A vendor-neutral datacentre is not owned or operated by a carrier or service provider. It does not provide any Telco or Internet specific services, this allows any entity to sell services to another entity without competing with the data centre where they co-locate.
Van Wyk says, “As the international business subsidiary of China Telecom Corporation Limited (“CTCL”), the largest fixed line service and third largest mobile telecommunications provider in China, China Telecom’s presence in the data centre opens up exciting business opportunities for the existing Teraco community.” Van Wyk continues, “Our clients now have the opportunity to connect freely with service providers and carriers in Asia, providing local businesses direct access to a whole new market of consumers. Further to this, the availability of additional routes builds resilience in the networks available at Teraco.”
Mr Xiaofeng Deng, Chief Executive Officer of CTG says, “Our partnership with Teraco helps to further strengthen our gateway position for connecting the MEA (Middle East and Africa) region and Asia. Teraco is an international grade data centre and the most connected facility in Africa. The benefits of being in Teraco means CTG has access to: all submarine cable systems, significant networks as well as national and international carriers in Africa. With the numerous clients housed in the data centre, we will be able to provide even more cost-effective, diversified, and resilient connectivity services to our customers in Africa and beyond.”
Van Wyk says, “CTG’s decision to be part of Teraco Data Environments is a smart business decision. Teraco has reported strong growth in the last year and an increase to over 5000sqm in actual floor space.” Furthermore, van Wyk says the company’s growth can be attributed to the availability of choice in carrier, network and service provider to clients and the availability of the free and public peering service, NAPAfrica, as well as the African Cloud eXchange (ACX), a colocation space dedicated to sharing and selling cloud services into Africa.
According to Van Wyk, there will always be challenges in broadening the African horizon. “Until recently, one of the main challenges affecting Africa, was connectivity out of Africa, which was largely reduced when all the undersea cables landed.” He says terrestrial cable is now the big hurdle. “We’ve got all this undersea capacity, way more than we can actually use right now, but the problem is getting that to consumers throughout the continent. CTG joining Teraco’s data centre community contributes to enhancing the gateway to Africa,” concludes van Wyk.