African telecoms providers have stepped up the rollout of content delivery networks (CDNs), allowing faster access to key web resources as well as lower latencies, according to infrastructure firm SEACOM.
The company said this will mark the next phase in the development of Africa’s internet infrastructure that will see more content and services brought closer to end-users.
“Over the past six years, we have seen a great deal of activity in Africa’s telecom market as providers have invested in infrastructure such as carrier-neutral data centres, open peering internet exchange points, national and regional fibre links and submarine cables,” said Mark Tinka, head of engineering at SEACOM.
“The next step will be to host more content within Africa rather than in Europe and the US – 90 per cent of African internet content is hosted outside the continent today. We’d like to see that figure reversed so that 80 or 90 per cent of content is hosted within Africa.”
SEACOM, said it offers operators and networks the ability to use the content and caching nodes, allowing content to be brought closer to the end-user. These accelerate and optimise file downloads, video and music playback, software updates and other web content requested for by operators and Internet service providers connected to a telecom network.
“In addition to bringing content from American and European content owners closer to end-users, CDN’s will make it more viable for African content owners to host their content within the continent,” said Tinka.
“Many content owners currently host their content in Europe or the US because regional links between many African countries are of relatively poor quality. Now they can bring it back to Africa.”
