Page 4 - WIOCC - Africa Connected FEB 2021

WIOCC COO Ryan Sher explores the impact of new market entrants into Africa and the impending opportunities
Ryan Sher
WIOCC Chief Operations Officer
A number of new subsea cables are scheduled to land on Africa’s coastlines over the coming years and will provide additional international capacity which will support the continued growth of the telecoms industry. At the same time, the arrival of new players, principally cloud operators and content providers, is a fundamental change that is already affecting buying patterns, capacity demand and prices.
Cloud operators and content providers are buying significant amounts of international capacity from carriers to carry their content to Africa - mostly from Europe, North America and Asia. Setting up data caches in major data centres in Africa will enable them to offer local businesses and consumers high-performance access to their content and services. Local caching also allows ISPs to pick up such content in Africa, rather than at international exchange points.
With ISPs accessing content locally from a variety of cloud operators and content providers, end-users are benefitting from a wider selection of online content. As consumers’ data consumption continues to increase, this drives the need for better application performance creating a variety of revenue opportunities for African carriers and ISPs. For example, by partnering with cloud operators and content providers businesses can seize the opportunity to offer their customers value-added services, improve their own cloud network redundancy or re-sell cloud and application services.
As cloud operators and content providers continue to extend their reach to and within Africa, demand for international connectivity to access non-local content, applications and services, and for local connectivity will grow further. At the same time, these international internet
and content providers will need African carriers and operators to serve their demand for extremely reliable domestic circuits delivering high-quality connectivity to first-class data centre facilities. The overall demand for internet content and connectivity will continue to rise inexorably, and ever more so as African markets transition further into digital economies.
It is paramount that our shareholder businesses remain agile and proactive. Collaborating and leveraging each other’s competencies enables us to help you exploit the opportunities for business growth. Contact our shareholder team (shareholdersales@wiocc.net) to find out how you can work more closely with WIOCC and develop your business.