South African Bandwidth

[Eric Dunbar]

On 10/8/05, john levin <john at technolalia.org> wrote:
> Very OT, but I know there's South Africans on this list, and anyway, the
> sounder is for OT stuff.
>
> I was reading this article
> http://www.tectonic.co.za/viewr.php?id=637
> about MLDonkey, when I read:
> "If you happen to have an offshore server at your disposal, this makes
> for an interesting exercise in avoiding South African bandwidth
> limitations – you can simply log on when a file is done and download it,
> without using South African bandwidth for uploading or for failed
> downloads. "
>
> What are these SA bandwidth limitations? ISP limits? Weak
> infrastructure? Or what?

Because this is such an intreaguing problem I will make two wild
guesses (I know nothing about the subject):

Perhaps South Africans pay per unit of bandwidth used, and, having a
failed d/l or u/l means you pay extra? Or, perhaps there's a legal
requirement on SA ISPs to limit P2P traffic (for ethical or practical
reasons)?

Eric.