Less than a year ago, we announced our plan to open a second Internet Exchange, after Madrid, on the Iberian Peninsula. Within months of the initial announcement, DE-CIX Lisbon started its journey to develop into a healthy interconnection ecosystem that today shows a balanced mix of content networks, network access providers and Internet service providers.
The geographical origins of the connected networks and their main area of business – e.g. a network offering telecommunication services in Congo – show the importance of Lisbon as the new hub connecting Africa to Europe. This development was possible due to many reasons, two of them being:
- Connecting in Lisbon instead of London saves enormously on data transport costs and reduces latency by at least 30 milliseconds round trip time (RTT), and
- With the GlobePEER Remote connection to DE-CIX Madrid, networks connected in Lisbon could peer from day one with more than 150 networks that peer at DE-CIX Madrid.
20+ connected networks with a clear African emphasis
Meanwhile, more than 20 networks are connected to DE-CIX Lisbon, and all-time peak traffic has already reached the important milestone of 1+ G traffic. Since September, AFR-IX telecom is on board as a reseller for Lisbon, making sure that the number of connected networks at DE-CIX Lisbon will rise further. AFR-IX’s network covers the whole African continent, with more than 50 POPs, and AFR-IX is a partner of more than 20 operators based in Africa.