Nigeria's Internet exchange set to come on stream
Jonah Iboma
A national Internet Exchange Point that will facilitate the keeping of local internet traffic within the country’s telecom network is set to become operational following the completion of work on the facility to provide the service.
Our correspondent gathered at the 5th International Nigeria Telecommunications Forum in Abuja Wednesday that about N30m had been spent on the project and a formal commissioning by the President Olusegun Obasanjo is being planned for early October.
President of the Internet Service Providers Association of Nigeria, Mr. Samuel Adeleke, who revealed this in an interview with our correspondent, said that the project by keeping local internet within the shores of the country, would lead to a reduction of investment operators commit to international bandwidth, especially Internet service providers and telecommunications operators.
An exchnage otherwise called as IXP, is a physical infrastructure that allows different ISPs to exchange Internet traffic between their autonomous networks by means of mutual peering agreements, which allow traffic to be exchanged without cost. IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via their upstream transit providers President Obasanjo had directed the establishment of the point in 2005 during the second phase of World Summit of Information Society in Tunisis, when it became clear that the absence of such a point was responsible for the high cost of internet access in the african continent.
Adeleke noted that telecom operators would particularly benefit from the project as many of them can carry their local traffic through the internet using voice over internet protocol and subsequently spend less on transmission of local calls.
Accordingly, he stated, the cost of local calls could come down to about the same level as we have in the international arena.
“As you know, it costs more for calls to be made within Nigeria than when than to the United States. This is because operators are using voice over internet protocol. With the IXP, we should see the cost of local calls falling as well.
Adeleke said that the as a national project, the IXP will have seven branches located namely in Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu, Port-Harcourt, Abuja, Maiduguri and Kano. He said within each of these branches there would also be local connection points, which would all be connected to together.
According to him about four firms were already connected to the exchange and that live tests of data transmission was being done currently, advising that firms who need the service, especially internet Service providers need not wait for the commissioning before coming forward to be connected to it.
A national Internet Exchange Point that will facilitate the keeping of local internet traffic within the country’s telecom network is set to become operational following the completion of work on the facility to provide the service.
Our correspondent gathered at the 5th International Nigeria Telecommunications Forum in Abuja Wednesday that about N30m had been spent on the project and a formal commissioning by the President Olusegun Obasanjo is being planned for early October.
President of the Internet Service Providers Association of Nigeria, Mr. Samuel Adeleke, who revealed this in an interview with our correspondent, said that the project by keeping local internet within the shores of the country, would lead to a reduction of investment operators commit to international bandwidth, especially Internet service providers and telecommunications operators.
An exchnage otherwise called as IXP, is a physical infrastructure that allows different ISPs to exchange Internet traffic between their autonomous networks by means of mutual peering agreements, which allow traffic to be exchanged without cost. IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via their upstream transit providers President Obasanjo had directed the establishment of the point in 2005 during the second phase of World Summit of Information Society in Tunisis, when it became clear that the absence of such a point was responsible for the high cost of internet access in the african continent.
Adeleke noted that telecom operators would particularly benefit from the project as many of them can carry their local traffic through the internet using voice over internet protocol and subsequently spend less on transmission of local calls.
Accordingly, he stated, the cost of local calls could come down to about the same level as we have in the international arena.
“As you know, it costs more for calls to be made within Nigeria than when than to the United States. This is because operators are using voice over internet protocol. With the IXP, we should see the cost of local calls falling as well.
Adeleke said that the as a national project, the IXP will have seven branches located namely in Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu, Port-Harcourt, Abuja, Maiduguri and Kano. He said within each of these branches there would also be local connection points, which would all be connected to together.
According to him about four firms were already connected to the exchange and that live tests of data transmission was being done currently, advising that firms who need the service, especially internet Service providers need not wait for the commissioning before coming forward to be connected to it.
Comments