Saving the Net: Importing Bandwidth Costs.

You know, it's good to see that Doc Searls and others are now paying attention to something that has been patently obvious to people outside the United States. Suddenly, there's an outcry on the web when there has been an outcry for quite some time... because the people who are hurt the most cannot cry out. Eventually, someone formalizes an idea that has been formalized many times before and makes it popular.

If I have misgivings about U.S. policy, it's not about ICANN. It's about the horrid prices for connectivity that the telcoms in the Caribbean and Latin American region pass along to the consumers, which includes me and perhaps you. We even talked about it at the Caribbean Internet Governance Forum; Brian Jahra did a great presentation which is available here (PDF).

And the inherent problem is that pricing is not U.S. policy. But a lot of the companies dealing with pricing are in... the United States, and for the Caribbean and South America in particular, that pricing is geographically important. It's why the big submarine cable to the west of Trinidad and Tobago isn't being used. It's probably why I pay about $80 US a month for 1/8th the bandwidth I could get for $40 US in the United States.

So it's good that Doc and Co. are talking about it. I just wonder why it took so long for them to catch on to what we've known all along:

We're getting screwed.

I'm not supposed to act surprised, am I?

But, since the companies we have to deal with - like U.S. Sprint here in Trinidad and Tobago (because we are forced to deal with TSTT) - are based in the U.S., and we don't have any options, we have to wait on people to think within their own terms to get anything done for ourselves. And THAT is the largest problem with the internet. Screw low cost laptops and cell phones, cheaper operating systems and so on. Make the infrastructure more affordable.

It's the failure of the WGIG that nothing concrete came of this at WSIS... it was about as effective about this problem as the police in Tunis were effective with Human Rights.

Get it together, people. You have to pay attention, even outside of your own little world, and listen to the whispers you hear... because those could be screams from the other side of the planet.

But it is good that Linux Journal actually has an article on it.

Image at top courtesy Digiteyesed.com