[Bp_localcontent] Local content hosting paper

[Michael Kende]

Dear all,

I hope that this finds you well.  If you recall, I discussed several times during our calls our insights regarding the hosting of local content, based on some work we were doing in Rwanda.  I am very pleased to announce the publication of our resulting report today, entitled "Promoting Local Content Hosting to Develop the Internet Ecosystem," which I co-authored with my colleague Karen Rose.   This report starts from the observation that most, if not all, emerging countries already have local content, but it is typically hosted overseas, and must be accessed over often expensive and sometimes under-provisioned international links.  To gather data and insights, we worked in partnership with the Hon. Minister Jean Philbert Nsengimana of Rwanda and his team at the Ministry of Youth and ICT and many of the key stakeholders in the country.

As a result, we can show that content providers in countries such as Rwanda are hosting their content abroad because it is cheaper, but that this is imposing a much larger cost on the local ISPs who must pay to bring the content back to Rwanda.  Further, having to access the content abroad significantly decreases the throughput for users, which decreases usage and suppresses the development of the entire ecosystem.  The paper shows that when Google and Akamai cache content locally in Rwanda, usage goes up significantly as the user experience improves, and provides recommendations for making the local hosting environment a viable choice for local content providers as well.  The result should be more accessible content, more usage, and then the creation of more local content to address the new demand.

For more details and to download the paper, see http://www.internetsociety.org/blog/public-policy/2015/01/content-side-access-equation.  We would look forward to any thoughts or comments you might have.

Best regards,

Michael

PS I apologize if you receive this more than once on different mailings.

Michael Kende
Chief Economist
Internet Society
Galerie Jean-Malbuisson 15
CH-1204 Geneva
Switzerland

Tel: +41 22 809 0367
E-mail: kende at isoc.org<mailto:kende at isoc.org>
Website: www.internetsociety.org<http://www.internetsociety.org/>

'The Internet is for Everyone!'

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