{"id":549833,"date":"2006-08-14T12:14:24","date_gmt":"2006-08-14T12:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/549833-gasping-for-bandwidth.html"},"modified":"2006-08-14T12:14:24","modified_gmt":"2006-08-14T12:14:24","slug":"gasping-for-bandwidth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/549833-gasping-for-bandwidth.html","title":{"rendered":"Gasping for bandwidth"},"content":{"rendered":"

South African broadband consumer activist website MyADSL pays more than R10 000 a month to host its website locally when it could host it overseas for a mere R700.<\/font> <\/p>\n

These exorbitant local hosting costs are causing South Africa\u2019s ICT sector to fall behind international standards as content developers are prevented from using multimedia delivery.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Local websites that host bandwidth-hungry content such as audio and video files or have high traffic volumes are increasingly hosting their websites overseas because of favourable costs.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Hosting one of these websites in South Africa can be anywhere between 700% to 1 000% more expensive than hosting the same website internationally.<\/font> <\/p>\n

However, with developers simply moving their websites overseas, it means that revenue that used to remain in South Africa is leaving the country and South Africans are accessing locally produced websites via costly international bandwidth, unnecessarily using up capacity on the SAT-3 undersea cable.<\/font> <\/p>\n

\u201cAll this content made for South Africans by South Africans must travel through the SAT-3, using the valuable resource that is the international cable,\u201d said Rudolph Muller from MyADSL.<\/font> <\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with hosting in South Africa is it is extremely expensive for a site with high traffic volumes because of the exorbitant fees for bandwidth,\u201d says Muller. \u201cIn South Africa you can get affordable hosting packages but they have severe bandwidth limitations.\u201d<\/font> <\/p>\n

Muller says MyADSL still hosts in South Africa because it is trying to draw attention to issues surrounding exorbitant broadband pricing and by moving overseas, it would be discouraging users to surf the content on its site as it would be accessed via expensive international bandwidth.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Hans Wencke, the CEO of hosting company Hetzner, says local and international hosting costs can be similar but that traffic quotas in South Africa can discourage traffic volumes.<\/font> <\/p>\n

\u201cThe international hosting market is increasingly becoming an alternative to local hosting and it will place a burden on international bandwidth that is very expensive,\u201d said Wencke.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Hetzner sells international and local hosting packages and Wencke says a one-gigabyte hosting package in Germany will cost you the equivalent of R12, while a similar hosting package in South Africa will cost about R90.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Muller says there are limited users for bandwidth-hungry content owing to the price, and the result is that South African websites use a lot less audio and video content as well as podcasting on their websites.<\/font> <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is because of the cost to the user and the cost to the guys hosting the content,\u201d said Muller.<\/font> <\/p>\n

\u201cOur developers do not have the freedom to develop new services and new skills, and the result is our IT industry becomes internationally uncompetitive,\u201d said Muller.<\/font> <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is already a shortage of skills in the ICT sector,\u201d says Wencke. \u201cIf people don\u2019t have the opportunity to practise their skills we will fall behind and have to learn from other countries who are already familiar with these technologies.\u201d<\/font> <\/p>\n

Matthew Buckland, the head of marketing for the Online Publishers Association, says it is no secret that South Africa has slipped from its status as an Internet pioneer in the Nineties.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Russel Hanly, the head of M<\/font> edia24.com<\/font> , says there is demand for bandwidth-hungry content such as audio and video to be posted alongside new stories, but there are heavy costs to the publisher for posting bandwidth-intensive content.<\/font> <\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s about making a decision as to whether it is worth it putting this content up,\u201d said Hanly. \u201cWe have made a decision to invest ahead of the broadband curve. We want to be well-versed in the kind of content that works and how to deliver it.\u201d<\/font> <\/p>\n

Discuss this article<\/font> <\/a><\/p>\n

Mail & Guardian<\/em><\/font><\/a> <\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How high costs are thwarting attempts to develop South African web content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}