Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Large capped/Unlimited Internet Access for Locally hosted Content

It is surprising that a good number of Internet Service Providers actually limit bandwidth to locally hosted websites (a purist definition of local content). The trend is to cap bandwidth to the specific service package signed up for irrespective of whether traffic is local or international.

ISPs could potentially save international bandwidth costs by aggressively promoting creation of local content, hosted locally.  With a critical mass of locally hosted websites, they would be able save costs by encouraging their clientele to use local (locally hosted) websites which would typically be less costly to access.

This of course requires quality and affordable hosting services locally that are comparable to those offered abroad. Among the main reasons cited by people seeking hosting services include
  • self service capabilities
  • high availability
  • (and of course) cost
Question is whether ISPs will step up.

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2 comments:

The Wert said...

Josiah,
I totally agree with you on this. However, the local ISPs probably see it differently. Having worked in an ISP before, I know that the limit is there for financial reasons.
The more you limit at source, the more money you make. When the under-sea fiber cables land, we hope that the reduced bandwidth costs will result in an change in this attitude.

Andrew

Riyaz said...

There's 2 different models:

1. We started by having a layered infrastructure model, where a telco/PDNO would lay the infrastructure, and ISPs just sell. Getting that cheaper would be very difficult - since the layer 1 and 2 company also needs to make some money.

2. What people are moving to now is an all-round telco where the telco is also the ISP (or vice versa). This has led to reduction of prices, since they just take care of their costs of infrastructure directly. So now we can see some viable changes.

Another problem is wireless infrastructure - it's all frequency-constrained, and that becomes very expensive. So running the local wireless network will be as expensive as the international satellite capacity. So the whole thing has to be planned carefully before they just open up the local network - it might get congested fast !