Thanks alot am now well informed... Then I think the challenge is now on the Govt, the ISPs and the final User, we should develop this Peering habit, coz come to think of it the Govt now has like a country wide network of the fiber; so basically farmers, teachers, students, doctors etc can now be connected both locally and international... basically one can run a BPO from any major Town in Kenya and you will agree with me the cost of running one say in Eld would be way cheaper than Nai. But I also think the biggest challenge is to the content providers and developers, we need to localize the content, what will make the Farmer, to get online, is it only to check one email from a family member abroad or is it to catchup with the market in Nai, Kisumu etc? What will make the student in Kitale go online, is it to catchup on the latest mchongoano on mchongoano.co.ke or does he/she have to check the same on a .com site hosted in the US? Coz I believe as much as the first world is well connected, huge % traffic is local to that country.... // Watson 2009/6/15 Michuki Mwangi <michuki@swiftkenya.com>
Watson,
Watson Kambo wrote:
Thanks Mich,
So does it mean guys in Europe and Japan who have #Mbs, got a buddy in Sweden who has 11Mbps link, do not actually have the same its actually an 'upto #Mbs' .... Or is it coz, correct me if am wrong, most of the traffic might be Local ( only Swedish) that they get this then if its international traffic then they share...
Its the very same as my previous mail with the following significant differences.
the 11Mbps connection mostly on some DSL service has proper backhaul to the ISP. Contention on the last mile is hardly an issue.
As you rightfully observed with a greater percentage of the traffic being local (also known as peering - mainly at no cost - aka bill and keep) and with cheap local capacity available to the providers - connecting to the local exchange for over 60 percent of your traffic becomes a trivial experience. As with Sweden, Korea, Germany and others most ISPs have between multiple 1Gbps, 10Gps and 40 Gbps links to the IXP. At such high capacities having 1:4 contention ratios or less becomes the norm.
The cost of transit (traffic that cannot be reached through peering hence needs to going through some carriers network depending on where you are this could be about 40% on average for some maybe more), is relatively cheaper compared. For instance transit costs with operators like Congent and others is around $6/Mbps and highest will be about $10/Mbps. (see www.drpeering.net). Therefore when buying in bulk it becomes cheaper.
MY question is why the National fiber bandwith
should cost the same as theUndersea ... I would think if all I do with my net is read email from my Kenya friends, and read Kenyan Newspaper probably watch kenyan TV online, then I can have enough capacity to do this like in Mbs...
The cost of the local infrastructure with competition normally brings such costs down. Therefore if your ISP was able to buy dark fiber or huge circuits from one building to another or to an IXP for a rate thats within reason this may change. As it stands the last mile is underdeveloped and hence we cannot see any significant cost reductions at this stage.
By under-developed what i mean is that the operators with the infrastructure have failed to realise the kind of gold they have on the ground. Folks still sell 128kbps on fiber while the rest of the fiber lays idle. In the 25yrs fiber cables have its worth making sure that you make use of each year of its life - one year less is money lost.
Best regards,
Mich.
-- Watson wanjohi kambo