In the last two years, investigations have shown serious improvement in the hosting of contents in the country with the advent of commercial data centre operators like MainOne, Rack centre and Medallion. The trio had also achieved Tier 111 certification.
In an interview, managing director, Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), Mohammed Rudman, noted that massive growth in data companies and additional inflow of allied investments in recent years in areas of content provisioning and distribution network to Nigeria are changing the narrative in international data exchange points
Rudman noted that “by the end of this year these big internet content provider and distribution network will be in the country”.
“When they are fully connected to the exchange point, it means that for Nigerians to access their content will be easier as they don’t need to go through international links again. More so, local content providers in the country can also be assisted by the content distribution network to distribute such content outside of the country and make money from it,” he said.
However, he called on local content providers who host their servers outside of the country to consider relocating them in other to boost local traffic and save money for the country.
Before now, government and stakeholders have been making efforts to encourage hosting of local content locally in order to make local internet traffic local.
Recently, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) issued an order mandating MDAs to relocate their website servers to the country to boost local internet traffic.
IXPN boss added that “Media and entertainment contents are generated locally but hosted abroad. The day we experience cut to undersea cable infrastructure that links Nigeria to the outside world, we won’t have access to those content which are generated here and are meant for Nigerians”.
Giving more insights to IXPN position, head of engineering at Seacom, Mark Tinka, said about 80 percent of Africa’s Internet traffic comes out of Europe.
Seacom is a submarine cable operator with a network of submarine and terrestrial high-speed fibre-optic cable that serves the east and west coasts of Africa.
According to him, “Most African Internet users tend to get much more of their content from Europe than from the US. Seacom’s dream is to one day be able to keep the majority of traffic on the continent, thereby reducing the amount of money Africa spends on transporting traffic to Europe. That will also help to drive more Internet penetration in Africa because of a reduction in cost of business”.
