France-IX reaches new milestones with presence in Africa

France-IX, the premier Internet Peering Service Provider in France, has updated visitors to AfricaCom on its presence in Africa.

Over the past twelve months, the number of African networks that have joined France-IX in Paris and Marseille has increased by 60 percent and traffic from African ISPs has increased by 90 percent. This significant growth firmly positions France-IX as the leading choice for African ISPs and mobile operators wishing to peer with its community of several hundreds of carriers, ISPs, content delivery networks and Internet professionals.

Six new African networks – Dolphin Telecom, Ecoband, Guilab, Orange Senegal, Parabole Reunion and Liquid Telecom have connected over the past year, bringing the total number of African members in the France-IX Paris and Marseille peering community to 16.

This growth is partly due to new connections via France-IX remote peering partners with presence in Africa – AFR-IX, Angola Cables, Telecom Italia Sparkle and BICS enable more than 70 percent of African countries with French as its official first language to reach France-IX via a remote peering solution. Also Africa, which grew at a compound annual rate of 45 percent between 2014 and 2018, is experiencing the most of international Internet bandwidth.

France-IX has continued its program of supporting the creation of new IXPs in Africa. IXPs are a crucial part of building a sustainable domestic Internet ecosystem, the establishment of which is an important step in fostering Internet-based economic growth. The support it provides comprises training, equipment donation and technical assistance. This initiative started with the creation of CASIX in Morocco followed by SENIX in Senegal and the regional IXP initiative in Congo has been supported by France-IX throughout 2018.

“France-IX both contributes to and benefits from Internet bandwidth growth in Africa: 14 percent of our Marseille peers are African ISPs and we aim to support the expansion of Internet connectivity across Africa by offering affordable, reliable, low-latency Internet peering services from France,” said Delphine Masciopinto, Chief Commercial Officer at France-IX adding: “Our vision to support initiatives in French-speaking countries has already come to reality in Morocco, Senegal and soon in Congo. We believe in empowering local teams to build a sustainable domestic Internet ecosystem/mobile connectivity that will have a positive impact on the economic and social improvement in their country.”