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by pistoriusp 5974 days ago
This problem usually occurs with shaped accounts. During working hours the connection is shaped, and therefore, cheaper.

The alternative is to pay a lot of money and have a download cap (5GB ~$67 p/m/ 10GB ~$85 p/m).

Right now, on an unshaped account I've got a 200ms ping to google.com; on a shaped account it'll be ~800ms.
1 comments
pmjordan 5974 days ago
Wow, interesting. Is Europe-bound traffic really expensive for the ISPs or is this basically just a money-making scheme?

As far as I know there are only 2 major connections out of southern Africa, one all the way just off the west coast to Europe (with a branch to South America) and one through the Indian Ocean to India. I guess that duopoly could easily be used to drive up prices.

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pistoriusp 5974 days ago
It's a money making scheme. We've used to only have a single operator that is 50% owned by the government.

We've finally gotten another operator, but... We're not really holding our breath for cheaper Internet just yet. Maybe... Who knows?

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