Comments on: The sad truth about today’s Internet population

By: AdamR

AdamR — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 07:44:29 +0000

In New Zealand we have a reasonably good internet uptake, but there are challenges. The country is about the same size as the state of Colorado, with only 4 million people. We are at the end of a long undersea fiber-optic cable which carries all our traffic.

This carries a cost… with the accompanying problem of monthly traffic caps.

ISPs here are turning this to their advantage though. They don’t differentiate between international and in-country traffic. Plus they’ve installed huge caching proxies everywhere, so you get charged for using the cable even if you’re not!

By: mostafa

mostafa — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:29:11 +0000

hey i am from Iran and the speed rate is low very low , the speed of my internet is 45 Kbps it is sad truth and most of suitable sites are filtered such as youtube tinypic …

By: Pingdom

Pingdom — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:17:41 +0000

Thank you guys for the comments.

@Daniel: Of course there are more pressing concerns, but this article was about the state of Internet access. Great that more bandwidth is coming to Africa, though.

@Dave: The Internet is another resource, another tool, and if you don’t have it, you’re at a disadvantage. Especially if you look at it from the perspective of a global economy.

By: Dave Black

Dave Black — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:57:58 +0000

Truth? Maybe. Sad? Maybe not. Why would internet use be the same in every country? Use of internet technologies varies wildly from city to city, let alone from continent to continent. The great advantage of the internet is precisely that it encourages strongly bonded social groups to form and doesn’t treat them as all having the same needs or aspirations. Be careful that you’re not judging what everyone else “should” want based on what “we” want.

By: Daniel Howard

Daniel Howard — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:06:32 +0000

Boohoo!

And yet the Internet is penetrating a lot faster than say, telephones ever did.

You know what’s more of a concern? Access to drinkable water. And food. And not fleeing from civil war and genocide. And literacy.

Anyway, Kenya just established an undersea cable with Dubai: Africa is working on bringing more bandwidth!

-danny