By Charles Mgbolu
An American researcher and assistant professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and Interactive Computing, Atlanta Georgia, Michael Best, recently, exclusively told Vanguard CyberLIFE that the major reason for the bottlenecks experienced at every internet exchange point online, especially between local and foreign based  ISPs is because both ISP classes “do not trust each other”.

Michael Best who was speaking as a resource person at an event organised by a leading ICT training Institute in the country; Digital Bridge, tagged Enhancing the Nigerian Film Industry through ICT Education, Training and Enlightenment said that some file exchange downloads that had to sail from a foreign owned site through it’s foreign based ISP to local servers in the country supported by local ISPs and some other information exchange request are not possible because both local based ISPs and their foreign counterparts are edgy towards one another; each unwilling to make itself fully accessible and available; thereby making heavy file exchange requests an herculean task.

When CyberLIFE enquired for the reason behind this silent fracas, the American Professor was at a loss for words, he said “I have no clue”.

Digital Bridge Institute had invited, Mr. Best, to the forum to speak to an audience of assembled Nigerian film makers, producers and industry stakeholders on modern film distributing networks and streams when he’d dropped the bombshell to this reporter.

Mr. Best who is a world renowned researcher with focus on information and communication technologies for social, economic, and political development; particularly the study of mobile phones, the internet, and internet-enabled services and their design, impact, and importance within low-income countries of Africa and Asia said that even though he had told the film makers to try and get more of their content online and on to the shelves of online media stores for the world to see and appreciate, these film makers and producers would yet go through certain levels of difficulty achieving this due to the stiff relationship that exist between the ISPs

Mr Best who is a frequent IT consultant to the World Bank, ITU, and USAID said that even if eventually, the film producers manage to get their materials online, it would be difficult if not impossible for film lovers over there (abroad) to download the materials due to the same stiff reason.

In his reaction to this issue however, the president of the Digital Bridge Institute, Mr. Raymond Akwule disagreed!
He said that the problem is basically a low broadband capacity thing which was evident in the country.

Speaking in an exclusive interview, Mr Akwule said the ‘bottleneck’ in question arises when a low capacity broadband field like what is attainable in the country tries to fuse with a much higher broadband field capacity like that which is evident abroad. “Because our local server is almost overwhelmed in the encounter it has to take a much longer time to absorb the information it seeks” Akwule said.

Mr Best however is not budged by this answer as he insists that except the NCC steps in to iron out issues, the situation will further deteriorate and eventually, it may become  impossible to share any more information between local and foreign based ISPs.