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Computing Rants

The Internet will forever suck in South Africa

Internet Bandwidth by World Region

It appears to me that there is no incentive to host any online content in South Africa. Hell, there’s no point hosting anything internet related in the whole of Africa. We’ve lost. We’ve become part of the third world on the Interwebs. The dark continent remains dark in the digital age. Thanks Ivy. Thanks Telkom.

In contrast, tomorrow a 1Gbps (that’s gigabit-per-second!!!) internet service arrives in Japan. for $56 a month (i.e. less than R560/month).

Yes. Let me repeat that. Tomorrow a 1Gbps internet service arrives in Japan. Do you know how fast that is? That’s faster than most corporate LANs! That’s faster than hundreds of business internet connections. South Africa currently has a Total National bandwidth of around 400Gbps. Give or take a few gigs.

Very soon 400 households in Japan will have more internet influence than the whole of South Africa.

Our entire country could be denial-of-serviced off the interwebs by a handful of people in Japan.

Amazon Web Services, here we come. With the pricing structures Amazon (or their competitors) offer, there is absolutely no reason to commission another Internet server in the whole of Africa, ever again.

Yes, of course it’s fucking tragic.