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