Kommentare zu: How Datanet Serves Premium Internet to East Africa

Von: Jon

Jon — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 11:22:13 +0000

Thanks for pointing these things out Tim. I’ll chock up the inaccuracies to my being new to the region and just a general lack of understanding of how things worked at the time. Never bothered to go back and correct things because I spend so much time writing new content.

Von: McTim

McTim — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:27:41 +0000

Dewd,

Sorry, but these statements are incorrect:

“Uganda has an IXP (Internet Exchange Point) that connects to a large undersea cable with an end point in Saudi Arabia.”

If we had fibre to the world, it’d be cheap as chips!

“This point acts as the hub for most of the IXP’s in the region (the rest probably connect in Europe).”

Currently only MTN rwanda connects to the UIXP from outside UG. Did you mean “ISPs” and not “IXPs” ??

“In other words, all the internet service providers in Uganda are paying to access the local IXP”

Well they pay a little something to connect via leased line or fiber to the IXP, (unless they own that fiber). The real reason that Internet access is so expensive is that hauling it via a satellite is prohibitive. Use of an IX actually brings costs down.

Von: mossplix

mossplix — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:10:06 +0000

the connection speed at my university (makerere university) is always at 7-13kbs during peak hours which is most of the day anyway …i might consider being a constant vistor to fang-fang

Von: T1 Coming to Uganda in 2009? - Appfrica

T1 Coming to Uganda in 2009? - Appfrica — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 06:00:56 +0000

[...] “How Datanet Provides Premium Internet to East Africa” and this post I wrote about the various factors working against affordable internet connectivity in [...]

Von: Jon

Jon — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 05:33:04 +0000

Yeah, it’s problematic to say the least.

I think in this case people are praying that corruption is the cause because that means someone can actually do something about it. The fact of the matter is it’s more likely that costs are just high because that’s the way it is. Until the ISPs can pad their bottom line with more customers and IXPs can pad their bottom line by distributing costs to more ISPs, it looks like this is the way things will remain for some time.

Von: Clint

Clint — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:40:26 +0000

Thanks for such helpful information. I’m surprised by how hard it is to track down actual culprits of the high prices, and if they are due to real or artificially inflated costs. In certain african countries, I assumed high prices were due to the monopolies of the service providers, but it looks like the Fibre for Africa group is doing some good work in going into things deeper.

If it is just getting more people to subscribe, it is almost like a chicken and egg situation. Who in Africa can afford those prices to subscribe, and how are they going to go down unless more people do?