{"id":10103,"date":"2012-04-17T16:20:38","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T14:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=10103"},"modified":"2012-04-18T13:00:40","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T11:00:40","slug":"a-case-for-ixps-in-emerging-markets-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/10103\/a-case-for-ixps-in-emerging-markets-study\/","title":{"rendered":"A case for IXPs in emerging markets – study"},"content":{"rendered":"

Localised\u00a0hosting of\u00a0financial systems that were previously abroad, along with tangibile\u00a0cost savings, are some of the benefits of establishing Internet exchange points (IXPs)<\/a> in emerging markets according to a new study.<\/p>\n

The study was conducted as part of the Internet Society’s Interconnection and Traffic Exchange Programme, which aims to foster cost-effective Internet interconnection environments in emerging economies.<\/p>\n

It looked at the benefits gained from developed IXPs in Kenya and Nigeria.<\/p>\n

IXPs act as data traffic hubs within the global Internet infrastructure, enabling Internet service provierds (ISPs) and backbone carriers to exchange traffic between them.<\/p>\n

Emerging markets, the Internet Society noted, don’t have well-established exchanges, often forcing the networks to transfer local data though long-distance international links at a much higher cost.<\/p>\n

The study quantified how IXPs in Kenya and Nigeria saved the countries millions in cost, while raising additional revenue and spurring development and telecoms growth.<\/p>\n

In Kenya, the Kenya IXP reduced latency of local traffic (from 200-600ms to 2-10ms), while saving ISPs almost US$1.5 million in connection fees.<\/p>\n

In Nigeria, the IXP saw the country experience a similar reduction in latency, and a saving of close to US$1 million in connection fees.<\/p>\n

Both countries also experienced additional benefits, bringing financial systems – such as Nigeria’s online banking and Kenya’s online tax and custom services – back into the country having being hosted overseas.<\/p>\n

The precense of the IXPs has also induced Google<\/a> to place a cache in both countries, which has increased the amount of locally-distributed content – which has subsequently spurred the mobile data market to boost by US$6 million in Kenya.<\/p>\n

\u201cOffering more than just cost and performance benefits, well-run IXPs serve as a catalyst to dramatically enrich a country’s Internet ecosystem, opening a new world of possibilities with comparably minimal investment,” said Karen Rose<\/a>, senior director of development strategy at the Internet Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We hope that this study will help inform the dialogue among government, business, and technology leaders of emerging countries still struggling with cost and bandwidth issues to show them, in no uncertain terms, the benefits IXPs can yield for developing the most fertile ground possible for Internet growth.”<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Google to grow South African presence<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study published by the Internet Society today (17 April 2012) highlights the economic and social benefits of establishing Internet exchange points (IXPs) in emerging markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,2411,2409,2410,2413,2412,1123],"class_list":["post-10103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-internet-exchange-points","tag-internet-society","tag-ixps","tag-karen-rose","tag-kenya","tag-nigeria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10103"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10110,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103\/revisions\/10110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}