Proposed Raxio exchange point to streamline Uganda’s Internet traffic

April 7, 2020 in Business, Communications, Companies, Infrastructure, Technology & Telecoms by Editor

UXIP Executive Director, Spencer says the deal will make the Internet significantly cheaper, faster, and more reliable for local users.

Raxio Data Centre and the Uganda Internet Exchange Point (UIXP) have signed an agreement that will expand the UIXP’s peering network into the country’s first Tier-III carrier neutral data centre.

Peering is a process by which two Internet networks connect and exchange traffic. It allows them to directly hand off traffic between each other’s customers, without having to pay a third party to carry that traffic across the Internet for them.

“This deal represents a significant milestone in the development of Uganda’s Internet ecosystem. Internet exchange points have a symbiotic relationship with carrier neutral data centers. Our deployment in Raxio will catalyze a virtuous cycle of growth that will make the Internet significantly cheaper, faster, and more reliable,” Kyle Spencer, the Executive Director of the UIXP said in a recent statement.

UIXP is a private not-for-profit company founded in 2001 with the goal of improving Internet connectivity within Uganda. Recent projections are that the Africa data centre market is likely to expand at a compound annual growth rate of around 14% during the period 2018 – 2024. This growth is driven by rapid digitization of the African economy, an increasing wave of ICT infrastructure deployments, a growing youth population, and a rising middle class

UIXP currently interconnects 28 networks which exchange over 10 gigabits of Internet traffic on a daily basis. This deal will make all of them reachable from the proposed Raxio Data Centre with a single cross-connect on day one. It will also enable network operators to peer at multiple locations within the country.

The Centre’s General Manager James Byaruhanga said, “This partnership with the UIXP will provide a scalable, robust, and highly available alternative location for telco, ISP, carriers, parastatals, content delivery networks, and corporate enterprises to peer with each other and exchange local Internet traffic/content without breaking out to the global internet. This lowers the overall cost of network service delivery, improves routing efficiency, and increases fault-tolerance.”

The Centre, being built in the Namanve on the outskirts of central Kampala, will house around 400 racks and be able to provide 1.5 MW of IT power to ensure the equipment housed within operates optimally, 24/7, in a fully safe, secure and redundant environment. Raxio Data Centre in Uganda is one of five data centres being constructed in Africa by First Brick Holdings with plans underway to break ground in Ghana and Ethiopia.

Officials said this move by Raxio Data Centre expands the growing portfolio of competitive connectivity options that will be available within its facility. Unlike data centres which are owned by network operators, Raxio’s neutral ownership has a direct incentive to offer its customers the widest possible array of service providers. This ensures that they do not get locked into a specific vendor, and that pricing will be as competitive as possible.