Angola Cables will peer at Teraco's Internet Exchange Point (IXP), NAPAfrica, as it expands its network reach and peering capabilities across the globe.
The telecoms operator's strategy is to become a major IP transit and MPLS player in Sub-Saharan Africa. Angola Cables IP product manager Darwin Costa says the group and the Angolan government are working to build Angola into a major telecommunications hub.
"It is vital to ensure the African traffic remains within the continent, and at the same time customers are guaranteed improved Internet connectivity."
He says another aim is to enable "super-fast" access to Europe from SA, via its main hub in Lisbon and the European ring network.
This follows Angola Cables' announcement at AfricaCom 2016 in November that it planned to use Teraco as a co-location partner to deploy its first direct point-of-presence in SA and grow its IP services in the SADC region.
NAPAfrica is Africa's largest IXP, with over 240 unique connected networks and 140Gbps peering traffic, and provides peering across Sub-Saharan Africa from Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Since its launch in 2012, it has become one of the top 20 largest global IXPs by membership.
Costa says NAPAfrica is the most complete IXP across the African continent.
"We believe that by combining strengths, Angola Cables...will be able to provide links to and from SA from Angola, as well as to Brazil and the US, once the South Atlantic Cable System is in operation."
Teraco's business development manager, Michele McCann, says the partnership will undoubtedly increase interconnection between Angola and the rest of the world.
"This is not simply about peering; the collaboration will impact Internet connectivity across several countries and improve the services of Angola Cables as well as create a platform for the country to compete on a global stage. Through our peering exchange and neutral platform, we can link Angola and its neighbouring countries, as well as connecting South and North America with the hub in SA," adds McCann.
Tier one operators are yet to successfully focus on the African continent and Costa says peering with NAPAfrica enables Angola Cables to reduce latency and increase bandwidth throughput. He says this will increase overall connectivity performance on the continent.
"We want to use peering as a tool to keep traffic paths local and throughput as high as possible. The majority of traffic, for and in Africa, does still travel outside the continent, and with peering we have the ability to change this in order for customers to derive the most benefit," says Costa.
"By providing customers with stable Internet connectivity, Angola Cables is able to directly impact the growth of the digital Angolan economy, as well as other countries where it is an operator," adds Costa.
He says peering at NAPAfrica has helped the company to "think bigger in terms of the role Angola Cables can play in the overall improvement of the Internet across Africa".
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