[Foundation-l] RFC: local mirrors for cheaper and faster access

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Apparently, in the Sakha Republic in Eastern Russia, browsing sites
connected to the republic's network is cheap or free according to the
plan's the ISPs offers, while browsing sites outside the republic
costs more. So people often choose to read local news and forums and
request information from external sites only when necessary. This is
actually quite good for developing the local culture and fostering the
local language, but it may be detrimental for an international project
like Wikimedia.

Is anybody familiar with other places in which Internet access works like this?

Would it make sense to create some kind of a local mirror of Wikimedia
Projects to facilitate participate in such areas? Creating a data
center in every such place would probably not be cost-effective, but
maybe there's some clever networking trick that could help people
overcome these costs, a proxy or some such? Or collaborating with
local Universities, Free Software groups or ISPs to host mirrors of
content in a language relevant to that area, that would be editable,
too?

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬