Subject: [gaia] Fwd: [ciresearchers] FW: [Bp_localcontent] Regional Specificities

From: Arjuna Sathiaseelan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 20:55:37 -0400

More info..
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "michael gurstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Jul 2014 16:56
Subject: [ciresearchers] FW: [Bp_localcontent] Regional Specificities
To: <[email-masked]>, <
[email-masked]>
Cc: "Michael Kende" <[email-masked]>

Some interesting data and analysis from another list.

Comments, particularly on the Rwanda experience?

M

*From:* Bp_localcontent [mailto:[email-masked]] *On
Behalf Of *Michael Kende
*Sent:* Saturday, July 12, 2014 1:51 PM
*To:* Susan Chalmers; [email-masked]
*Cc:* [email-masked]
*Subject:* Re: [Bp_localcontent] Regional Specificities

Hello,

Thanks Susan for setting up the next phase.  A few thoughts below.

First, on data we have been gathering an excel spreadsheet where we can
include broadband penetration levels (fixed and mobile), presence of ISP
competition, and many other measures, for Africa, Latin America, and
emerging Asia-Pacific.  I would be happy to share that, although of course
it does not replace on-the-ground stories about the state of competition,
as opposed to the database which indicates whether competition is allowed,
but not how vigorous it is.  Most of the data come from the ITU.

I would also like to share a bit more information that I have gathered
about local content in Rwanda given to us by the government.  They asked
the ISPs to indicate to them the top 20 Rwandan-owned websites, of which
about 15 are commercial, and the rest are government.  The government ones
are required to be hosted locally, all of the others are hosted abroad,
either Europe or the US.  (Note that these were not the top 20 websites
visited by Rwandans, which of course include Google and others like in
other countries).

While there we (Karen Rose and myself) held a local content workshop,
including government, ISPs, content providers, web developers, and data
centers, and the main issues raised for the decision to host abroad were
price and quality of service (including security), characteristics of which
were viewed more positively abroad.  This led to some spirited discussions,
which revealed that some of these views were based on perception rather
than actual experiences – there were stories of US web hosters losing all
data, and evidence of falling prices locally.  Of course, it is hard to
sort through these stories in a workshop, but what everyone agreed was that
getting together in one room to talk through these issues is itself very
beneficial to help dispel myths.   A number of the websites acknowledged
the benefits of hosting locally, in terms of latency, and expressed the
price point at which they would be willing to do that - one small company
was live streaming video from local events, to local users, via Colorado,
with a high latency and filling up international transit both directions,
and was looking for a local solution.  Others, some of whom entrusted their
sites to web developers, in fact had no idea where there content was
actually being hosted (including the CEO of one of the largest ISPs, who
did not know where his website was, but promised to look into it and
consider ‘bringing it home’ – we discovered it was in the Amazon cloud, not
local).

Finally, a note about ‘locally relevant content’.  As part of its Google
Global Cache program, there is a YouTube cache in Rwanda, available to all
ISPs via the IXP, RINEX.  While it takes some international capacity to
fill the cache, we calculated that at the current cost of international
transit, the cache is saving ISPs USD 750,000 per year – much of it new
traffic driven by the lower latency, which in turn is increasing revenues
for the ISPs who sell data incrementally.  As more such content is cached
locally, such as from the other CDNs, it will further decrease costs, and
can promote bigger buckets of data from the ISPs, further driving usage.
 Also, it highlights the benefits to local content providers of hosting
their own websites locally.  That, for me, illustrates the value of
international locally relevant content in driving usage.

We are gathering data from the ISPs and content providers, and if not
sooner, hope to be able to report on the numbers at the IGF.

Best regards,

Michael

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