the TERRORISTS DID !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You wrote:
"You forgot about the slave trade and the child labor too."
What has that to do with the issue at hand ?
Slave trade ENDED MANY MANY YEARS AGO, and please, DO NOT TRY TO CONFUSE THE ISSUE using LONG, DEAD strawman.
Those who continue to use the "slave" issue are the same ones who had difficulties to come up with EXCUSES as to why the Asians, - such as the Japanese, - who were just as dirt poor as the Africans, can climb up the ladder, while the Africans can't.
Please do not blame the "slave-owners", because there is NONE !
"Fact is that people who live in developing countries exploit each other just as much as the developed countries exploit the developing countries."
So what's the point?
Exploitation exist, it's part of Nature.
Don't you see the lions hunting down their victims - tearing their flesh and everything - don't you call that EXPLOITATION ?
Don't you feel that those animals who got their flesh torn off by their predators VICTIMS ?
If you want to be such a BLEEDING HEART, why don't you go live in Africa and stop all the lions and tigers from eating their victims ?
Thank you !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No, the US did not invent packet switched networks. That was done in the UK's JANET network in the late '60's. What became the Internet was a wide variety of national packet-switching systems using different protocols. The US protocols were adopted more because of numbers of users than any superior technical merit.
And what about the most common (by far) use of the Internet, the World Wide Web? Invented by a Briton working at Europe's CERN research centre.
Anyway, it's not a long-term problem. Internet usage in Asia and Europe in particular will shortly be at US levels, and local traffic will overtake the current US-centred 'Net, particularly as European identity grows. For the record, Slashdot and Google are the *only* US-based web site that I use extensivly; most of the others are here in Australia or in Europe.
PS: try learning other languages; it's fun and opens up all sorts of new sources of information. It's nice to be able to type a technical query into Google and be able to understand German, Italian or French information without Babelfish's dodgy translations. I know you're American and hence hard-wired for English-only, but do give it a try!
Yes, PC lives, and lots of slashdotters are PC-brainwashed !
I posted a message and it got moded down to "-1". If that's not enough, someone replied me with "what about slavery" thing.
As if the world still go out to Africa and capture the Africans to be their slaves.
Damn.... I thought the slashdotters are educated bunch, unfortunately, I was wrong.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This arrangement isn't particularly nice; for example, a public service site with popular content still ends up paying for their bandwidth, even though it might actually make the Internet more attractive to other customers and hence contribute positively to the bottom line of the ISP it is already paying. Trouble is: nobody has figured out a good way of measuring that, and trying to measure it would impose enormous overhead and complexity. In the end, we'd likely all pay more, and Africans still wouldn't get their peering arrangement because of their asymmetric traffic patterns.
If Africa ever becomes a popular Internet destination, they will have the leverage to negotiate a peering arrangment. Until then, Africans can enjoy very cheap bandwidth, and they have a choice of where to hook up. They could hook up through a European ISP and negotiate a special deal if they don't have much US traffic.
Sub-saharan Africa's cultural experience is one of the most nightmarish in colonial history. Few genocidal episodes in history have been as horrific as those wrought upon the peoples of the Congo by the Belgian rubber industry, and the rest of the colonial experience was just as nightmarish. I don't need to list how the South American experience is so radically different - how the South American domininat class is still the criollo class, and how institutions have been imported whole-cloth. The jury is still out on just how far down Mexico's economic success will trickle, and that's after over a hundred years of independence (starting with Juarez); Argentina's entire identity is essentially European - it's long excellent educational tradition started with Sarmiento, and despite it's problems now, it still has that foundation.
Your two other Asian success stories are city-states, and I don't think that's an accident; they harvested the economic benefits of the natural advantages of the regions they are in without exposure to the obligations of national management.
But the states of Africa had no pre-colonial history as states. There were no institutions to pick up from. These states are no more than 2 generations old, and the elites of those states are the kleptocratic foreman classes of old. The best way to help Africa is conscientious globalism: trade agreements focus on and with the middle class coupled with an insistence on environmental, human rights, and labor standards. Which is exactly what a good deal for the ISP's in Africa would entail.
First, you should never argue with an idiot, as people might not be able to tell the difference. If you believe me to be an idiot, that was your first mistake.
Second, I can't believe you wasted ten paragraphs on ad hominem attacks (the halmark of a weak argument, or poor arguement skills) to have only one paragraph worth refuting (and even that one contained an ad hominem attack.)
Third, I never stated I was from the U.S. (and I still haven't), and don't bother saying it's obvious, as that is also an ad hominem attack.
Finally, I'll refute the only arguement you made in your diatribe. As I understand it, each ISP pays for traffic which crosses the network of various telco's (yes this even applies when U.S. clients attach to Australian servers.) In the case where the access directions are relatively on par, it is easier financially to not really bill each other. This applies to ISP's in the U.S. as well as it does to Australians. It's simply an economy of scale. If Australia wanted to build a cable, or satellite connection to the States, they would pay in States rates (which still wouldn't necessarily be a peer relationship.) It's a simple economic relationship between telcos, and your assumption that the benefit the U.S. receives from a connection to Australia is the same as the benefit Australia receives from a connection to the U.S. is just that, an assumption, and a pretty arrogant one at that. You'll also notice that as others have already pointed out, U.S. telco's have started to recognize Europe in many more peering relationships, they just don't feel Australia is quite there yet. I could continue this conversation further, but as you are not likely to listen anyway, I don't think I'll bother. (Yes, that last sentance was also an ad hominem attack, though a fairly tame one by your standards.)
By the way, I made the assumption that I wasn't arguing with an idiot, as I know most of the time people can't tell the difference.
I beg to differ with your views. The problems affecting Africa are not entirely of our own making. The Westeners have an exploitative interest in Africa and have had that for centuries.
You talk about wars. Do you not know that many of the wars in Africa are enriching you guys up there. The CIA triggered and supported the killing of Patrice Lumumba in Congo. And what followed? Do you want to know why there is no democracy in Congo? The war in Angola. Who was funding Savimbi? Who supplied the ammunition? Who gave him military intelligence? Yes, you have much to do with our problems. The war in Mozambique which lasted more than 15 bad years was all because of superpower rivalry between USA and the long gone USSR. The USA supported the MNR rebels while USSR was for Samora Machel. What's more the USSR benefitted immensely from their unwelcome and uninvited stay in Mozambique. They ran down that country without mercy. We might have had despotic leaders, but who supported them? Is it not a familiar story. Not to you, of course.
Fraud and corruption are not ills that are exclusive to Africa. What happened to Enron? What happened to the Japanese financial institutions? If Africans are corrupt who benefits? Is it not the big multi-national companies?
The root cause of under-development goes much deeper than fraud, corruption and "ethnic wars". We must understand the complexity and magnitude of the African problem. Don't forget the ripple effects of slavery. Let's talk about WTO and free trade. Read more on the Doha conference. The more African countries open up their economies to free trade, the more the developed countries shut them out. The success of the Bretton Woods Institutes (WB and IMF) is questionable. Bad policies and unworkable resolutions on the side of the IMF and WB. Some of our political leaders have not been helpful either.
Deal with us fairly! We are as much capable as everyone else under the sun. We're not weaklings! Nor are we cry-babies. There is nothing to stop me from doing what a European can do. Nothing! But the skewed system.
Yes, there is a reason - the system. It's the system that breeds the extremists, the fanatics, the suicide bombers. It's the question of cause and effect. I don't belong to any of the above categories. I'm as interested in the economic growth of Africa as any self-respecting, law-abiding, rational, clear-minded, purpose-oriented African should be. I'm just giving simple facts. Things that don't need scratching your head.
Then there is "aid". Is it truly aid. It's tied, it has strings, too many strings, attached to it. The givers have benefited more than the receivers!
Finally, I have much to do as an African. But, you have a part to play too. Hither to you have been a bad player partner. Why not start by changing your supremacists attitude?
Africans can do it, if you let them do it. We've success stories: 1. Makatiani(sp), a black African from MIT (USA), started Africa Online in Kenya now it runs across the continent, 2. Econet Wireless International now listed on the LSE is from Zimbabwe and has operations in New Zealand and across Africa, 3. Nigel Chanakira of KMB financial institutions of Zimbabwe is in the top 100 emerging business people in the world. Of course, these are just a few examples. Many more go unreported. Africa can develop. I know we can do it. I believe we can do it.
Africa is not poor because Africa is poor but it is poor because it has been robbed and raped.
From your response to the response to that AC with a bad case of ignorance... or maybe just young hmmmmmm... you're right he does make a point me thinks. But not the one you pointed out, because that one is obviously false. When the internet first woke up, the universities traded data and thought. If data and thought wasn't something worthwhile the internet as it is, would not be. His whole post was electronic elephant dung, except for
"its called business" .
If you've seen the movie "Changing Lanes", the senior partners of the law firm, conducted a similar form of business. They do what they do, because they can.
Many many people are very interested in Africa for minerals, money, history, and original thought... as well as up to the minute elephant reports, or do you think the conservation people don't care about this? "As far as it being their own fault blah blah blah" I dare say you are dangerously close to having nothing to offer to the internet community...shame on me, I suppose you could have physical/mental issues. In which case I'm picking on someone who knows not their thought limitations.
You're right though that's how some companies work. It's just called business, we've seen what Microsoft has done, it's business to bring TV/radio stations under only one or two entities, the major newspapers have been there for years, it's business what they're doing with the mp3 ripping, who cares about the musicians themselves or the listeners, and that regions for dvd are stupid, no wait (if we force people to only shop certain regions...) unless you remember it's just business... so who cares.
What I want to know is, if there were no factories or conservatives millions of years ago, whom do we blame on all of those ice ages ending and starting? And if there is no spoon... is there a fork?
If you're not making mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake. -Frank Wilczek, Par
Whatever
You not only ashame to be called a liberal, you don't know what the hell you are talking about.
You said
"the slave trade is alive and well, but not in the world powers"
What the hell are you trying to mean ?
If the slave trade is alive and well, and YOU BLAME the United States for the slave trade, what is that "but not in the world powers" bit ?!
And you continued:
"There is also a fundamental difference with the Jaspanese and the Africans.
Their societies are totally different, which is probably what allowed them to
develop while Africa didn't."
Aren't the Africans Homo Sapien Sapiens, just as the Japanese (and all Human Beings) ?!
If they are - that means, if the Africans are just like the others, - Human Beings, - then, the African Society should be classified as HUMAN SOCIETY - and where is the world can you justify that "totally different" bit ?
Be careful of what you are saying, liberal !
What you _ARE_ truly saying, is that somehow the Africans are _TOTALLY DIFFERENT_ to the rest of the Human Race, and because of that, the Africans' society is "totally different" from the rest of the societies made up of Human Race.
And could you elaborate on that "TOTALLY DIFFERENT" bit ?
Are you saying that the Africans are _NOT_ Human Beings ?
The one who should unpluck his head from the sand is Bleeding Heart Liberals like you.
Face the real world, brother !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Well.. you know slavery? Where do you think all those slaves that willingly jumped on the ships for america came from?
They were rounded up in Africa, by Africans, and sold to (usually) the Dutch or Spanish traders who brough them to various Carribean islands. Importation of slaves was outlawed in the late 1700's by our Constitution.
And then, colonialism anyone?
What about it? As in, do you have a point?
If you don't want to see that most of europe and amrican wealth is delivered from continious exploitation of the rest of the world, no matter how sublte it is, it doesn't mean it isn't there.
And merely because you insist (in the way that ignorant losers do) that for American and Europe to be as wealthy as they were that they had to have exploited someone doesn't make it true either. Quite simply, capitalism works. Not only did it make the US and Europe rich by trading with each other, but it's made most of Asia richer.
It is. And those kids that are dying from hunger or from AIDS? Did you know that up until recently drugs to help those infected with HIV/AIDS were few times more expensive in africa than in the 'west' (up until recently when african countries finaly convinced WTO that this has bad effect on overall economy (that was the ONLY reason WTO accepted)).
This is most certainly bullshit, because in America we pay higher costs for drugs - ALL DRUGS including those for treating HIV - than even Canada or Mexico who are right off our borders. Are you so damned ignorant of basic economics that you think a rich country can sell something to countries on a poor continent for more than the rich country is willing to pay?
The catch is that providing telecommunications infrastructure to rural communities isn't a simple matter of "a couple of bucks a month". Most of these rural communities are hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest major urban area. The kind of investment that has to be made is in the order of millions of dollars - just to get a pair of wires out to a farm house.
At some point in time, a significant capital outlay has to be made by somebody.
It's much cheaper for the money to be collected by the Government through slightly higher telephone rates for the vast majority of the population, through one corporation, than it is for the money to be collected by many disparate farmers through higher prices for food.
There are fewer middle-men involved, which means more of the collected funds get to be injected into the actual infrastructure.
The cost to the city-dwellers is actually less if rural telecommunications is subsidised directly through higher costs for telecomms infrastructure, rather than through two or three layers of profit margins on food products. In this case, the Government is controlling the price of food by subsidising infrastructure, and it's only the people of that country that benefit.
There are plenty of other things that farmers (we call them "Primary Producers" along with miners) get subsidies on here in Australia - especially vehicles, and diesel fuel - mainly because it makes more economic (and political) sense to directly subsidise the primary producers, rather than pass the costs on through the system.
In the case of telecommunications links between countries - such as the USA and Australia or USA and Africa - there is no incentive for a subsidy to be provided, since there is no significant economic gain to be made. The USA don't want to give away money to Africa or Australia, so they don't subsidise the connection.
User-pays is fine in the case of a simple supplier/consumer model, but it falls apart in the larger model of trying to keep a country on its feet. The rich need to provide some support to the poor (ie: some basic standard of living), since without the poor they wouldn't be rich. It's quite simple, really.
So if it were Microsoft using its overwhelming market power to dictate terms its Not OK, but if its a country dictating terms to anotehr country because they have a bigger economy it is OK??
You've missed the point. Why should american ISPs be able to send mail to Africa for free at Africa's expense? I'm big and pwerful so its OK - is that the philosophy here???
Dear Bleeding Heart Liberal,
Other than placing blames, what can you do ?
First, you blame the "Slavery".
Then, you blame "Different society".
Would you kindly tell me what's your definition of a "society" ?
Isn't "society" a GROUPING of INDIVIDUALS ?
And if the "society" of Africans is "DIFFERENT" from the "society" of Japanese (not only Japanese, but all Asians, all Human Beings !), then, according to your insistence that the "SOCIETY" is to be blamed for whatever weaknesses the Africans are suffering from, aren't you BLAMING the INDIVIDUALS from the African Continent for their COLLECTIVE REFUSAL or INABILITY TO COMPETE WITH OTHERS ?!
Look now
The Asians were AS DIRT POOR AS the Africans, and can you please enlighten me as to why Asians like the Japanese and the Chinese are able to CLIMB THE LADDER while the Africans can't, or won't ?
Don't blame on the society, man.
If the Africans can't compete with the others, it is NOT that they can't, but they don't, or won't.
If there's a will, there's a way.
The Asians have found their way, since they are willing to compete.
On the other hand, the Africans have yet to find their will.
Stop blaming on the Society, on Slavery, or on Others.
If you really wanna place blame, blame the Africans themselves for their inability to come up with their OWN WILL to compete.
I am NOT saying that the Africans are in any way INFERIOR to others, it's just that the Africans have yet to find their WILL to pick themselves up from ground up.
Nobody can help you, but yourself. Same with the Africans.
There's even a saying - God helps those who help themselves. And if the Africans don't, or won't, want to help themselves, then, they have nobody else to blame.
I do not know if you are from Africa, or if you're of the African stock. I don't care.
I just want to say that I am SICK of those who always place blames on OTHERS for their own fault.
Blame yourself first, before blame others.
If that's what you call "ignorant", so be it.
I rather be an ignorant asshole than one who refuse to help himself.
Have a good day.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !