11

Measuring the Digital Divide

Les Cottrell – SLACLecture # 4 presented at the Workshop on Scientific Information in the Digital Age:

Access and Dissemination

ICTP, Trieste, Italy October , 2009

www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/talk09/ictp-divide.ppt

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Summary• The Digital Divide world wide, measurements

• Case Study of Africa

• Africa directions– Wireless/fibre, Routing, Costs, Difficulties,

• Conclusions & further information

Factors• Earnings/poverty

• Age

• Rural vs City

• Education/skills

• Developed vs Developing regions– Policies, corruption, conflict, disease, protectionism,

infrastructure (e.g. now power)

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Where is it (country)Cartogram perspective see

www.geog.qmw.ac.uk/gbhgis/conference/cartogram.html

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Population

Internet Users 2002

Area

Tertiary Education fromhttp://www.worldmapper.org/

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Measuring the Divide WorldwideAbv. Name Organization Countries

Date of Data

GDPGross Domestic Product per capita

CIA  229 2001-2006

HDI Human Development Index UNDP 175 2004

DAI Digital Access Index ITU180

1995-2003

NRI Network Readiness IndexWorld Economic Forum

120 2007

TAI Technology Achievement Index UNDP 72 1995-2000DOI Digital Index ITU 180 2004-2005OI Index ITU 139 1996-2003

CPI Corruption Perception IndexTransparency Organization

180 2007

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Choose most: up-to-date, countries, important factorsHDI & DOI

E.g.:Human Development Index(HDI)• A long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth • Knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds

weight) and the combined primary, secondary and tertiary education gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weight)

• A decent standard of living, as measured by GDP per capita (or Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) in US$).

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1980

1990 2007

2000

Argentina gets worse in 90’s, S. America improves in 00’s, Africa improving long way behind

E.g. Digital Opportunity Index (DOI)• Based on 11 indicators in 3 groups: Opportunity,

Infrastructure and Utilization: Ideally DOI=1– All homes have ICT devices, all citizens have mobile ICT

devices, everyone using broadband, everyone access to ICT at affordable prices

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One way to measure (PingER) Behind Europe5 Yrs: Russia, Latin America, Mid East 6 Yrs: SE Asia9 Yrs: South Asia12 Yrs: Cent. Asia16 Yrs: Africa

Central Asia, and Africa are in

Danger of Falling Even Farther

behindIn 10 years at the

current rate Africa will be 1000 times

worse than Europe

Derived throughput ~ 8 * 1460 /(RTT * sqrt(loss))Mathis et. al

1993

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Some Other World Views

Voice & video (de-jitter) Network & Host Fragility

Data TransferCapacity

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World Measurements: Min RTT from US• Maps show increased coverage • Min RTT indicates best possible, i.e. no queuing• >400ms probably geo-stationary satellite• Between developed regions min-RTT dominated by

distance - Little improvement possible• Only a few places still using satellite for international

access, mainly Africa & Central Asia

2000 2008

Loss

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With TCP (>80% Internet traffic) recovery from loss can take several seconds, such delays make interactive use annoying to impossible.For non TCP multi-media traffic loss causes poor voice/video (VoIP/H323) above 1.5%,loss > 0.5% unacceptable for IPTVhttp://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tutorial.html#loss

Africa by far worst region,

10-20 times worse than developed regions

Case Study Africa

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Africa is huge, diverse & dreadful access• Hard to get fibre everywhere

• ~ 1B people, over 1000 languages,multi climates

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Fibres

CapacityFrom Telegeography

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Mediterranean. & Africa vs HDI

• There is a good correlation between the 2 measures• N. Africa has 10 times poorer performance than Europe• N. Africa several times better than say E. Africa• E. Africa poor,

limited by satellite access

• W. Africa big differences, some (Senegal) can afford SAT3 fibre others use satellite

• Great diversity between & within regions

HDI related to GDP, life expectancy, tertiary education etc.

Sub-Saharan broadband cost off-scale

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www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/idi/2009/index.html

Source ITU

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African Situation

• Access to the internet is so desirable to students in Africa that they spend considerable time and money to get it. Many students surveyed, with no internet connection at their universities, resorted to private, fee-charging internet cafes to study and learn. www.arp.harvard.edu/AfricaHigherEducation/Online.html

Internet Café in Ghana

• School in a secondary town in an East Coast country with networked computer lab spends 2/3rds of its annual budget to pay for the dial-up connection.

– Disconnects Heloise Emdon, Acacia Southern Africa

1 yr of Internet access > average annual income of most Africans, Survey by Paul Budde Communications

• Survey (IHY meeting Ethiopia in November ’07) of leading Universities in 17 countries (will repeat with more clarity):

– Each had tens of 1000’s of students, 1000 or so staff– Best had 2 Mbits, worst dial up 56kbps– Often access restricted to faculty

Demo: ITCP Internet Weather for Africa

• www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/africa-weather08.mov

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Demo• Shows population=bubble area, y=throughput, x=RTT as a

function of time• Note

– Improved performance & increase of coverage with time

– Africa clusters towards long RTT and poor throughput (bottom left) and generally far worse than rest of world

– African varies by countries (cf Egypt & Ethiopia)

– Big variations year to year

• Correlate with DOI index (opportunity, infrastructure, usage)• by mobile telephony, Internet tariffs, #computers, fixed line phones, mobile subscribers,

Internet users)/population

• http://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/pinger-metrics-motion-chart.html

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Possible Attractions

• Large Population (~1 Billion)

• Youthful population• Saturation of developed

markets makes emerging markets interesting to business (Vital Wave)

• Leapfrog technologies (cell phones, wireless …)

MatureMatureEmerging StrategicEmerging Strategic

Emerging NicheEmerging NicheEmerging LongtermEmerging Longterm

2020http://www.internetworldstats.com/

Africa

Huge growth

~ 3x lower penetration than any other region

huge potential market

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What is happening: Fibre• GEO-Stationary satellite $/Mbps

300 -1000 x Fibre, severely bandwidth-constrained,high latency

• Up until July 2009 only one submarine Fibre Optic cable to Sub-Saharan Africa, no competition, costly & only W. Coast

• 2010 Football World Cup => scramble to provide fibre optic connections to S. Africa, both E & W Coast

• Multiple providers = competition

• E. Coast: Seacom & TEAMs landed Jul 2009, Seacom working

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Plans for New Sub-SaharaUndersea Cables to Europe and India by 2011

Seacom (7/09)

EASSy(6/10)

TEAMs(9/09)

WACS(Q2/11)

MaIN One(Q4/10)

GLO1(11/09)

ACE(2011?)

$ 650M $ 265M $ 82M $ 2B ? $ 865 M $ 150 M ???

13.7 kkm 10 kkm 4.5 kkm 13 kkm 14 kkm 9.5 kkm 12 kkm

1.28 Tbps 1.4 Tbps 0.12 – 1.2 Tbps 3.84 Tbps 2.5 Tbps? 0.64 Tbps ???

June 2009 Q1/Q2 2010 Sept. 2009 2010 Q4 2010 Q2 2009 2011

Ambitious plans are once again underway to better-connect Africa

The potential increase in capacity compared to now is 1000X

The issue is whether there is a sustainable market

”People are buying 10-15 times their existing bandwidth. They can get that much for the same sort of cash they’re already spending” Herlighy, Seacom CEO

http://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables

SAT3

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Impact: RTT etc.• As sites move their routing from GEOS to terrestrial

connections, we can expect:– Dramatically reduced Round Trip Time (RTT), e.g. from 700ms to

350ms – seen immediately– Reduced losses and jitter due to higher bandwidth capacity and

reduced contention – when routes etc. stabilized

• Seacom live Thu Jul 23, ‘09 - reported by BBC & CNN

325ms325ms

Big jump Aug 1 ’09 23:00hr

Big jump Aug 1 ’09 23:00hrMedian RTT SLAC to KenyaMedian RTT SLAC to Kenya

• Bkg color=loss Smoke=jitter

• RTT improves by factor 2.2

• Losses reduced• Thruput

~1/(RTT*sqrt(loss)) up factor 3

720ms720ms

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From ICTP, Trieste, Italy• Even Bigger effect since closer than SLAC

– Median RTT drops 780ms to 225ms, i.e. cut by 2/3rds (3.5 times improvement)

Aug 2ndAug 2nd

Seems to be stabilizing

Seems to be stabilizing

Still big diurnal changes

Still big diurnal changes

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Next Steps: Going inland

• Extend coverage from landing points to capitals and major cites

• Need fibre connections inland

CentralCentral

NorthernNorthern

SouthernSouthern

• Connect up the rest of the sites & countries (UG, RW, ML..)

Other countries on Seacom• Tanzania, also

dramatic reduction in losses

• Uganda inland via Kenya, 2 step process

• Rwanda inland via UG & KE 3 steps

• Many sites still to connect

SLAC to UgandaSLAC to Uganda

1 direction, Aug 31 direction, Aug 3

Both directions, Aug 15Both directions, Aug 15

Sep 27Sep 27SLAC to TanzaniaSLAC to Tanzania

SLAC to Kigali Inst of Education, RwandaSLAC to Kigali Inst of Education, Rwanda

720ms720ms

320ms320ms

22-25 Sep ‘09

Other Countries

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750ms750ms 450ms450ms SLAC to AngolaSLAC to Angola• Angola step mid-May, more stable

• Ethiopia Mar ’09, most measured hosts on GEOS

• Zambia half step Aug 20, 09 still trying on 2nd step. Via Namibia & ZA

Aug 20Aug 20

SLAC to ZambiaSLAC to Zambia1 direction1 direction Both directions?Both directions?

• Mozambique May 2007 (via ZA)• Malawi future probably via Mozambique• South Africa since started measurements to it in Feb’05

Why does Haramaya in Dire Dawa have fibre connection before Addis Ababa the capital?

And…• September 6 ’09

Glo-1 ubmarine cable landed in Lagos, Nigeria. This brings competition to the SAT3/WASC/ cable consortium.

• In May 2010 the Main One cable will be landing on the West Coast of Africa, more competition.

• All this adds up to factors of 2 or more times improvement in 1-2 years for many hosts in many African countries. Hopefully this will dramatically help the rate of catch up.

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Beyond fibres reach• ABUJA Africa's first communications satellite suffered an energy failure just 18 months after its launch - Nov.

2008

• In areas where fibre connections are not available (e.g. rural areas), the main contenders appear to be:– wireless, e.g. microwave, cellphone towers, WiMax etc., – Low Earth Orbiting Satellites (LEOS) for example

Google signed up with Liberty Global and HSBC in a bid to launch 16 LEOS satellites, to bring high-speed internet access to Africa by end 2010,

• gigaom.com/2008/09/09/google-invests-in-satellite-based-internet-startup/

– and weather balloons• www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=694&doc_id=178131&• http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/undersea-broadband-fiber-optic-cables-to-africa/

• Wireless mobility– then wireless (cell phone, wimax, LEOS…) – cell phone growth leads Internet growth by 4.5 years– failure just 18 months after its launch - Nov. 2008

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Mobile• Leapfrogs

– landlines– PCs

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Use: e-mail, research purchase products online, listings, maps traffic info, IM, searches, banking, news

– Landlines, desktops

Need for NRENs & IXPs

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IXPs a Major Issue for African Internet• International bandwidth prices are biggest contributor to high costs• African users effectively subsidise international transit providers!• Fibre optic links are few and expensive reliance on satellite

connectivity• High satellite latency slow speed, high prices• Growth of Internet businesses is inhibited• In 2003 10 out of 53 countries had IXPs• More IXPs lower latency, lower costs, more usage• Both national and regional IXPs needed• Also needed: regional carriers, more fibre optic infrastructure

investment• Need NRENs country ->region

– Then international IXPsInternetInternet

AA BBIXP•Américo Muchanga

americo@uem.mz, •25 September 2005

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Routing• Used to typically go through a satellite provider

such as Newskies• Now TZ, UG & KE go via London

and Teleglobe & terrestrial fibre• IXPs starting up, e.g.

• S. Africa direct to Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique

• Burkina Faso direct to Mali, Senegal, Benin

• Ubuntunet Alliance > GEANT• Founders: Kenya, Malawi,

Mozambique, Rwanda South Africa• Joined by DRC, SD, TZ, UG

S. Africa

Burkina Faso

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Next Steps: Let’s get together• Get leaders such as universities, academic

establishments (teach the teachers) to get togeher to form NRENs for country

• Bargain for cheaper rates• BW most expensive

worldwide ($4K/Mbps)• Then NRENS get together to

create International eXchange Points (IXPs)– Avoid intercountry links

using expensive intercontinental links via Europe and the US.

From Broubecker Barry 2008From Broubecker Barry 2008

Need for alternate

routes• Effect of

Mediterranean fibre cuts Dec 2008

• confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Mediterranean+Fibre+Cuts+December+2008

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Kbits/s

RTTSLAC to Oman

8:30am 19 Dec

0:00am 22 Dec

• ’05 Karachi cuts• Mar 14, Karachi

Water & Sewage digs up fibre – down 3 hours

• Jun-Jul 12 day outage,huge loss of confidence & business – satellite b’up inadeqaute

Effect varied

by country

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• Previous cut Jan 31st 2008

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Conclusions: The bad• Poor performance affects data transfer, multi-media,

VoIP, IT development & country performance / development

• DD exists between regions & countries, rural vs cities, poor vs rich, old vs young…

• Decreasing use of satellites, expensive, but still needed for many remote countries in Africa and C. Asia

• Last mile problems, and network fragility• Current providers (cable and satellite) have a lot to loose

– Many of these have close links to regulators and governments (e.g. over 50% of ISPs in Africa are government controlled)

• Africa worst by all measures (throughput, loss, jitter, DOI, international bandwidth, users, costs …) and falling further behind.

Conclusions: There is Hope• World cup: international fibre access + competition• LEOS• Leapfrog last mile fixed wire with wireless• Cheaper end points: OLTP, net computer, smart-phones

• Banding together of universities => leverage influence & get deals => NRENs => IXPsUsers– E.g. Ubuntunet, Bandwidth Initiative

• Standards:– Harmonization of regulations country to country– Cheaper cell phone, can’t afford multiple technologies & frequencies

• Regulatory regimes becoming:– more open/transparent, less resistant to change

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“The way we develop here in Africa will be different from the way the big nations

developed. They grew up with computers. We are growing up with mobile phones.

- Fritz Ekwoge”

PingER: African coverage• Host monitored in ~50 of 60 countries (98.7% pop)• 131 hosts monitored in Africa• Cannot find hosts in Comoros, Eq. Guinea, Sao Tome, (while here added Chad, and a 2nd host in Guinea)

• Yellow only 1 host (so could be anomalous, e.g. Libya)

• Need help for contacts: (cottrell@slac.stanford.edu)

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More Information• Case Study: Fibre for Sub Saharan Africa, see

– https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/New+E.+Coast+of+Africa+Fibre

• Mediterranean Fibre cuts:– https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+thr

ough+Mediterranean

– https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Mediterranean+Fibre+Cuts+December+2008

• ITU/WIS Report 2006 & 2007 (or Google: “WSIS Report 2007”)– www.itu.int/osg/spu/publications/worldinformationsociety/2007/report.html– www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/idi/2009/index.html

• Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa– www.arp.harvard.edu/AfricaHigherEducation/Online.html

• PingER– www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger, sdu.ictp.it/pinger/africa.html– www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/icfa/icfa-net-paper-jan09/

• Global Information watch: www.giswatch.org • Need network contacts in Africa: cottrell@slac.stanford.edu

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Extra Slides

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Trends:Losses

• N. America, Europe, E. Asia, Oceania < 0.1%

• Underdeveloped 0.3- 2% loss, Africa worst.

• Mainly distance independent

• Big impact on performance, time outs etc.

• Losses > 2.5 % have big impact on interactivity, VoIP etc.

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• ~ Distance independent• Calculated as Inter Packet Delay Variation (IPDV)

– IPDV = Dri = Ri – Ri-1

• Measures congestion• Little impact on web, email• Decides length of VoIP codec buffers, impacts streaming• Impacts (with RTT and loss) the quality of VoIP

Trendlines for IPDV from SLAC to World Regions

N. America E. Asia

Europe

Australasia

S. Asia Africa

Russia

L. America SE Asia

C Asia

M East

Usual division into Developed vs Developing

Jitter

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VoIP & MOS• Telecom uses Mean Opinion Score (MOS) for quality

– 1=bad, 2=poor, 3=fair, 4=good, 5=excellent– With VoIP codecs best can get is 4.2 to 4.4– Typical usable range 3.5 to 4.2– Calc. MOS from PingER: RTT, Loss, Jitter (www.nessoft.com/kb/50)– Africa & C. Asia not possible, S. Asia with patience OK

MOS of Various Regions from SLACImprovements very clear, often due to move from satellite to land line.Similar results from CERN (less coverage)

Usab

le

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Leading

Country Population

Int'l BW Mbps

Int'l BW / capita (bps)

Internet Users

Internet users/ 1000 capita

BW (bps)/ Internet User

DOI Rank

Egypt 82,073,660.00 3784 46.105 1000000 12.1842 3784 90

South Africa 43,743,316.00 881.5 20.152 1012500 23.1464 870.617 91

Senegal 12,938,350.00 775 59.899 19351 1.49563 40049.6 112

Cameroon 18,569,348.00 155 8.3471 6500 0.35004 23846.2 137

Nigeria 139,070,856.00 150 1.0786 350000 2.5167 428.571 155

Kenya 38,213,024.00 113.39 2.9673 80000 2.09353 1417.38 164

Uganda 31,621,980.00 100 3.1624 8000 0.25299 12500 152

Burkina Faso 14,866,133.00 76 5.1123 14238 0.95775 5337.83 163

Cote d'Ivoire 18,465,326.00 55.42 3.0013 13747 0.74448 4031.43 144

Benin 8,349,959.00 47 5.6288 6396 0.76599 7348.34 147

Niger 13,364,797.00 30 2.2447 3117 0.23322 9624.64 179

Mozambique 21,379,584.00 18.5 0.8653 25000 1.16934 740 169

Ethiopia 78,697,922.00 10 0.1271 12155 0.15445 822.707 173

Namibia 2,067,433.00 9 4.3532 19000 9.19014 473.684 109

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Scenario Cases

4. Sep 05, international fibre to Pakistan fails for 12 days, satellite backup can only handle 25% traffic, call centres given priority. Research & Education sites cut off from Internet for 12 days

Heloise Emdon, Acacia Southern

AfricaUNDP Global Meeting for ICT for

Development, Ottawa 10-13 July

3. Primary health care giver, somewhere in Africa, with sonar machine, digital camera and arrangement with national academic hospital and/or international health institute to assist in diagnostics. After 10 dial-up attempts, she abandons attempts to connect

1. School in a secondary town in an East Coast country with networked computer lab spends 2/3rds of its annual budget to pay for the dial-up connection.– Disconnects

2. Telecentre in a country with fairly good connectivity has no connectivity– The telecentre resorts to generating revenue from photocopies,

PC training, CD Roms for content.

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Unreachability • All pings of a set fail ≡ unreachable

• Shows fragility, ~ distance independent

• Developed regions US, Canada, Europe, Oceania, E Asia lead– Factor of 10 improvement in 8 years

• Africa, S. Asia followed by M East & L. America worst off

• Africa NOT improving

US & CanadaEurope

E Asia

C Asia

SE Europe

SE Asia

S AsiaOceania

Africa

L America M East

Russia

DevelopedRegions

DevelopingRegions

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Throughput• Derive from:

Thru ~ 8 * 1460 _____________(RTT * sqrt(loss))

49

• Note step changes

• Africa v. poor

• S. Asia improving

• N. America, Europe, E Asia, Oceania lead

Norm_thru = thru * min_rtt(remote_region)/min_rtt(monitoring_region)Thru = 1460 / (RTT*sqrt(loss)) Mathis et. al

Norm Thruput

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World thruput vs ITU-OI Behind Europe6 Yrs: Russia, Latin America 7 Yrs: Mid-East, SE Asia10 Yrs: South Asia11 Yrs: Cent. Asia12 Yrs: Africa

South Asia, Central Asia, and

Africa are in Danger of Falling

Even Farther Behind

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Overall (Aug 06)• ~ Sorted by Average throughput• Within region performance better (black ellipses)• Europe, N. America, E. Asia generally good• M. East, Oceania, S.E. Asia, L. America acceptable• C. Asia, S. Asia poor, Africa bad (>100 times worse)

Mo

nit

ore

d C

ou

ntr

y

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Bandwidth & Internet use• Note Log scale for BW• India region leader• Pakistan leads bw/pop• Nepal very poor

• Pakistan leads % users• Sri Lanka leads hosts%

%• Pakistan leads bw/pop• Nepal, Bangladesh,

Afghanistan very poor

Bit

/s

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DAI vs. Thru & S. Asia• More details, also show populations• Compare S. Asia with developed countries, C. Asia

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S. Asia Coverage

• Monitor 44 hosts in region.

• 6 Monitoring hosts

Loss from CERN

Min-RTT from CERN

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S Asia MOS & thruput

Mean Opinion Score to S Asia from US

Daily throughputs from US to S Asia

• Last mile problems• Divides into 2

– India, Maldives, Pakistan, Sri Lanka

– Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan

Usable

RTT ms

RTT NIIT to QAU Pak (1 week)

Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su

• weekend vs. w’day, day vs night = heavy congestion

Pakistan

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Americas• Cuba poor throughput

due to satellite RTTs and high losses

• US & Canada lead

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OECD Broadband

• Graphic from San Jose Mercury, 11/22/07

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Subscribers /people

Subscribers / 100 people

• OECD median=27+-0.7

• ITU Africa 3.34+-3.1

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Satellites vs Terrestrial• Terrestrial links via SAT3 & SEAMEW (Med & W. Africa)

– monopoly bandwidth is sold for $4.5K-12K per Mbps/mo (only 5% used)– Equal satellite prices

PingER min-RTT measurements fromS. African TENET monitoring station

Mike Jensen,Paul HamiltonTENET, S. Africa

Normal Satellite $/Mbps 300-1000x fibre costs

Only 14 of 49 Sub-Saharan countries have fibre

NEPAD ‘04

University

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Divide within Divide: Africa Throughput

• Overall Loss performance is poor to bad

• Factor of 10 difference between Angola & Libya

• N Africa best, E Africa worst• Big differences within regions • In 2002, BW/capita ranged

from 0.02 to over 40bps - a factor of over 1000

99 hosts

45 Countries

61

Validation• Many indices from ITU, UNDP, CIA, World Bank try to classify

countries by their development– Difficult: what can be measured, how useful is it, how well defined, how

changes with time, does it change country to country, cost of measuring, takes time to gather & often out of date, subjective

– Typically use GDP, life expectancy, literacy, education, phone lines, Internet penetration etc.

– E.g. HDI, DOI, DAI, NRI, TAI, OI .. In general agree with one another (R2~0.8)

• Given importance of Internet in enabling development in the Information age some metrics we can measure:– International bandwidth– Number of hosts, ASNs– PingER Internet performance

• See if agree with development indices.– If not may point to bad PingER data or illuminate reasons for differences– If agree quicker, cheaper to get, continuous, not as subjective– Working to extend PingER coverage (120=>156 countries, 45 in Africa)

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Thru vs Int. BW

• Hard to get to countries (E. Africa, C Asia)

• Last mile not good (China)

• ’07 vs ’05 (Aus & NZ)

• Emphasize Internet deploy (Estonia)

• Host choice (Congo, Libya)

Derive: thru ~ 8 * 1460 /(RTT * sqrt(loss))Mathis et. al

Good Correlation

norm_thru = thru * min_RTT(rem_region) / min_rtt(mon_region)

63

PingER vs Speedtest• www.zdnet.com.au/broadband/results.htm

– Application sends known amount of data between your computer and servers– Measures throughput saves results by country, ISP

• About 30 countries have <= 3 attempts

Server in Aus.

AU&NZ agree

Absolute values agree

Strong Correlation

Africa (magenta) worst off

64

Digital Opportunity Index (ITU 2006)• 180 countries, recent (data 2005, announce 2006), full

coverage 2004-2005, 40 leaders have 2001-2005• 11 indicators (grouped into: opportunity, infrastructure & utilization)

– (Coverage by mobile telephony, Internet tariffs, #computers, fixed line phones, mobile subscribers, Internet users)/population

• Worked with ITU to see if PingER can help.– Added countries

• 130>150

– Increase coverage

65

Correlation Loss vs DOI• Good correlation, Africa worst off

66

• Automate uploading etc. via Internet

67

Broadband Subscribers

www.telegeography.com

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• SAT-3• Projects in progress (before soccer World cup in S. Africa)

– EASSy complete end 2008, S. Africa to Port Sudan. Consortium members include most of the national telcos from the various East African nations, including Telekom South Africa, Telkom Kenya, Zanzibar Telecom, Uganda Telecom, TDM Mozambique, Djibouti Telecom, Sentech, Telecom Malagasy, Rwanda Telecom, and Botswana Telecom, with about a dozen other likely participants.

– SEACOM (2009) – S. Africa to EU and IN, also lands in Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya and UAE

– TEAMS - Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. – UHURUNET and its terrestrial segment, UMOJANET capacity of

3.84 Terabits/sec, the undersea submarine cable is intended to link the entire continent of Africa, with the outside world including Europe, Brazil, India and the Middle East

– UBUNTUNET (Cisco router in London, to connect GEANT)

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70

SAT3

71

Fibre Links Future

– SAT-3 shareholders such as Telecom Namibia, which has no landing point of its own find it cheaper to use satellite

• Will EASSy follow suit?• Another option to EASSy: since

Sudan and Egypt are now connected via fibre, and the link will shortly extend to Ethiopia, there are good options for both Kenya and Uganda/Rwanda and Tanzania to quickly link to the backbones via this route

• SAT3 connects eight countries on the W coast of the continent to Europe and the Far East. Operating as a cartel of monopoly state-owned telecommunication providers, prices have barely come down since it began operating in 2002

Mike Jensen

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73

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Costs compared to West• Sites in many countries have bandwidth< US residence

– “10 Meg is Here”, www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=104415

• Africa: $5460/Mbps/mo– W Africa $8K/Mbps/mo– N Africa $520/Mbps/mo

(IDRC study Jan 2005)

1 yr of Internet access > average annual income of most Africans, Survey by Paul Budde Communications (OECD 2.5%, US 1.45%)

Bandwidth Initiative: Coalition of 11 African Universities (MZ, TZ, UG, GH, NG, KY) + four major US Foundations to provide satellite thru

Intelsat at 1/3 cost ($7.3K/Mbps/m => $2.23K)

OECD: median=$16/Mbps/moJapan=$3.09/Mbps/moOECD study on Broadband Nov 2007

Bandwidth in Africa is hundreds of times more expensive than in Europe or

N. America

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Why Make Internet Measurements?• In the Information Age Information Technology (IT)

is the major productivity and development driver., particularly science & education

• Travel & the Internet have made a global viewpoint critical

• One Laptop Per Child (“$100” computer) – New thin client paradigm, servers do work, requires

networking (Google: “Negroponte $100 computer”), driving Intel & AMD cheap net-books

– Internet enabled cell phones (e.g. iPhone)– Enables “Internet Kiosk & Cafe” can make big difference

• So we need to understand and set expectations on the accessibility, performance, costs etc. of the Internet