Derrick
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- Joined
- Nov 22, 2010
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It can be compared to the brain drain that has been causing the droves of educated individuals to emigrate in search of a better life over the recent years. I am referring to the very noticeable migration of South Africa’s web content onto international computer infrastructure – particularly in the USA.
It is a well known fact that hosting overseas is considerably cheaper on the pocket than equivalent services from local suppliers. The question one must ask however is – what effect is this having on the macro economy of our country.
I regularly come across large exclusively South African sites that are hosted offshore but I think the ultimate insult to the ISP industry is when government services begin hosting outside our borders. I came across a prime example of this last week in the form of the new National Traffic Information System website which is proudly hosted in the American State of Utah!
People have noted before the fact that this offshore hosting – while preserving individual cash flows – is doing nothing for the economy as a whole. Aside from small margins that are retained by local resellers all of this cash is leaving our country and filling up the bank accounts of our first world counterparts.
The cost of telecoms to the end consumer is a continuous bone of contention however one factor affecting this price is the fact that end consumers are having to foot the bill of increasing percentages of international bandwidth on their accounts due to all this content not being hosted in South Africa.
So why are South African ISP’s not doing something to reverse this trend?
Sure – the costs of anything that vaguely resembles communication in this country is exorbitant but I have to wonder if the service providers have actually sat down and done the sums. Any of the ISP’s who are in both the web and internet hosting business as well as the consumer internet connectivity market have the opportunity to make a difference.
For the sake of illustration I will get out my magic wand and conjure some sums:
Using hellkom as my basis we can find a ballpark figure for our incumbents favourite 3gig cap of R200. This means a cost of R66 per GB. Based on anecdotal figures it can be assumed that at least 75% of each of those GB will be used for international browsing. Considering the margin squeeze that Telkom places on its resellers I would think that at least R33 per GB of your cash goes into the SAT-3 coffers.
Now for basic unmanaged hosting you can expect to pay R800 to R1000 for a measly 5GB of traffic. This equates to a hosting cost of R160-200 per GB.
Surely the likes of IS and Verizon could sweeten their prices by up to 20% on every GB of traffic that I stop hosting on an international server and move into their data centres? This would decrease their dependence on SAT-3 not to mention the improved customer experience from having websites hosted in our own backyard.
It is a well known fact that hosting overseas is considerably cheaper on the pocket than equivalent services from local suppliers. The question one must ask however is – what effect is this having on the macro economy of our country.
I regularly come across large exclusively South African sites that are hosted offshore but I think the ultimate insult to the ISP industry is when government services begin hosting outside our borders. I came across a prime example of this last week in the form of the new National Traffic Information System website which is proudly hosted in the American State of Utah!
People have noted before the fact that this offshore hosting – while preserving individual cash flows – is doing nothing for the economy as a whole. Aside from small margins that are retained by local resellers all of this cash is leaving our country and filling up the bank accounts of our first world counterparts.
The cost of telecoms to the end consumer is a continuous bone of contention however one factor affecting this price is the fact that end consumers are having to foot the bill of increasing percentages of international bandwidth on their accounts due to all this content not being hosted in South Africa.
So why are South African ISP’s not doing something to reverse this trend?
Sure – the costs of anything that vaguely resembles communication in this country is exorbitant but I have to wonder if the service providers have actually sat down and done the sums. Any of the ISP’s who are in both the web and internet hosting business as well as the consumer internet connectivity market have the opportunity to make a difference.
For the sake of illustration I will get out my magic wand and conjure some sums:
Using hellkom as my basis we can find a ballpark figure for our incumbents favourite 3gig cap of R200. This means a cost of R66 per GB. Based on anecdotal figures it can be assumed that at least 75% of each of those GB will be used for international browsing. Considering the margin squeeze that Telkom places on its resellers I would think that at least R33 per GB of your cash goes into the SAT-3 coffers.
Now for basic unmanaged hosting you can expect to pay R800 to R1000 for a measly 5GB of traffic. This equates to a hosting cost of R160-200 per GB.
Surely the likes of IS and Verizon could sweeten their prices by up to 20% on every GB of traffic that I stop hosting on an international server and move into their data centres? This would decrease their dependence on SAT-3 not to mention the improved customer experience from having websites hosted in our own backyard.