Internet experts to discuss Interconnection issues

The high cost of Internet connectivity in Kenya and rest of Africa will be the key agenda for an Internet experts meeting in Johannesburg beginning Wednesday this week. 

Internet engineers, infrastructure and service providers, Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) coordinators, regulators, and policy makers will meet in the South African city to examine why connectivity is still expensive despite the influx of fiber optic cables that have been laid all over Africa. 

The three-day annual Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) shall explore ways to share content faster without incurring costs through interconnection. 

AfPIF facilitates discussions on infrastructure challenges, including terrestrial capacity issues, national and regional IXP development, local content development, and international peering. 

The forum also provides a venue for productive technical discussions and business relationships that can be forged to augment Internet infrastructure and services in Africa. 

“AfPIF has established itself as a strategic event for conducting business in Africa,” said Dawit Bekele, Internet Society Regional Bureau Director for Africa. “This year, we’ve added even more opportunities for business connections to be made and agreements to be negotiated." 

The opportunities for business connections has become very vital after ISPs and content providers indicated that the business case for local peering was not very clear and some companies needed training to identify new business models that would allow them to be more competitive. 

"It is still difficult for some in developing countries to understand how people can make money with the internet, especially with the network infrastructure," said Adiel Akplogan, CEO at AfriNIC, one of the African organizations supporting training for ISPs. 

Global transit providers allow ISPs to buy internet capacity in bulk, lowering the overall costs.

Because Africa has shortage of local traffic (from one local ISP to another), some ISPs find the cost of routing capacity internationally cheaper, because it is lumped up and the more the capacity, the lesser the cost. 

A recent study by Analysys Mason showed that local exchange of internet content in Kenya and Nigeria allowed ISPs to save $2.5 million per year.

The study, commissioned by ISOC, found that ISPs and content providers have been able to reduce connectivity costs largely because of local interconnection, commonly known as "peering". The research is titled: "Assessment of the impact of Internet Exchange Points- Empirical study of Kenya and Nigeria." 

The issue of local content has been debated in Kenya, indeed, the government and the World Bank have a $3million kitty targeting local content generation but after three years of grant making to individuals, corporations and community organizations, the country is yet to develop sufficient local content. 

"The Kenya Revenue Authority is probably the best example of how government agencies can offer efficient services by peering at the Kenya Internet Exchange Point, most transactions such as import and export services, tax and PIN applications are faster because there is no international connection, KRA exchanges content directly with other ISPs and content providers in Kenya," said Michuki Mwangi, CTO at KIXP.

KIXP currently exchanges 1Gigabit per second during peak time traffic, reducing latencies from 200-600ms on average to 2-10ms. International transit providers charge $300 per Mbps, and according to the report, ISPs in Kenya have been able to save $1.5 million by exchanging the traffic locally.

The meeting will bring together organizations such as Amsterdam Internet Exchange, London Internet Exchange, Netnod, Google, Akamai, Liquid Telecom, SEACOM, Arbor networks, Hurricane Electric, AfriNIC, Teraco, and dotAfrica among other organizations.