In The News

Epsilon Extends Remote Peering to South Africa with NAPAfrica

July 23, 2020

The partnership enables Epsilon customers across the globe to efficiently expand their network presence in South Africa within the Teraco-hosted IX

Singapore, 23 July 2020 – Epsilon, a global connectivity and communications service provider, has partnered with NAPAfrica to deliver peering at the largest internet exchange (IX) on the African continent. This marks Epsilon’s first IX partnership in Africa, having established relationships with global peering exchanges including AMS-IX, DE-CIX and LINX. 

Enabled on its software-defined networking (SDN) platform Infiny, customers of Epsilon can access NAPAfrica directly via the Remote Peering service, without a physical presence at the internet exchange points (IXPs) located in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The NAPAfrica IXP enables peering with over 430 unique networks (ASNs) across 20 countries in the southern African region.

Africa represents a massive opportunity for businesses looking to penetrate a fast-growing market with enormous potential for digitalisation. Our partnership with NAPAfrica enables us to deliver on-demand access to key internet hubs in sub-Saharan Africa which will allow businesses to peer efficiently with local and regional partners. NAPAfrica is an excellent addition to our global network fabric as we grow our remote peering capabilities. We’re excited to be working with NAPAfrica and bringing our customers into the peering community within Africa.

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Mark Daley

Director of Digital Strategy and Business Development, Epsilon

In March 2020, NAPAfrica reached 1Tbps of peak traffic – a 1884x growth from its first recorded traffic of 532Mbps in 2012. Africa has experienced the fastest international internet bandwidth growth compared to any market in the world between 2015 and 2019 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45%, according to TeleGeography.

Our partnership with Epsilon will enable more organisations across the globe to peer directly with their customers and partners in Africa. With Epsilon’s global reach, we see this as a great opportunity to add value to our existing partners and increase the number of peering options for our community. This partnership is another milestone for NAPAfrica as we establish ourselves as the internet hub for sub-Saharan Africa. We look forward to working with Epsilon to grow our peering community and accelerate our contribution to the internet ecosystem across the region.

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Andrew Owens

Technical Lead, NAPAfrica

About NAPAfrica
NAPAfrica is a not-for-profit carrier neutral Internet Exchange Provider IXP) that is provided by Teraco, a data centre and service operator in South Africa. The exchange offers services in 2 Johannesburg PoPs (ISANDO CAMPUS JB1, BREDELL CAMPUS JB2), 1 Cape Town PoP (RONDEBOSCH CT1) and 1 Durban PoP (RIVERHORSE VALLEY DB1). NAPAfrica’s founding goal is to help make Internet access more accessible for Africa. 

For more information, visit napafrica.net.