3 ms·

The fastest affordable option in South Africa is still ADSL. Line rental from Telkom (they have the telecom monopoly) costs me ~ZAR500 p/m and then I pay anothe

by tkriger 11y ago

The fastest affordable option in South Africa is still ADSL. Line rental from Telkom (they have the telecom monopoly) costs me ~ZAR500 p/m and then I pay another ZAR130 for an unshaped, 60gb cappped account. This is a 4meg line, so max 400-odd kbps. So yeah, $70 seems pretty reasonable to me...

pmjordan 11y ago
Doesn't South Africa have a backhaul problem though? Overpriced internet in North America tends to be artificial scarcity at the last mile. I'm not sure that's the case in SA? I've visited quite a few times and yeah, your internet connections truly are painful to use even when I'm on holiday and not really using the net that much. Much worse than rural areas of Europe which typically only get 1-3Mbit/s ADSL. Some of it is the latency to faraway CDNs and EU/US-centric servers and saturated intercontinental cables, but even South African sites seem to be awfully slow, with high latency, which to me suggests overloading on the core infrastructure. Is that the case? (I know you see microwave comms towers all over the place - if those are being used as the main cross-country internet links then that could be it.)
- majani 11y ago
  Remember most African sites are hosted on Western web hosts.
  - pmjordan 11y ago
    "Western" seems like an odd term to distinguish Europe/North America from Africa, but I assume that's what you meant. I don't have any data to back up or refute such a claim, but it makes sense: Europe & North America have economies of scale for internet infrastructure, including hosting, so hosting there is presumably cheaper than in SA or other African countries. Which drives the domestic demand for hosting abroad, causing that money to not be reinvested in the local infrastructure. I don't know what the solution to that is. Maybe global CDNs building (more) datacentres in Africa will bring some of that money back and have a positive impact on the local ecosystem? (Taking their hosting money abroad is presumably the rational choice for most African companies, so it's difficult to fault them for not "helping themselves")

by tkriger 11y ago

pmjordan 11y ago

Doesn't South Africa have a backhaul problem though? Overpriced internet in North America tends to be artificial scarcity at the last mile. I'm not sure that's the case in SA? I've visited quite a few times and yeah, your internet connections truly are painful to use even when I'm on holiday and not really using the net that much. Much worse than rural areas of Europe which typically only get 1-3Mbit/s ADSL. Some of it is the latency to faraway CDNs and EU/US-centric servers and saturated intercontinental cables, but even South African sites seem to be awfully slow, with high latency, which to me suggests overloading on the core infrastructure. Is that the case? (I know you see microwave comms towers all over the place - if those are being used as the main cross-country internet links then that could be it.)

majani 11y ago
Remember most African sites are hosted on Western web hosts.
- pmjordan 11y ago
  "Western" seems like an odd term to distinguish Europe/North America from Africa, but I assume that's what you meant. I don't have any data to back up or refute such a claim, but it makes sense: Europe & North America have economies of scale for internet infrastructure, including hosting, so hosting there is presumably cheaper than in SA or other African countries. Which drives the domestic demand for hosting abroad, causing that money to not be reinvested in the local infrastructure. I don't know what the solution to that is. Maybe global CDNs building (more) datacentres in Africa will bring some of that money back and have a positive impact on the local ecosystem? (Taking their hosting money abroad is presumably the rational choice for most African companies, so it's difficult to fault them for not "helping themselves")