By 
By MARTIN EKPEKE
Nigeria eyes a drop in the yearly cost of connectivity by about $20 million with the recent commissioning of the country’s first Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria, (IXPN) in Lagos by the Nigerian Communication Commission, (NCC).
Like many African countries, Nigeria pays a huge penalty for offshore bandwidth to carry online traffic that should ordinarily be local.
An IXP is a Network infrastructure that allows several ISPs and several network operators to exchange traffic among their networks meaning traffic that are actually which are usually exchanged at offshore points could now be carried locally requiring lesser consumption of scarce and expensive bandwidth. Additional IXPs are to come on stream in Ibadan, Abuja, Enugu, Maiduguri, Port Harcourt, Kano and other cities in the months ahead.
“This means that this facility will save the nation some foreign exchange when fully implemented and I am told by the management of IXPN Ltd we will experience immediate drop in connectivity costs as well as cost savings of more than $20million in offshore Internet bandwidth payments in the first year of operations. This is very commendable,” said Nigeria’s telecom regulator Dr Eugene Juwah while commissioning the facility
Nigeria takes its rightful position to be the regional IXP for the West Africa region, said Chairman of IXPN, Chima Onyekwere, whose company Linkserve as touted as the first privately owned ISP in Nigeria.
“At IXPN, we are committed not only to the development of a national internet infrastructure, but increasingly, an infrastructure that will span the entire African continent, Europe, America, Asia and the entire world. IXPN will provide the much expected benefits required at an IXP as well as build and maintain a global reputation for quality, performance, reliability and excellence in all aspects, “said Onyekwere.
