[kictanet] Local Content - Beyond lip service

Thu Jul 28 18:14:27 EAT 2011

Hi Aki,

The KICTB have sponsored the setting up and equip of about 17 news capture 
locations countrywide with a target of one in every constituency.  A lot of the 
footage captured will never see the light of day especially if we are looking to 
sell it to the likes of NTV and such other broadcasters.

What KICTB is doing boils down to a wastage of resources if the footage captured 
remains on their hard drives, worse still will be the damage caused to the 
confidence of the youth who will have been trained on how to use the digital 
recording and editing equipment, a situation that can be seen in the group from 
kibera.

I can watch Youtube videos satisfactorily on my 512 kbps WiMax link which would 
mean that with the right infrastructure and traffic prioritisation on the KIXP 
node will allow the site like eziki to offer a platform for all that footage 
being generated all those amateurs out there and thus create an alternative 
source of information. 

However ground breaking open data might be the fact that it is historical in 
nature has its drawbacks therefore we need a more require and independent source 
of  verification.  I believe that one of the statistician's mantras is to 
collect more information than you need in the same vein we need a quantity of 
footage and quality will follow.

The cost of setting up a server able to serve over 1000 videos will cost less 
than 1 million shillings, KICTB can participate by covering the cost of a 1Gbps 
pipe into KIXP while Dr. Ndemo can through in NOFBI bandwidth for uploading the 
videos from across the country.

Lets stop looking for reasons why we cannot and instead spend our energies in 
finding out what we need to do to make it happen.
 Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
Kenya

Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696

________________________________
From: aki <aki275 at gmail.com>
To: robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Sent: Thu, 28 July, 2011 12:08:01
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Local Content - Beyond lip service

Dear Robert,

I'd like to share some thoughts on this. :-) 

Its a very good idea and I can relate to it because I'm doing/done some dev work 
on multimedia as such.  There are many platforms that allow one to create a 
youtube versions but I can see the developer has put in a lot of effort. 
Unfortunately one may require millions of USD as startup capital. If the server 
was placed in Kenya, I think the minimum required link capacity would be around 
a monthly 1Gigabit/s which is not cheap either. Bandwidth costs are against us 
but also how does the developer platform seek to compete with this : e.g. 
Rihana's video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp4UwPZfRis&feature=relmfu ) is 
enough to bring our entire country internet capacity to a standstill, the 
youtube farm servers must be maxing out on everything and under processes 
stress.  She is the content that many content developers can only dream of as 
content distribution. In this video, there are almost 74million views over a 
short time. This file is about 40Mbtes X 74,000,000 views = Tera Bytes of 
internet bandwidth needed!. Its possible that the entire Seacom/Teams bandwidth 
gone with just 1 video and we may probably blow a Mux somewhere along the 
route!  

So while we continue to develop platforms, let us also keep a watch out for the 
real content that can really really drive traffic and we will surely get there. 
I think it would be interesting if KICTB made next year as Digital TV 
development, which I believe is our immediate development platform for content 
due to simplex data directions. Unfortunately slow wireless speeds do not help 
and non-unlimited internet access also means that end viewers could run of out 
credit while watching local youtube, so it will be a gradual process.

Corrections are welcome. 

Rgds. :-)

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 9:15 AM, robert yawe <robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Hi Listers,
>
>
>I have been following the activities of a local developer who has made great 
>strides in creating a platform for hosting local content through his web site 
>www.eziki.tv.
>
>
>Unfortunately due to the high cost of local hosting he has been forced, like 
>many other brilliant young men and women, to host overseas where the cost are 
>low but then they suffer the hit from bandwidth limitations.
>
>
>This young man has taken initiative and put down his resources to prove a 
>concept and I believe he deserves direct local investment from funds such as 
>Tandaa, Kazi Kwa Vijana and many others instead of us asking dreamers to present 
>proposals and business plans for cloud based products.
>
>
>I would like to propose we pick up this has a project and bring the site back 
>home and empower the team to move to greater heights before some VC from the US 
>grabs him then we start lamenting.
>
>Please visit the site and see what is on offer, you can also view my 
>channel http://www.eziki.tv/quadrantshiftafrica on which I will move most of my 
>rants and raves for posterity and for easier access by those who have an issue 
>with reading long text.
>
>
>Samsung and LG should look at this modem and see how to incorporate it in the 
>new IP TVs and publicise access to eziki.tv as well as youtube and all those 
>other sites.
>
>Robert Yawe
>KAY System Technologies Ltd
>Phoenix House, 6th Floor
>P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
>Kenya
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20110728/a5176807/attachment.htm>