Following on from last year’s announcement, reported on this site, that internet exchange operator AMS-IX had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with MainOne’s Lagos data centre, MainData Nigeria (MDXi), AMS-IX and MDXi have announced the launch of a new internet exchange in the city.
The new internet exchange, AMS-IX Lagos, is situated in the carrier-neutral data centre of MDXi, an Equinix company. Under the terms of the partnership, MDXi will serve as the commercial partner of AMS-IX and regional sales and marketing arm for AMS-IX Lagos. AMS-IX will run the technical and operational management of the exchange.
AMS-IX Lagos aims to become an important content hub for West Africa, enabling regional and local ISPs, carriers and internet exchanges to aggregate content from large global content delivery networks, hosting companies and application providers. In the coming months, MDXi and AMS-IX will focus on seeking alliances with local telecom operators and IXs and supporting local ecosystems.
AMS-IX Lagos will launch with over 25 connected networks as AMS-IX and MDXi will migrate and onboard the existing connected networks of the West Africa Internet Exchange (WAF-IX) in the coming month. Connected networks at WAF-IX include large CDNs and application providers such as Cloudflare, Microsoft and Google.
Funke Opeke, Director MDXi, makes clear her ambitions for the future, saying: “This partnership enables MDXi to deliver value to the rich ecosystem of network operators, carriers, content providers, cloud services providers, and enterprises that we have present in the data centre. The AMS-IX partnership will help MDXi consolidate its role as a content hub not just for Nigeria, but for francophone and English-speaking West and Central Africa.”