Listers,
I
have noticed, that while all laudable efforts in speeding
up our broadband connectivity to the
rest
of the world hits top gear, saddeningly regional local
interconnectivity lags behind. Why
is
this so...?
For
instance reaching a branch office located in Tanzania
from their Kenya HQ office,or vice
versa means traffic transits out from our
cyberspace to some international exchange
point
somwhere in London, hits the return trip
back via some other Link to Dar. This
especially
affects VOIP connectivity and quality, between
interconnected offices, and other services
that
rely on good QOS.
This, especially while we are working on the
economic, Social, and perhaps Political
intergration of the Comesa block seems to fly in the
face of the major milestones that have
been
achieved in the Telecommunication sectors of the member
countries, and I strongly
suggest the industry addresses this urgently. We
need a Regional Internet Exchange point
set
up. Perhaps name it COMESA-IXP or something. But one thing
is clear; the more we
each
send traffic destined locally on a roundtrip to Europe or
elsewhere and back, means
we
incur huge transiting costs in the process, which dollars that
we export out should be
be
used to expand and develop our local & Regional
interconnection capacity..
I
think, this is an issue worth being addressed and I'd be
interested to discuss this more
with
anyone interested to drive this forward.
Anyone..?
Regards,
Harry