Hello,
IMHO, in the context of the AP region, I guess we are overlooking the
user perspective - locally available "Internet" content. Barring
.au, .sg, .kr, .hk (?), .jp and .tw, I do not see any major effort
around to provide locally, content that is available in the US
be it the GNU archive, the WU archive or one-of-those Beatles
song and lyrics archive - result - good amount of traffic to the
US. (The AP region has only 4 archie servers !) When one sees
such traffic trends, why would an ISP even think in terms of
investing in a link to a place other than the US - the cost
permitting ?
I have been attempting to convince ERNET to invest in a link
each to NL/GB and SG/JP since we have a significant amount of
traffic to these places. I have even tried to present the idea
that IN is strategically placed in the context of linking the
Southern AP region to Europe/US which could mean good gatewaying
business - NO GO ! Each time we have a meeting, there's a raging
war on this point, but, bring out the top 25 hosts contacted and
the related traffic percentages and the consensus is to add more
bandwidth on the link to the US !
If on the one hand the tariffs and the telecom policies do not
provide for a good intra-AP connectivity, there is this "content
availability" that's adding to the "US-centricity" (not that
most of the Internet tools aren't ... 
). So ... could we
do anything at all ?
It may not be possible to persuade governments to change their
policies as fast as we would like them to change.
My gut feel is that the tariffs permitting, making content available
locally will hold the key to bandwidth investments and the choice
of the upstream ISP.
--Gopi Garge
Enzo Michelangeli sez: