{"id":462228,"date":"2022-09-28T08:41:19","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T06:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=462228"},"modified":"2022-09-28T08:45:27","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T06:45:27","slug":"africas-edge-transforming-digital-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/industrynews\/462228-africas-edge-transforming-digital-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"Africa\u2019s Edge: transforming digital Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Digital technologies promise to dramatically improve how people live, work, play and communicate.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.openaccessdc.net\/?utm_source=MyBroadband&amp;utm_medium=Article&amp;utm_campaign=September+2022\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Click here to find out more about Open Access Data Centres.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is particularly true throughout sub-Saharan Africa where digitisation can deliver improved access to life-enhancing services for individuals, communities and enterprises that would otherwise be excluded through lack of infrastructure, skills and funding.<\/p>\n<p>Key trends in the region\u2019s digital landscape, including increasing digital adoption by small and major businesses and one of the world\u2019s most youthful demographics, indicate growing demand for next-generation connectivity.<\/p>\n<p>According to industry body the GSMA, by 2025, there will be commercial 5G services in at least seven African markets, including Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, with 28 million 5G connections between them.<\/p>\n<p>However, Africa remains a long way from the vision of a \u201cmodern and robust digital infrastructure that is inclusive and reaches all people\u201d as outlined in the Digital Council Africa\u2019s 2021 annual report, which notes fixed fibre broadband household penetration remaining flat across sub-Saharan Africa at less than 3%, and mobile internet subscriptions growing to just 30%.<\/p>\n<p>The legacy data centre (DC) world supports islands of strong connectivity focus on the largest urban areas, with network deployment to smaller cities and communities limited by the capital investment required and unpredictable returns.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\"><strong>A change for the better<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Transformational new DC operator, Open Access Data Centres (OADC), established in 2021 as part of the WIOCC Group, is dramatically improving this situation, bringing a unique decentralised digital connectivity proposition to Africa.<\/p>\n<p>OADC is not only building DCs in multiple countries, but rather than focussing only on the largest cities is deploying facilities throughout a country, right-sizing each DC according to local demand (from hyperscale, through \u201cmidi\u201d to edge). Its unique core-to-edge architecture supports:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>fixed and mobile operators in cost-effectively extending network reach<\/li>\n<li>the cloud community in migrating content closer to the network edge<\/li>\n<li>disaster recovery provision, and processing of large data sets close to the point of origin<\/li>\n<li>deployment of new revenue-generating, latency-sensitive applications<\/li>\n<li>cost-optimisation of network backhaul connections<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In delivering content to the edge, we are establishing local interconnect points and interconnect ecosystems that decentralise peering and \u201ccompute\u201d away from the large core DCs, to wherever people and businesses are creating and consuming content.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, we are implementing innovative field support structures across our field teams and adopting Internet of Things (IoT) and AI techniques to optimise the way in which we support our DCs.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\"><strong>Moving fast; moving together<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Since securing $200m of funding in November 2021, OADC has moved at pace.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to large-scale facilities in Lagos and Durban, we have almost 30 OADC EDGE DCs live in South Africa delivering content to the edge at exactly the point of use.<\/p>\n<p>Two mid-range DCs are coming on-stream in Cape Town by year end and two more at key locations in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<p>We will also extend this architecture across Nigeria and, subsequently, into smaller countries across sub-Saharan Africa &#8211; particularly at the \u201cmidi\u201d and \u201cedge\u201d scale.<\/p>\n<p>This architecture is a critical element in the infrastructure needed to expedite delivery &#8211; and leverage the benefits &#8211; of 5G as it emerges across Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Uniquely with the WIOCC Group, the carrier-neutral DCs being deployed by OADC can take advantage of an established pan-African hyperscale network infrastructure, operated by a carriers\u2019 carrier; a sister company &#8211; for interconnectivity across Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Being carrier-neutral means that we are also ensuring a vibrant ecosystem of other carriers in all consumption points and DC delivery points, interconnected and optimised across all available technologies.<\/p>\n<p>Africa is clearly ready for this level of high-quality carrier-neutral digital infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>Access to a readily-available, open-access infrastructure delivering high levels of connectivity and underpinning local interconnect ecosystems will prove to be critical to ensuring successful deployment and adoption of 5G, the Internet of Things and other advances that will deliver growth to the region throughout the 2020s.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"mailto:contactus@openaccessdc.net\">You can contact Open Access Data Centres here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Digital technologies promise to dramatically improve how people live, work, play and communicate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341030,"featured_media":462242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28937],"tags":[78262],"class_list":["post-462228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industrynews","tag-open-access-data-centres-oadc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341030"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":462234,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462228\/revisions\/462234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}