Nigeria may not be there yet, but it is certainly not lagging behind as many critics say. The giant of Africa has since gotten out from slumber. In telecommunications, it is at least ahead of its peers in West Africa. That explains why the Ghana Internet Exchange Point decided to connect to Nigerian’s Internet Exchange Point, IXPN, in a bid to route traffic locally within the region. While this process is on a vice-versa and partnership basis, experts say the move is expected to enhance the chances of Nigeria becoming the regional hub for Internet content in the region and the continent. It will additionally present Nigeria and Ghana the opportunity to reduce cost and improve latency on the route.
Further analysis showed that the Internet traffic destined for the two countries will now remain local, meaning that instead of the traffic coming from Ghana to Nigeria, which first goes to Europe or the Americas before returning to Africa, will come straight to the region. This way, there will be some cost saving, improvement service delivery, and making services safer.
Besides, should Nigeria become the Internet hub for Africa, it will help the country to create contents, especially local that can serve the international market, and enable it attract foreign investors. The Guardian gathered at the weekend that the IXPN is now the second largest in Africa, and the regional IXP for the West African region, a status allocated to it by the African Union.
An IXP is a physical infrastructure through, which Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), and other IP centric organisations exchange Internet traffic between their networks. The primary purpose of an IXP is to allow networks to interconnect with one another directly via the exchange rather than through one or more third-party networks.
The advantages of the direct interconnection are numerous, but the primary reasons are cost savings, reduce foreign exchange transaction, reduced latency, high bandwidth availability, security, improving routing efficiency and providing fault tolerance.
Already, it has been revealed that a leading service provider in Nigeria now saves over N20million by localising its traffic using the exchange point. These cost savings for the service providers will eventually translate to reduction cost of Internet access to Internet subscribers in the country. The Ghana-Nigeria deal is already confirmed in document presented by a former Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Prof. Cleopas Angaye, at an interaction program on, “Improving Socioeconomic Development of a Nation Through Qualitative Telecommunications Services,” organised by the Senate Committee on Communications.
In the document, which was released to newsmen, Angaye said the coming together of these two countries will attract other countries, which would enhance the chances of Nigeria being the regional HUB for Internet content in the sub-region and the continent.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, IXPN, Muhammed Rudman, who confirmed the connection with Ghana, told newsmen that the exchange has connected about 45 top organizations in the country.
