The Kenya Internet Exchange point which is also the largest exchange point in East Africa is now 13 years boasting ability to carry four times internet traffic as compared to 2011 in addition to having 30 peering members across Telco’s, corporate and independent ISPs, making it one of the largest internet exchanges in Sub Saharan Africa.
Apart from ISPs, mobile operators, network infrastructure operators, banks, academic and research networks, security experts, media houses and government Institutions such as the Kenya Revenue Authority, which relies on the IXP to allow online income tax reporting for citizens as well as clearing customs for importers are some of the stakeholders when it comes to the IXP.
According to Telecommunications Service Providers Association of Kenya (TESPOK) blog, the IXP has saved telcos millions of money while simultaneously speeding local data exchange, and encouraging the development of locally hosted content and services.
A report by Analysys Mason revealed that KIXP has dramatically reduced latency of local traffic, speeding data to 200-600mbps (megabytes per second) from 2-10mbps on average.
So effective is the KIXP that Google placed a cache in Kenya, thereby increasing the amount of locally distributed content (notably YouTube videos) at faster speeds. TESPOK reports that improved access to local content has led to increased usage, subsequently helping to increase the mobile data market by at least $6m per year in Kenya.
Telecommunications Service Providers Association of Kenya (TESPOK) CEO Fiona Asonga said KIXP had a key role to play in satisfying the growth in demand in Kenya for internet bandwidth and latency-sensitive traffic in Kenya. KIXP is now delivering an average of 1.2Gbps in bandwidth exchange, compared with 900 Kbps a decade ago when it opened – a more than 1000-fold increase. In 2008, KIXP reported an annual growth rate of over 300 per cent making it the fastest growing Internet Exchange Point in the world.
