Colo in Africa

Wed Jul 17 06:00:29 UTC 2019

On 17/Jul/19 02:32, Joel M Snyder wrote:

>  
> When a lot of people say "Africa," they really mean "South Africa"
> (the small country), and there is great connectivity there---but
> positioning yourself in South Africa doesn't really help you any more
> to get to Ghana (for example) than being in the Netherlands.

I've been dealing with a number of customers that are not investing - as
an initial approach into Africa - in East Africa, mostly Kenya.

So while South Africa seems an obvious choice for a number of reasons,
Kenya is quickly becoming an immediate option to that for operators that
want to kick-start something off in Africa. Also, because South Africa
is most obvious most of the time, a few operators are looking to do
something unique.

>
> If you really are thinking AFRICA as in AFRICA, you probably should
> use an approach that divides it into regions.  You can break it up
> however you want, but if you start with 4 regions (Southern, Northern,
> Western, Eastern/Central) you'll have chunks that actually hold
> together from a telecoms point of view pretty well.

Yes, that's a good place to start.

>
> My best experiences (and these are about 3 years out of date) have
> been in Jo'burg (Southern), Nairobi/Addis (Eastern/Central), Ghana
> (Western), and Egypt (Northern), but there is a lot of interest and a
> lot of progress so getting some ground knowledge would be a good idea.

For East Africa, Mombasa is actually more ideal than Nairobi because you
are close to all the major cable systems, being a coastal city. But most
importantly, because Kenya's 1st carrier-neutral data centre (iColo) is
operational there.

Nairobi is some 5ms - 6ms away, so it's not the end of the world.
However, iColo will also be launching in Nairobi in a few months from now.

>
> The real bandwidth is submarine cables that go up and down the coasts
> --- you can find some maps of these of varying accuracy and quality
> --- while actual E/W and N/S connectivity in the center of the
> continent is much more limited.

SEACOM and EASSy are your main systems on the East. There is the TEAMS
system, but that runs east to Fujairah.

WACS is your main system on the west.

You don't necessarily need to buy capacity on those systems, as there
are a number of operators (including the marine operations, themselves)
that have built IP backbones over those systems.

Google and Facebook are building new cables around Africa over the next
few years as well:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2019/07/03/google-and-facebook-to-build-own-undersea-cables-around-africa/#68e23529de16

Angola Cables launched SACS, which covers the western part of southern
Africa, South America and the southern tips of North America:

https://www.angolacables.co.ao/en/sacs-cable-to-boost-connectivity-in-africa-via-teraco-data-centres/

>
> There are a number of Internet-promoting organizations in Africa---you
> can start with ISOC and Afrinic that sponsor a number of projects
> aimed at increasing capacity there, but you'll find a bunch of people
> trying to do good things.  If you are mostly interested in South
> Africa, there's NAPAfrica and SAFNOG (Southern African equivalent of
> NANOG) as information sources.

AfPIF, iWeek and SAFNOG will all be happening between Mauritius and
Johannesburg week of the 19th and week of the 26th August.

Mark.