Lex van Wyk, managing director at Teraco says that from an initial exchange of 64Mbps, NAPAfrica is now reaching volumes over 300Mbps, which equates to a massive 368% increase. "With partners as substantial as MWEB joining the fold, I imagine growth over the next few months will match if not surpass the growth we have seen since launch." In the month since launch, NAPAfrica has effectively saved Teraco clients a combined R200 000 on their bandwidth usage.
Derek Hershaw, CEO of MWEB ISP says that they took the decision to support NAPAfrica due to the fact that it is the first and only free peering facility that aims to reduce ISPs operational costs and more importantly, that it is hosted in a neutral facility. "By simplifying the peering process and giving easy access to high speed, low-latency connections in an ISP neutral facility, NAPAfrica is reducing overall operational costs allowing ISPs to stay afloat in the current economic conditions, and pass the overall savings on to their customers," Hershaw says.
Open peering allows for partners to interconnect freely, reducing costs for them and their clients, increasing network redundancy and routing flexibility. However, a further opportunity exists for peering partners to now have the ability to share and freely onward sell services to new markets for which NAP provides the platform.
"Multi-lateral peering is unique to NAPAfrica in South Africa and offers partners access to an immediately visible and ever growing network of peers with just one peering session. With key network peering partners including WBS, Cell C, MWEB, and Web Africa to name a few we would like to invite other carriers, ISP's and content providers to join us and enjoy free, open peering that will ultimately decrease the cost of internet transit and ensure complete simplification of the process," concludes Van Wyk.
