Africa INX to provide free content
by Stuart Hardy, Managing Director of Africa INX
Africa INX, a South African Wholesaler company in the telecommunications space, announced yesterday that it will be providing large volumes of content at the most notable peering centers in the country, JINX, CINX and NapAfrica’s.
The content, which up until recently was only available through paid for local transit agreements, is largely based on content originating from Hetzner’s Data Centers in Cape Town and Gauteng.
“We estimate the amount of traffic to pass to the combined public peering points in SA to be in excess of 800 Mbps. This excludes traffic delivered directly to IS, Telkom and MTN which is not handed off at these locations and makes up the remainder of the 2.5 Gbps. For a lot of smaller service providers this will help reduce some of the costs related to accessing content in South Africa and further encourage the business case for establishing peering at these points in the country,” says Stuart Hardy, MD of Africa INX.
However Stuart is also quick to point out that its peering policies are also under review as there are significant cost implications for Africa INX in delivering traffic to service providers that only peer in one region.
“If a provider peers in JINX, and not in CINX, we pay for the national cost to deliver traffic to them which is in real terms and expensive exercise. As a result we may find that we can only support peering with operators that can accept the traffic in each of the major locations, namely JINX and CINX or NAP Africa in Cape Town and Gauteng. Because of the sheer volume of traffic, which we expect to be in excess of 1 Gbps in less than a year to these points, it could end up costing millions if we have to carry it nationally. But we hope to avoid this and rather work with providers to get the right structures in place.”
Hetzner’s new data centre, which is being completed in Samrand this month, will effectively make it the 8th major hosting facility that is incorporated into Africa INX’s Metro Fibre network in Gauteng.
“We feel that every data centre in South Africa offers something different, which is why we have incorporated them into our Metro network. The differences can be measured in cost, technology, location etc. What makes Hetzner’s facility unique is all three and so we expect it to make an impact in both the service provider and corporate market. The technology and design is a first in SA and we are proud to be able to incorporate it into our network and strategy.”
