Value from internet requires more local traffic

Africa needs to retain more local traffic within the continent to drive more value from the internet says MainOne’s Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Funke Opeke.

The continent, notes Opeke has the potential to immensely increase its value, significantly lower costs and improve performance  especially if Africa’s leading Internet players were to exchange traffic within the continent.

“This can be achieved by leveraging robust Internet Exchange Points and access via local interconnection points and local data centers which provide a platform for different networks to directly interconnect with other operators and exchange traffic, guaranteeing lower bandwidth costs, quicker access to more content providers and carriers and lower latency for local markets,” she added.

In an initiative of the Internet Society, this year focused on developing internet interconnection and traffic exchange opportunities where MainOne reiterated the importance of Internet traffic domiciliation as a key requirement for growing the internet ecosystem in Africa.

During her keynote address titled “Vision 80/20 by 2020” which approached the goal set by AfPIF to route 80% of Africa’s Internet traffic on the continent by the year 2020, Ms. Opeke examined the internet landscape in Africa and rued the current ecosystem of routing over 80% of the Internet traffic from Nigeria abroad, incurring expensive transit costs and increasing service latency.

She explained that until a few years ago, internet capacity in Africa was low with few high-speed networks and data centers to provide users the connectivity and content they desired.

According to her, this narrative is changing, as Africa’s growing fiber network density and increase in world-class data centers makes it much easier for content providers and OTT operators to host and serve data locally.

Ms. Opeke said MainOne’s data center company, MDXi had addressed these concerns by hosting the Nigerian Internet Exchange and launching an open interconnection service to facilitate collaboration and peering within its Lekki data center.

Ms. Opeke also shared the company’s strategy towards deepening regional integration and digital transformation of West Africa with submarine access to data centers in Lagos and Accra interconnecting all major operators, a new data center coming up in Sagamu, Nigeria, and its intent to extend its submarine cable to Cote D’Ivoire.