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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 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.
"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?
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?
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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They are also calling on African countries to take action by getting together to reduce their costs.
I hope that the West doesn't view this as a threat to their business interests and try to squash it. We have done that with textile industries in Africa. The result is that we have kept an extremely important industry out of a developing continent because we are trying to protect our own markets. This has had a devestating affect on the African economies.
It looks like the Africans are responding and they should be allowed to compete. The real question is whether or not we allow free commerce and don't try to force Africa to stop this practice. Governments in the West have been extremely influential in the spread of information technology here. Africa should have the same opportunity.
Believe nothing -- Buddha
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.
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."
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.
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
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
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
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-
no, the problem is the cost of the pipes. While the article is incredibly lacking in detail, it sounds like the African ISPs are paying for their own Internet connections. I hope that they are running their own email servers. The point that the article is trying to make is that nobody is peering with African ISPs, but as others have pointed out, nobody is going to do that unless the traffic is somewhat symmetric and quite significant in volume.
Basically, if you want access to my network, you pay me and you pay for the infrastructure to connect to my network.
If I want access to your network, I pay you, plus I pay for the infrastructure needed to access your network.
If we both want access to each other's networks, then perhaps we can work out a deal where no money changes hands. We'll both share the infrastructure costs.
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
That's not true. Those who are likely to be able to pay back a loan get loans. If you have no income and nothing to offer as collatoral, then you don't need a loan...you need a job.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
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.'
.sig: Now legally binding!
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."
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)
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!
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.
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
Buzzzt! Guess again. Please stay up on current events. Many African countries are quite stable, or at least stable enough to sustain healthy economies and attract investment. Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and Morocco come to mind as good examples.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
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.
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.
High tariffs. Most third-world countries charge extremely high import duties on automobiles and other manufactured goods to generate funds for the government and to protect local industry, such as it is.
Also, many (if not most) African governments are extremely corrupt. Any aid developed countries send sits in warehouses or is stolen by "leaders".
Tips and Tricks for Mozilla
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
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.
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.
---
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.
Yes - but who can read a Chinese spam e-mail? :o)
Video Game cheats, hints a
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...
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
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
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.
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
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).
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));
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 !
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 !
I hope that the West doesn't view this as a threat to their business interests and try to squash it.
Oh please. E-mail from Zaire to Kenya gets routed through the US and has to pay US carriers for one simple reason: neither Zaire or Kenya has laid wire connecting them. If you want to route local traffic over a distant network then expect to pay for it. Noone is stopping them from building their own intranet. This will also help them get peering status when they don't use the connection for local traffic.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
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 !
The US didn't invent packet switching, or the web. They built a little thing called DARPANET, however, and let it get bigger. It quickly spread around the country and the world.
My main point is that I don't need the vast majority of the world for my net experience. Australia is a great example. I go to a few Australian sites occasionally. The Southern Cross Cable was not built so that Americans could buy Tux earrings more easily. It was so Australia and its neighbors could connect to the US. If your backbone carrier saw the future of net usage shifting away from the US, the cable would be pointing somewhere else, wouldn't it? The US doesn't see its usage as being Australia-centric, thus the complete indifference over here. I can guarantee you that world net use isn't going to be centered on Africa for a long, long time. Because of that it makes no sense whatsoever for any of the big western Bad Guys to spend a dime on connectivity to Africa- their customers just haven't been asking for it. I resent spending $40/month on top of my regular cable bill just to let my computer use the same wire that my TV has been using for years. I don't need connections to most of the rest of the world, and I'm not going to pay for them.
If recognizing the Way Things Are and looking at simple economics is considered flamebait, then so be it. You keep dreaming of a perfect world, and I'll keep wanting to only pay for my part.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
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 !