By Dipo Olowookere
As part of its efforts to become the largest internet hub in West Africa, MainOne has launched a new interconnect service for carriers, enterprises and ISPs called Open-Connect.
Open-Connect is a service which facilitates improved interconnection, collaboration and peering within the MDXi Lekki data centre and the internet exchange.
The product will enable the creation of an environment that allows co-located customers connect to multiple networks, cloud and content providers while significantly reducing the cost of backhaul links to various providers and it offers competitive pricing in an open access, carrier neutral environment.
This launch comes after a partnership was entered into between a MainOne Data Centre company called MDXi, and the Nigerian Internet Exchange (IXPN), to improve national transit traffic in Nigeria.
Chief Executive Officer of MainOne, Ms Funke Opeke, stated that, “Traffic growth is a useful indicator of the health of the entire Internet ecosystem, and helps to measure the development of the digital economy.
“This new interconnection service for customers within our Data Centre will significantly improve traffic growth and localization in Nigeria, with reduced latency, improved speed and better quality of services to end users.
“This solution will enable more operators and carriers take advantage of the connections of the IXPN within MainOne’s connected Data Centre and enhance Internet traffic originating and terminating on any network in Nigeria to remain in-country.”
Open-Connect guarantees the best cross connect services in Nigeria, enabling customers bypass the public internet and connect directly to partners, cloud and SaaS providers with secure, reliable and flexible direct connections.
With connections to internet exchanges in Lagos, Amsterdam, London and Ghana and 50+ Points of Presence locations across West Africa, MainOne enables carriers, ISPs, content providers and enterprises of all sizes to quickly and easily increase their network footprint without investing heavily in additional infrastructure.
MainOne’s Open-Connect service takes advantage of the company’s recent partnership with the Nigerian Internet Exchange, which provides the Exchange with an IPV4/V6 network, backed by diverse backhaul, links across Lagos and Nigeria.
The data centre, MDXi, West Africa’s premier vendor-neutral data centre, is directly connected to MainOne’s 1.92TBPS submarine cable.
Home of West Africa’s biggest internet exchange (IXPN), MainOne’s Data Centre is Africa’s only Tier III facility with PCI DSS, ISO 27001 and 9001 certifications.
Adedapo Adesanya 
Modupe Gbadeyanka