Telcos Frustrating Data Centres, Voice Clearing Houses with Interconnectivity

Efforts at encouraging local hosting of internet content as well as the survival of interconnect clearing houses in the country are been frustrated by GSM operators through interconnectivity issues.

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations revealed, that the frustration for data centres come in form of the high cost of rendering connectivity to commercial data centre facilities.

Also, most telcos are now by-passing the clearings houses and are adopting direct peering option to the detriment of clearing houses as well making it difficult for emerging small operators to survive.

According to Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) guideline on the establishment of interconnect clearing houses, telcos are mandated to route at least 10% of their traffic through the clearing houses, but as at today, most of the telcos are not reaching the mandated volume rather they are routing mostly through direct peering.

Reacting to connection to data centres, Mohammed Rudman, managing director, Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), said: “For the information and communications technology to flourish especially in data centre and local hosting business, cost of in-country connection must be much cheaper than international connectivity. If all the telecommunications operators are interconnected at the various commercial data centres in the country, the cost of connecting universities and others located outside of Lagos to the data centres for them to host their servers locally will be reduced.”

He noted: Chinese content is in China, indian content is in India and Nigerian content should be in Nigeria, this could be realized if the country is well interconnected through the various commercial data centres, telcos and exchange point.”

Mohammed however, urged relevant government agencies to engage telcos on the way forward to easy interconnectivity issues as well as sharing of fibre optic links just the way it is done in the colocation of masts, so that the industry could start experiencing the needed growth and development.

Ike Nnamani, chief executive officer, Medallion, explained that direct peering in voice interconnectivity is allowed by law and that the two options co-exist for the growth of the industry.

He urged operators to see the bigger picture of growth and survival of the industry which will enhance the contributions of the sector to the GDP of the country.