
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