Impacts of Encryption Everywhere (any solution?)

Wed May 30 05:19:21 UTC 2018

On 29/May/18 20:01, Eric Kuhnke wrote:

> The one thing that you CAN generalize about a great many developing nation
> telecom markets, which is different than the US and Western Europe:
>
> Many urban locations have a complete absence of functioning last mile,
> legacy copper telecom infrastructure, which in a US city you would see used
> for ADSL2+ or VDSL2 or g.fast on old POTS phone lines, or
> DOCSIS3.0/DOCSIS3.1 on 75 ohm coaxial cable TV plant. Leaving "4G" and
> various forms of fixed point to multipoint wireless, whether LTE based or
> not, as the only viable residential and SMB broadband service option.

And this is a bad thing, because?

Just because it is done differently doesn't mean it is any less
effective. Mobile phones have significantly overtaken all other forms of
physical infrastructure in most of Africa, and the amount of data being
generated as well as the growing rate of penetration is some of the
highest in the world.

MNO's have taken slightly different approaches to how they build and
scale for Africa (and other developing continents such as Asia) than
they have for other regions of the world where physical infrastructure
is more rife.

Personally, I'm glad that the remaining bits of copper plant in Africa
are losing steam as folk jump straight into 3G/4G and fibre in Africa.
Coax was never really a hit in Africa (I know it was in Mozambique), but
glad we don't have to deal with that legacy either.

I am fortunate enough to live in a city where 4G/LTE is available, with
a reasonably-priced 100Mbps FTTH service to my house, as do many others
that live in major African cities where private companies are not
sitting around waiting for the gubbermint to catch up. Is there a lot
more that can and should be done? For sure! But things are happening...

Mark.