IXPN: Lack of Collaboration Triggered Infrastructure Duplication, High Cost of Internet Service

Emma Okonji

Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), the platform enabling direct interconnectivity of networks within Nigeria, has raised concern over the current duplication of infrastructure and the high cost of internet service in the country, and blamed the situation on lack of collaboration among operators.  

The Chief Executive Officer of IXPN, Mr. Muhammed Rudman, who raised the concern at a recent workshop organised by IXPN and Africa Data Centres (ADC) in collaboration with Workonline Communications, said there could be lots of benefits associated with collaboration among operators, peering in carrier and cloud-neutral data centres and the hosting of content locally in Nigeria, if operators could collaborate among themselves. He therefore advised operators on the need to collaborate. 

According to Rudman, there is a lack of collaboration between the various operators in the ecosystem, which has led to duplication of infrastructure and ultimately, high cost of services for the end-users.

“There are lots of fragmentations in the industry. Despite the Nigerian Communications Commission’s framework for infrastructure sharing, industry players do not collaborate and that is why we have duplication of several infrastructure that are supposed to be shared,” Rudman told Journalists on the sideline of the forum.

He noted that if industry players collaborate, it would bring down operational cost and capital expenditure.

Speaking on what peering in a carrier and cloud-neutral data centres will bring to the industry and the Nigerian economy in general, Rudman who is the immediate past president of the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA), said peering between Internet Exchange Point and a carrier/cloud-neutral data centres would enhance connections for citizens and organisations alike, and would also help the economy to thrive.

“Peering through internet exchanges, addresses the challenges of traffic by ensuring the shortest possible route is used to reach a given destination. It keeps traffic as local as possible, which improves performance and enables faster connections between networks, facilitating high-speed data transfer, lower latency, increased bandwidth and improved fault tolerance,” Rudman said.

According to him, local hosting of content is a driver for economic growth, stressing that money paid to foreign hosting companies, constitutes capital flight, puts more strain on Nigeria’s foreign earnings and slows the growth of local data centres and delays the development of new ones.

He also explained that hosting locally would provide additional revenue opportunities to local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and data centres which in turn would create more job and technical competencies. 

“Local content hosted abroad has higher latency than when hosted locally, and this can be over 100 per cent. But hosting it locally in any of the data centres has a direct and indirect impact on the economy. It will lead to job creation, and improved tax collection for government,” he argued.

The implications for businesses who host their content abroad are numerous, as it affects business continuity, it comes with lower support level and poor update cycles because of conflicting working hours. This is even as a study shows that a second-long delay causes a seven per cent drop in conversions, an 11 per cent drop in page views and a 16 per cent drop in customer satisfaction, Rudman warned.

He however said as a way of addressing some of the challenges in the ecosystem, IXPN organised a free Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) training for network engineers across Nigeria as part of its planned capacity building programme for its increasing members and commitment towards improving the internet ecosystem in the country.

“We want to empower empower members of IXPN with the rudiments and workings of Border Gateway Protocol, which is important to us as a one-stop peering point for service and content providers, hence the need for the training,” Rudman said.