Telecommunications carrier CMC Networks and Teraco have collaborated to improve connectivity and increase the percentage of content hosted within the continent.
Teraco is one of the largest carrier and cloud neutral data centers in Africa, and in this partnership, CMC Networks will tap into Teraco’s Africa Cloud Exchange so as to provide a direct connection within the continent, without the need for international transit.
Local content exchange has remained low in Africa, with most people preferring to host internationally. The Internet Society has engaged local internet communities with the vision of increasing local content hosting to 80 percent.
Europe and the US have been cited as favorable hosting destinations with people citing Africa’s unreliable power, lack of hosting providers and poor intercity connectivity as part of the reasons for hosting abroad.
The partnership between Teraco and CMC will increase the percentage of content hosted within the continent and smoothen intercountry content exchange, without the need for international transit.
“By providing the essential building blocks, the Africa Cloud Exchange greatly assists us to provide our customers with the most direct and best possible cloud experience across the continent with stringent service levels to suit,” said Marisa Trisolino, CEO, CMC Networks.
Teraco has data centers in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban, which have more than 5000 cabinets connecting over 50 African countries. Teraco says it is serving more than 400 of Africa’s growing companies, and this partnership is expected to make communication easier between the countries.
“We believe the nature of the Africa Cloud Exchange will encourage and lead to increased cloud innovation. It is an outstanding platform and will support us to achieve our strategic cloud objective, which centers on solving cross-border cloud connectivity problems throughout Africa,” Trisolino added.
Andrew Owens, peering and interconnection specialist at Teraco says Multi Cloud Connect will offer a better cloud experience to users by reducing network latency, scaling on demand, and ultimately lowering network costs.
“We empower our carrier communities to do more in the cloud by providing secure, direct, flexible network connections to a wide range of local and global cloud service providers,” Owens said.
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