2024 Cloud and Security Conference — Teraco’s Michele McCann discusses the importance of peering

Michele McCann is the Head of Interconnection and Peering at Teraco.

She is a key member of the Teraco executive and an important part of the team responsible for developing and growing the NAPAfrica Internet Exchange into the largest IXP in South Africa.

Before working at Teraco, McCann was the Commercial Director at Arc Telecoms, where she led the development of new infrastructure and helped deliver ISP products and services to the market.

McCann is passionate about peering, as well as content and carrier aggregation across the African continent.

One of her key focuses is relationship development with new and existing Teraco enterprise clients, as well as cloud and content providers, with the goal of growing future opportunities locally and internationally.

Panel discussion

On this panel, McCann discussed the role NAPAfrica has played in South Africa’s peering landscape.

When NAPAfrica launched in 2012, it recorded traffic of 532Mbps. As of 2024, its Internet traffic exceeds 4Tbps. It has also become South Africa’s largest Internet exchange point.

“As part of our continuous growth journey, we’ve seen local peering policies achieve maturity over time,” said McCann.

She added that NAPAfrica’s impressive traffic growth has been across a wide range of industries, including entertainment, gaming, security, and business.

There has also been a major increase in traffic to and from other African countries, McCann added.

This is a key evolution that NAPAfrica has facilitated through its continent-wide infrastructure, with telcos in countries as far away as like Angola, Togo, and the DRC joining the exchange.

Energy needs

The incredible growth of NAPAfrica has forced Teraco to double its capacity every year.

This has required extensive investment in new infrastructure and forced Teraco to rethink how it procures its electricity.

Earlier this year, for example, it secured its first grid capacity allocation from Eskom.

It will therefore begin construction of a 120MW utility-scale solar PV energy facility in the Free State.

When fully operational, this plant is expected to produce more than 338,000MWh annually.

“This aligns with our strategy to achieve our 100% clean energy goal,” said McCann.

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