ZAPF7: TRANSFORMING SA'S INTERNET LANDSCAPE

The seventh South African Peering Forum (ZAPF7) convened on November 16th, 2023 at the Radisson Blu in Granger Bay, Cape Town, with a strong lineup of speakers and 125 internet engineers committed to transforming the region's internet infrastructure. This initiative was founded eight years ago by Workonline Communications and key host sponsors who have supported the initiative through the years as it has grown in both numbers and standing.

ZAPF7 showcased a collective commitment to improving Southern Africa's internet landscape. The forum sparked discussions, initiated collaborations, and laid the groundwork for ongoing endeavours aimed at transforming the region's digital infrastructure.

As attendees enjoyed a beer at the end of the day, the resonance of shared insights, new perspectives, and collaborative efforts echoed a promising future—a future marked by a more interconnected, robust, and accessible internet landscape for Southern Africa.

Speakers and Insights

Sessions were led by experts in the field, sharing insights on various critical topics:

  • Yolandi Cloete provided a comprehensive update on NAP Africa, highlighting seamless peering arrangements crucial for enhancing internet accessibility across the continent.
  • Edrich de Lange shared updates on INX-ZA, discussing the vital role of community-run Internet exchange points in South Africa and their impact on facilitating optimal traffic routing.
  • Jørgen Grinnes explored the Amazon Peering portal and the transition to 400G, shedding light on strategies to optimize internet traffic through Amazon Web Services (AWS).
  • Caglar Dabanoglu presented Akamai's perspective on hosting a multi-terabit live streaming event in South Africa, emphasizing the importance of robust infrastructure for delivering high-quality streaming experiences.
  • Ben Ryall delved into the impact of subsea cuts on Meta's African Edge Infrastructure, highlighting challenges and solutions for maintaining a reliable internet ecosystem.
  • Bhavesh Mistry enlightened attendees about Taara's innovative approach, focusing on delivering abundant and affordable internet using next-generation wireless optical communication technology.

The day culminated in a stimulating panel discussion highlighting the dearth of young skills in the industry and strong cry for capacity building.  The traditional "Peering Personals" session closed out the day, before Beers for Peers on the deck.

Sponsors and Contributions

ZAPF7 wouldn't have been possible without the generous support of key sponsors dedicated to advancing internet connectivity and infrastructure across the region:

Africa Data Centres, AMS-IX. Amazon Web Services. DE-CIX, Equinix, Flexoptix, INX-ZA, LINX, MikroTikSA , NAPAfrica and Workonline Communications

To learn more about ZAPF, head over to the event website at https://www.zapf.africa/. Join us on this transformative journey as we continue to build a better-connected world, one connection at a time.


MAXIMISING A NETWORK MOTIVATES GROWTH

How an ISP start-up maxxed the big-time, collaboratively

Frustrated as a student, already under pressure from higher education fees, a young Richmond Arthur found that the high costs, and unreliable connectivity at his university were the catalyst to his career.

Richmond is the Founder and CEO of Maxinet, one of Ghana’s leading Internet Service Providers. Richmond’s exasperation with costs and inferior connectivity fuelled his vision to build quality, reliable and affordable internet solutions for his fellow Ghanaian students. The growth in internet penetration in Ghana has steadily grown over the past period, with an estimated 53% of households having Internet access by January 2022. However, access to quality internet is challenging, for both businesses and households.

Richmond started Maxinet in 2018, just a year before graduating from Ghana Technology University with a B Degree in Information Technology. Less than five years on, Maxinet has certainly lived up to its name and its founding vision.

Challenges of a start-up

Along the way, Richmond explains there were some key business lessons in establishing his own ISP. “It didn’t come on a silver platter,” he says. “I had to go through a process of starting up a business – and one of the challenges was the capital. I underestimated the amount of startup capital for sure, and ultimately required more than ten times my initial estimation. Every time I revised it, I needed more – and more.”

The second challenge faced was to build the right infrastructure.

“I had knowledge but not all the expertise to build everything. I found it hard to find the right engineers, and to be able to afford them. I learnt that creating the right team is a process, and that finance and human resource go hand in hand in the beginning.”

Finding partnerships

Maxinet uses the upstream services of Workonline Communications to connect to the global Internet. Workonline is one of the largest IP transit providers in Africa and has a large footprint across West, East and Southern Africa.

When first introduced to Workonline, Richmond and the team hit it off immediately.

“They were the most experienced of all the providers we had considered, and had a very mature, long-term approach to collaborative market growth,” says Richmond. “The Workonline ecosystem is robust and they introduced me to many others already making use of their services. We also tested their services thoroughly and found that they were able to offer the best and fastest routes from and to Ghana, offering the benefits of improved latency while keeping the traffic on the continent instead of sending it to London or Europe for example.”

The partnership between Workonline and Maxinet has grown from strength to strength. Workonline business development manager, Daniel Duah, attributes this to open communications and collaboration between Maxinet and Workonline teams.

Richmond agrees and echoes Daniel’s views. “Since we signed up, we’ve had reliable service, great partnerships, and a deep personal connection. In fact, now we are friends, it’s not just business any more. Once I get that kind of service, it flows downwards to my customers and everyone benefits”

“This collaborative approach has helped me build a better and stronger customer base.”

Independence rules

Being an independent ISP was a significant milestone for Maxinet. Workonline supports and guides their customers through the process of establishing an independent ISP.

Independence in the Internet industry refers to having your own block of unique addresses, issued by Afrinic the African Internet registry, and can be a complex process. The benefits of this are important to downstream customers but often not understood or appreciated. The impact of independence is control over quality - Maxinet can provide the same quality service and speed but at a lesser fee than the larger telco’s charge.

“Without the experience and assistance of the Workonline team, we would have struggled to establish the quality service we are able to provide. Their engineers are world-class and always there when we need them,” adds Richmond.

He adds a story of the early days in the business where Workonline helped negotiate a lower monthly service cost for his base station, protecting Maxinet’s cashflow and helping to grow the long-term viability of the business.

Starting an ISP in a growing and vibrant market like Ghana is often seen as a great business opportunity and with low barriers to entry. Maxinet’s story shows that it can be done if you have the right partners on your side and an appetite for collaboration and independence.


NANOG88 and BEYOND IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

In 2017, Workonline Communications hosted its first Engineers Tour, sending a team of top African network engineers to a conference hosted by the North American Network Operators’ Group (NANOG). June 2023 marked the return of the Workonline Engineers Tour as 10 senior network engineers from across Africa attended NANOG88 in Seattle, Washington, USA, along with participating in roundtable discussions with some of Silicon Valley’s leading tech companies. The goal of the Workonline Tour 2023 was to allow our engineers to network with other professionals, share the value of the largely untapped African market, and once they returned, share what they learned with their respective communities. Social media support was provided to boost awareness of the tour before, during and after the trip to Seattle.

Co-sponsored by FLEXOPTIX, the Workonline Tour was created with the purpose of exposing top African network engineers to cutting-edge technologies currently in use by leading companies, as well as building their professional networks and sharing the value of the African telecom market. Event attendance and special meetings with companies in Seattle gave the engineers a remarkable opportunity to be introduced to some of the best minds in the business. Workonline believes the knowledge gained from the Engineers Tour will enable the participants to develop the internet ecosystem in Africa upon the trip’s completion.

The 2023 tour, dubbed #WorkonlineTour_2023 across social media, kicked off on June 11 as senior network engineers from South Africa, Uganda, Burkina Faso and Rwanda arrived in Seattle. NANOG88 took place from June 12 through June 14, allowing the team to network with top industry professionals and attend events, panels and more for three full days.

While NANOG ended on Wednesday, June 14, #WorkonlineTour_2023 continued. June 15 and 16 saw the team meeting with multiple tech companies in the Seattle metropolitan area, including AWS, Fastly, SpaceX, Meta, Google and Microsoft. After nearly a week in Seattle, the engineers departed the city on June 17.

Workonline Communications posted regular social media updates about #WorkonlineTour_2023 through the company’s official Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn channels, attracting over 6,000 impressions across platforms. The coverage began the week before NANOG88 and continued throughout the week after the team had returned to Africa.

Overall, #WorkonlineTour_2023 was successful both in terms of team member development and social media promotion. One attendee of the tour shared insights into their experience with Workonline and the trip to Seattle:

“I appreciate Workonline for the initiative and support in the recently concluded tour. The tour has brought insight on how other companies have emerged to the level they are on now. My company will learn from their history to get to where we want to be in the near future.

Having had discussions with Google and SpaceX specifically will enable my company to engage them directly to see how we can optimize existing services.”


AFRICA REGIONAL OPERATOR OF THE YEAR

Carrier Community hosted its exclusive CC-Global Awards (CCGA) ceremony in June, attracting over 200 members who joined the prestigious event. Held at the renowned Metropol venue in Berlin on June 27th, the 7th annual CCGA celebrated the exceptional accomplishments of leading telecommunications companies from around the world.

Among the recipients of the CC-Global Awards was Workonline Communications, awarded as the Africa Regional Operator of the Year. This recognition acknowledges their outstanding contributions and innovations within the telecommunications sector, independently evaluated by a panel of telecom analysts and industry experts.

The event, featuring over 50 categories and 40 deserving winners, attracted significant attention with more than 200 physical and virtual participants. A live broadcast ensured that those unable to attend the ceremony at Metropol Berlin could still partake in the experience.

The occasion served as a unifying platform, honoring exceptional accomplishments within the industry and recognizing the finest players. Workonline Communications' achievement stood out among notable accolades, showcasing the company's dedication and impact within the African telecommunications landscape.

Expressing her delight, Wida Schmidt, the CEO of CC, conveyed her gratitude to all the attendees who contributed to the success of the CC-Global Awards Ceremony 2023 (CCGA). She remarked on the joy of celebrating remarkable achievements and industry innovations, specifically highlighting Workonline Communications' outstanding win as the Africa Regional Operator of the Year.

“I want to extend a big THANK YOU to everyone who joined our CC-Global Awards Ceremony 2023 (CCGA) last night and supported us in making this happen,” said Wida Schmidt.


EMPOWERING LOCAL INNOVATION

In a market where small Internet Service Providers (ISPs) often struggle to compete and expand their services, Lifi.net, a rising ISP based in Nigeria, has crushed the barriers to growth through a strategic partnership with Workonline Communications. Renowned as one of the largest IP transit networks in Africa, Workonline has actively supported the development of the African internet market. IP transit is a service that enables ISPs to connect to the global internet and exchange traffic with other networks.

Lifi.net's remarkable journey serves as a prime example of how collaboration with industry leaders can pave the way for smaller players to thrive and flourish in the ever-evolving internet landscape.

LiFi.net provides high-speed internet connectivity to individuals and businesses in Lagos. The company was established in 2018 and is headed by CEO, Abraham Oluwambe.

Abraham Oluwambe is passionate about providing reliable internet connectivity to Nigerians, which he believes is crucial to the country's development. Having experienced first-world connectivity when he trained  in both London and the United States, his vision was to replicate the same back home, and bridge the digital divide in Nigeria by providing affordable and high-speed internet services to all.

LiFi.net started by reselling internet connectivity from other ISPs, and began to grow by connecting organisations and multinationals. However, Oluwambe and his team aspired to expand further and explored the market in a quest to offer better services.

Realising that their reseller business model would not scale to support such growth, they sought assistance from Workonline Communications.

Abraham Oluwambe explains: “We found we were at a point where providing internet access alone was not enough. We wanted to be in control of the routing of our internet packets and keep traffic in Nigeria. However, we were hamstrung by the number of hops our traffic had to take, with each hop costing quality and time – and we were at the mercy of the ISPs who provided us with bandwidth, both in terms of price and quality of service.

“As a an experienced wholesale provider, Workonline, have an extensive pan-African and global footprint, and  could connect us to all the Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) already on their network. This reduced our latency to some key content and websites. Workonline helped us to aquire our own block of IP addresses through Afrinic, the African Internet Registry, with their guidance. All of these are prerequisites to cross-connect and peer traffic with local and global service providers.

“In a matter of a months, we were able to peer with other providers and effectively eliminated buffering,” adds Mr. Oluwambe. LiFi.net peers at IXPN, The Internet Exchange Point Of Nigeria.  IXPN is ranked the third largest internet exchange point in Africa by traffic. It was created to reduce connectivity costs in millions of dollars in offshore internet bandwidth payments and reduce latency for local content.

Head of Business Development for the Workonline Group, Benjamin Deveaux, explains the process that they helped LiFi.net navigate. “By obtaining a licence with the Nigerian Communications Commission, an AS number and an IP block, an ISP is able to optimise their traffic routing – either locally or internationally.“

Workonline has presence across Africa including Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, and was the first African wholesale IP transit provider to deploy Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) Origin Validation (OV) to improve the security of Internet routing in 2019.

“Workonline used their market experience and technical expertise to guide us. It's been an incredible journey,” says Oluwambe.

Looking to the future, Abraham  Oluwambe is optimistic of his vision to expand the company’s success, and to taking the company further into East and Southern Africa. Workonline’s network architecture will make this easier as their footprint across Africa includes South, East and West African points of presence.

"We've come a long way, but there's still so much to be done. Our goal is to continue expanding our services, reaching more Africans and empowering them with the tools they need to succeed in the digital age."


THIRD POP ESTABLISHED IN KENYA

Mombasa, Kenya

Workonline Communications, the wholesale internet provider company, has launched its third core Point-of-Presence (PoP) in Mombasa, Kenya.

The additional PoP, housed in the carrier-neutral iColo datacentre in Mombasa, brings an important new addition to the IP Transit options available in the datacentre to content distribution networks, cloud networks, and internet service providers.

Workonline is recognized for its long term vision of deploying equipment capable of delivering up to 100 Gbps services at each of its core PoPs. Further to this, Workonline has continued to invest in its Kenyan network, and now connects its two PoPs in Mombasa to its PoP in Nairobi over the four most reliable routes, which in turn enables Workonline to provide the most reliable remote peering services, Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL), Ethernet Private Line (EPL), and IP Transit services in the market today.

Workonline (AS 37271), founded in 2006, is one of the largest IP transit networks in Africa. The company established its first PoP in Kenya in 2017, and is continually expanding its infrastructure across both East and West Africa.

In early 2019, Workonline Communications became the first African network to deploy Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) Route Origin Validation (ROV) to improve the security of Internet routing in Africa, and Workonline’s engineers continue to assist other networks in Africa in implementing RPKI ROV.

“We’re committed to keeping traffic local and building a better Internet in Africa, with Africa – and supporting secure, efficient, on-continent networks,” says Benjamin Deveaux, Head of Business Development at Workonline Group.

iColo’s CEO, Ranjith Cherickel explains that Workonline’s PoP is a welcome boost for ensuring that more citizens and, as a result, small businesses can come online and enjoy the benefit of world-class internet. “We are proud to partner with Workonline Communications to offer this experience.”

ENDS

About Workonline Communications Group

Workonline (AS 37271) is one of the largest and the fastest growing IP transit networks in Africa. The company is focused on providing highly scalable, high quality, and flexible service options to meet the needs of carriers, Internet Service Providers, content providers, and mobile operators.

Twitter: www.twitter.com/wolcomm

Facebook www.facebook.com/WorkonlineCommunications

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/workonline-communications

Website: www.workonline.africa/news

Email: bizdev@workonline.africa

 About iColo: A Digital Realty Company

 iColo: A Digital Realty Company designs, builds, and operates state of the art carrier neutral data centres in Kenya and Mozambique to serve a broad spectrum of clients – telecom carriers, ISPs and peering points, IT and cloud providers, content providers, enterprise, and financial services customers. As part of Digital Realty’s data center platform, PlatformDIGITAL®, the company enables customers with a global connected data community of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 27 countries on six continents. For more information, please visit www.icolo.io or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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NEW POINT-OF-PRESENCE IN NIGERIA

Workonline Communications, one of the largest IP network providers in Africa, has launched its first Point of Presence (PoP) in Nigeria, further enhancing the group’s West African presence.

The new megaPoP went live late last year, ready to provide 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps services at Rack Centre in Lagos, West Africa’s best-connected datacentre. This adds to the growing list of African markets in which the company manages megaPoPs including Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa.

Workonline’s presence will allow content distribution networks, and internet service providers with stringent quality needs to deploy in Nigeria, and will help those already in-country to keep African traffic in Africa.

Benjamin Deveaux, Head of Business Development at Workonline Group explains: “When content providers deploy in a market, they can reduce the time it takes to load the content they serve over the internet. Although many content networks have now deployed in parts of Africa, there is still around 80% of Africa’s internet capacity which goes back to Europe where the content is hosted. Workonline is on a mission to help Africa keep traffic on the continent to increase the quality for the user and develop the African internet economy.”

Workonline (AS 37271), founded in 2006, is one of the fastest-growing IP transit networks in Africa. The company specializes in providing wholesale IP transit (IPT), remote peering, and Layer 2 Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) services.

Jasper Lankhorst, Group CEO of Rack Centre, welcomed Workonline to its carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre which has earned several ISO certificates including ISO 27001, the global information security quality standard. Since its inception in 2013, Rack Centre has maintained a 100% uptime and offers its customers 100% neutral access and uncapped interconnect capacities.

In early 2019, Workonline Communications became the first African wholesale IP transit provider to deploy Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) Origin Validation (OV) to improve the security of internet routing. Workonline is also an active member of the Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) operator community, and was the first African network to implement all four of the MANRS routing manifesto actions. These MANRS routing manifesto actions are a commitment by a network to provide the highest feasible levels of security, stability and performance for interconnectivity with other network operators.

 


IP TRANSIT SERVICES EXPAND TO EAST LONDON, ZA

New Point of Presence at East London Datacentre

One of the largest IP transit providers on the African continent, Workonline Communications Group, has deployed its seventh South African Point of Presence (PoP) at the East London Industrial Development Zone Datacentre (ELIDZ DC). This is Workonline’s first edge datacentre, that brings about a 25% improvement in latency for clients between Cape Town and Durban. The facility is located within the ELIDZ’s secure primary zone in Sunnyridge, East London.

Clyde Bow, Business Development Manager at Workonline, explains that the new PoP will have two benefits. The first is redundancy, as it adds a third route between Cape Town and Durban for more established Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who need an elastic and scalable connectivity solution between multiple datacentres. The second is to help grow the internet ecosystem by enabling smaller ISPs in the Eastern Cape area, to gain access to quality local and global internet routes at a reduced cost, eliminating the need for inter-datacentre connectivity. In both cases, these ISPs can scale between 100Mbps and 100Gbps and have increased commercial flexibility in their offerings.

The ELIDZ’s datacentre, coupled with Workonline’s PoP, is a critical failover and redundancy route for IP transit and Ethernet Private Line services (EPL) from Durban to Johannesburg, and supporting routes for Cape Town too. Some of the reasons for choosing the ELIDZ’s datacentre was the failover measures in place, the quality of the interconnects, and the assurance of full redundancy during loadshedding, which is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

“The new PoP will create a new Internet ecosystem, helping build redundancy for those who already have links between Durban and Johannesburg, or Cape Town. This will also bring more internet traffic into East London, helping boost the economy.”

The datacentre already provides services to a variety of sectors in the Zone, including automotive, agro processing, logistics and manufacturing. It offers access to leading network, cloud and IT providers through its incubation and innovation initiatives.

“Through offering this PoP, Workonline is helping build our ICT ecosystem and providing services to our investors and tenants as well as helping encourage new companies into the Zone, thus creating jobs and growing the local economy,” says Simphiwe Kondlo, ELIDZ Chief Executive Officer.

About 1,000 jobs will be directly and indirectly created through the new PoP as people connect to the internet and more companies are encouraged to build offerings in the Zone. “One of our customers is even enabling fibre to the shack connections,” says Bow.

“By adding a further fully-fledged PoP in South Africa, we can deliver latency improvements and support better end-user experience for Internet Service Providers using our network. The increased network capacity will provide better connectivity options to meet the demanding network requirements from the Eastern Cape through to KwaZulu Natal,” says Bow.


ECOBAND EXPANDS PRESENCE INTO SOUTH AFRICA

Johannesburg and Accra, 09 February 2022 

Leading Tier-2 Internet Service Provider Ecoband Networks has chosen Workonline Communications Group, one of the largest IP transit providers on the African continent, to expand their footprint into South Africa.

The agreement will benefit Ecoband's customers, including those in West Africa, allowing for lower latency – of around 66ms between Cape Town and Accra.  The better-quality performance, with a more attractive commercial model, is in high demand from enterprises on the continent.  The move also supports the objective of African network operators to keep Internet traffic destined for the African continent, on the African continent.

As many content networks have now deployed in South Africa, the country is a critical hub providing access to the same content networks which can be reached in Europe. This means that should the Ecoband routes to Europe fail, their customers will be able to seamlessly access the same content in South Africa.

By leveraging Workonline’s highly interconnected South African network, Ecoband customers will enjoy the most efficient routes possible to key Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and cloud computing platforms, housed in South Africa. The key peering points will be in Johannesburg at NAPAfrica and JINX.

Head of Interconnection and Peering at NAPAfrica, Michele McCann, commented on the move: “We are excited to have Ecoband Networks join the NAPAfrica community.  Currently at NAPAfrica IXP there are over 530 networks connected servicing 26 different African countries.  With Ecoband connecting to NAPAfrica, Ghana, DR Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Mali will have access to key content and cloud providers such as Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, and more.“

Ecoband International says that the move is made on the back of their successful experience with Workonline in Ghana. “Workonline has provided the best uptime of any of our upstream providers. Their network has proven to be the most stable, and with physical presence and engineering support, they are actively involved in local Internet growth. It’s important to us to have an African IP transit provider who is committed to keeping traffic local without degrading the quality of service,” says Alexander Sulzberger, CEO of Ecoband Networks.

Workonline offers high capacity, low-latency and high stability IP transit and connectivity services up to speeds of 100Gbps at all major Internet hubs across sub-Saharan Africa.  The pan-African nature of Workonline’s network allows them to keep traffic on the continent (without necessarily routing it via Europe or other continents), whilst ensuring the most optimal path when delivering traffic outside the continent.

“This is another important step towards increasing the quality of intra-African traffic whilst keeping traffic on the continent. Ecoband Networks is a great example of how it is possible to build an African-born world-class network,” says Benjamin Deveaux, Head of Business Development for Workonline Group.

 

Ends

 

About Ecoband Networks

Ecoband Networks (AS327814) is a Tier-2 Internet Service Provider and Data Network Operator with points of presence in Abidjan, Accra, Lome, Johannesburg, in Africa as well as London and Paris in Europe. We are peering with African and international operators at several Internet Exchange points and have interconnect agreements with global Tier-1 carriers at our POPs where Ecoband also offers co-location and hosted Cloud services.

Peering DB: https://as327814.peeringdb.com

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ecoband.net

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ecoband-networks

Website: https://www.ecoband.net

Email: info@ecoband.net

 

 

About Workonline Communications Group

Workonline (AS 37271) is one of the largest and the fastest growing IP transit networks in Africa. The company is focused on providing highly scalable, high quality and flexible service options to meet the needs of carriers, Internet service providers, content providers and mobile operators.

Twitter: www.twitter.com/wolcomm

Facebook www.facebook.com/WorkonlineCommunications

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/workonline-communications

Website: www.workonline.africa/news

Email: bizdev@workonline.africa

 

 


ECOBAND AND WORKONLINE COLLABORATE IN WEST AFRICA

Johannesburg and Accra, 7 July 2021 -  Ghana’s Internet ecosystem has received a welcome boost from a collaboration with leading local player, Ecoband Networks and Workonline Communications, one of the largest IP transit providers on the African continent.

Workonline, a wholesale provider of Internet connectivity services, announced its presence in Ghana last year, just as the number of Internet users in Ghana breached 15 million in the country.   Ecoband were chosen by Workonline as a provider of dark fibre infrastructure services to assist with Workonline’s connection from its point of presence at PAIX to the cable landing station.

West Africa’s demand for faster, cheaper, and better access to quality content has grown exponentially of late. The past year of lockdowns and the change in work style has increased the need for high quality Internet in the country. Latency and a lack of locally hosted content are ongoing issues. When content providers deploy in a market, latency (or the time it takes to load and retrieve information on the Internet) is reduced.  Although many content networks have now deployed in South Africa, it is still currently estimated that around 80% of Africa’s Internet capacity goes back to Europe where the content is hosted.

This being said, the future for West Africa looks bright as more data centres and content networks are investing in Ghana.  Locally served content also assists in the reduction of the cost of Internet services, and in so doing, positively impacts economic growth.  Notably, PAIX operates Ghana’s leading carrier-neutral data centre, with the highest concentration of networks and is coincidentally where the Workonline and Ecoband networks meet.

Workonline offers high capacity, low-latency and high stability IP transit and connectivity services up to speeds of 100Gbps at all major Internet hubs across sub-Saharan Africa.  The pan-African nature of Workonline’s network allows them to keep local traffic in the continent (without necessarily routing it via Europe or other continents), whilst ensuring the most optimal path when delivering traffic outside the continent.

The benefits are passed on directly to Ecoband’s customers as they can now access additional, more efficient routes in Africa.  These rewards scale across the entire Ecoband network including Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Togo.

“Our drive is to find ways of continually improving the Internet ecosystem in West Africa,” says Eric Gbeho, CEO of Ecoband. “In delivering a world-class quality experience, Ecoband carefully selects providers that can deliver the very best in connectivity solutions.  Teaming up with Workonline has opened the door to improved access and experience for our customers, whilst driving down costs.   Workonline’s innovative approach to a symbiotic business model will help us continue to grow and improve the African Internet ecosystem together,” he adds.

“West Africa, and indeed Ghana, is an important focus for us to extend the reach of our network and support our mission of further developing a robust pan-African Internet ecosystem,” says Benjamin Deveaux, Head of Business Development for Workonline Group.  “We’re pleased to have partnered with a pivotal player like Ecoband to help us achieve this  mission.”

Ends

 About Ecoband Networks

Ecoband (AS 328914) is an ISP and Data Network Operator founded in 2001, servicing customers in Ghana and the surrounding francophone countries in West Africa with reliable connectivity solutions.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ecoband-networks

Website: www.ecoband.net

Email: info@ecoband.net