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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.
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?
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.
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.
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."
At the risk of sounding like a flamer...
You don't sound politically incorrect, you sound ignorant.
Most ISPs operate on a "cost sharing" basis, in that they charge each other for network bandwidth used. In practice, for two ISPs that peer with each other, the amount of bandwidth each uses on the other's network roughly balances out, so the one with the higher usage pays the other relatively little.
According to this article, American ISPs are not doing this with African ISPs. As the poster comments, that means that if an African ISP sends traffic over AOL's network, it pays, but AOL does not pay for traffic sent over the African ISPs' network.
Jesus, you didn't even have to follow the link to see that.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Because they're not being asked to pay for what everyone else is paying already - they are being asked to pay what everyone else used to pay.
:o)
How many US ISPs (Not the big international carriers like UUNet etc) do you think pay for a leased line across the pond to the UK and peering to Europe or lines to Asia etc?
They don't. They peer with people in New York and San Francisco - Asian and European networks however have to install lines at least to the US to get any decent connectivity and they have to pay for that.
Things have started to change for Europe and Asia but the African nations are no doubt forced to get leased circuits at least into Linx or one of the other big EuroNAPs before they get any decent level of connectivity.
As Africa's internet connectivity is lagging behind Asia's which has lagged behind Europe's which has lagged behind the USA's they are having to go through the same high cost expansion that European and Asian networks went through to get to the stage where they are large enough for the major carriers to be interested in peering with them in their home countries.
What is needed is the large carriers, BT, UUnet, ATT etc to fund an AfrIX (trademark) and allow African networks to peer there. AfrIX could be connected to Linx and one of the big US peering points to allow direct peers. This would cut costs across the board.
M@t
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
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.
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
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
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!
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?
That's not to say that prices haven't come down: They're a mere fraction of what they were before the Southern Cross Cable Consortium finished laying their cable. But the cost of wholesale bandwidth here is still 3 - 5 times the cost of the same amount of bandwidth in the US, because nobody in the US pays anything to see the rest of the world, whereas the whole world pays the full cost of getting to the US.
Or, putting it another way, consumers in 6 continents are subsidizing Internet access charges for the residents of North America.
A simple "Thank you" will suffice :-)
- mark
Network Engineer, Internode
-----
I tried an internal modem, but it hurt when I walked.
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..
I think he what he means though is that in this case, the traffic doesn't balance out. How many times do you visit sites in Africa? I don't think I ever have. How many users in Africa visit sites in the US? I would bet that is a fairly large number. That's why the costs are different.
To look at it another way. I start a small ISP with several thousand users. Will MCI pay to peer with me? No, because it is worth more for me to peer with them since they have access to all the cool sites my users want to visit. This is the same situation, just on a larger scale.
Jason
"FORMAT C:" - Kills bugs dead!
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.