Metro fibre provider Link Africa, and New Telco SA, a carrier neutral data centre solutions provider, have partnered on Link Africa's Midrand fibre network rollout, which will form part of Link Africa's core metro ring around Gauteng.

An announcement by the companies stated that Link Africa will make use of New Telco's Midrand Carrier Neutral Data Centre as a termination point onto their fibre ring for all Midrand Fibre to the Home (FTTH) and Fibre to the Business (FTTB) customers.

"We are excited to be a part of Link Africa's expanding network as a breakout point for any Link Africa fibre client in Midrand," says Eckart Zollner, Head of New Business Development at New Telco SA. "The fact that our data centre is carrier neutral means that not only will any Link Africa FTTH or FTTB subscriber in Midrand have access to all major ISPs and services in South Africa, but it is also attractive for the many service provides who terminate at our data centre, giving them a platform from which to access new business."

According to Zollner, New Telco SA have provided Link Africa with a termination point at their Midrand Data Centre which enables Link Africa to have full redundancy, whereby Link Africa can terminate fibre via separate points at the Data Centre, as well as expansion capacity. "Midrand is one of the fastest growing economic and residential hubs in South Africa, and the demand for connectivity is vast. We have ensured that Link Africa is provided with sufficient opportunity for future growth," says Zollner.

"Providing a reliable, well-supported service is a key focus for us," says Andre Hoffman Manager for Special Projects at Link Africa.

"New Telco SA's Midrand data centre is a very attractive point of presence for us, as it provides us with a breakout point to reach almost the entire Midrand area, and it is backed by a standard of excellence which we, ourselves, abide by," says Hoffman. "The data centre offers all the benefits we look for in a data centre: good security, excellent cable management and maintenance standards, great uptime and availability, and peace of mind when it comes to power supply – an especially key point in a country not well known for its reliable electricity delivery."

"New Telco has an outstanding reputation in the market and that, coupled with the fact that their carrier neutral nature enables interconnections with a wide range of reputable service providers for our customers, makes them an ideal partner for our fibre network, and is why the Midrand New Telco data centre will form part of our core network ring," adds Hoffman.

The fibre rollout in Midrand has already commenced, with several customers within Vorna Valley already terminated into the New Telco Data Centre.

Zollner and Hoffman have expressed confidence that reliable, fibre delivered IT and data services will soon be a reality for every home and business in the greater Midrand area.

The MEA market should also expect exponential growth in data centre traffic underpinned by the rapid migration to cloud architectures, according to the 6th annual Cisco Global Cloud Index (2015 – 2020) which notes that data centre traffic will reach 328 exabytes per year by 2019.

Experts have also stated that if more data centres are opened in Africa, end users would benefit from cheaper bandwidth costs and less latency in delivering content.

In a recent discussion with ITWeb Africa, Ranjith Cherickel, co-founder and CEO of Icolo, a new colocation data centre in Kenya, said, "There are two things that affect content being hosted outside, that is cost and latency. If you host content in Europe you have to pay for bandwidth cost to Kenya. That is expensive. The reasons [companies] have not [hosted locally] is because the infrastructure wasn't there," Cherickel explained.

He said that for every 150 to 200 kilometres, about 1 millisecond is lost. Between Europe and Kenya, the distance is about 8,000 kilometres and that equates to 900 milliseconds.