The Telecommunications Service Providers Association of Kenya (TESPOK) is the industry body representing the interests of the telecom operators in Kenya. It recently held its 15th Annual General meeting during which its Chairman Kris Senanu announced that the association will soon open its membership to other players such as software developers, hardware developers, technology hubs and other IT parties.
The association which is the voice of the Kenyan ICT industry, currently draws its membership from the network infrastructure operators, mobile operators and ISPs in the country.
During the AGM, the association CEO Fiona Asonga announced that the exchange point, KIXP has experienced a significant growth in overall traffic with 28 peering members, exchanging an average of 1.1 Gbps up from 980Mbps of internet traffic observed in Nairobi. The growth in peering traffic has been attributed to the efficiency realised after the migration of the IXP’s data centre from Bruce House to the East Africa Data Centre (EADC), largest tier 3 data centre in east and central Africa.
The report also indicated that the AMSIX-East Africa in Mombasa an IXP established by TESPOK in partnership with AMSIX in the Netherlands has seen growth from exchanging internet traffic of 897 Mbps from 0 Kbps. Both the KIXP and AMSIX-East Africa have enabled TESPOK members to exchange local internet traffic locally instead of routing them through Europe and the Americas as before.
The exchange points have become an integral part of the local ISPs that any little downtime is abhorred across board. This is not like the previous case where most IXPs didn’t see the value of the ISP.
During the AGM, TESPOK Chairman Kris Senanu said
TESPOK continues being more representative of the Telecommunications industry as a whole than it has ever been in the past both nationally and internationally ensuring better service delivery to its members. We have respect and a brand in the region that enables our members to use our services so as to ensure that there is a level playing field in the industry. We are a role model amongst the Exchange points and Cyber security deployments in Africa.
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