Rack Centre, the best-connected Tier III Carrier and Cloud neutral data centre in West Africa, has expanded its reach of available interconnection services with the addition of Workonline Communications, one of the largest IP network providers in Africa, to the enviable list of its growing marketplace.
Workonline Communications (AS 37271), founded in 2006, has megaPoPs across Africa including Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, and was the first African wholesale IP transit provider to deploy Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) Origin Validation (OV) to improve the security of Internet routing in 2019. The company specializes in providing wholesale IP transit (IPT), remote peering, and Layer 2 Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) services.
To further enhance its West African presence, Workonline Communications launched its first Point of Presence (PoP) in Nigeria. The company’s new megaPoP which went live in late 2022 was launched on the strength of the Rack Centre data centre in Lagos with the readiness to 10Gbps and 100Gbps services.
Welcoming Workonline Communications to Rack Centre, the Group Chief Executive Officer of Rack Centre, Jasper Lankhorst, reiterated the benefit of being part of the rich carrier and ISP ecosystem provided by Rack Centre’s marketplace which now creates an opportunity for customers to get access to top notch services offered by Workonline Communications.
Rack Centre’s carrier and cloud-neutral ecosystem allows customers the freedom of choice to interconnect with a variety of network service providers, whether it be IP transit, Peering, carrier services or cloud onramps. Our data centre has always maintained a 100 per cent uptime since inception and our customers enjoy full neutral access and uncapped interconnect capacities”, he said.
Benjamin Deveaux, Head of Business Development at Workonline Group explaining the mission of the company in Africa, said, “When content providers deploy in a market, they can reduce the time it takes to load the content they serve over the internet. Although many content networks have now deployed in parts of Africa, there is still around 80% of Africa’s Internet capacity which goes back to Europe where content is hosted. Workonline is on a mission to help Africa keep traffic on the continent to increase the quality for the user and develop the African Internet economy.”
In the bid to consolidate its leadership position and expand its current campus, Rack Centre is developing one of the most efficient and sustainable data centres in Lagos, Nigeria and across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Rack Centre’s rich ecosystem includes 56+ telecommunication carriers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), global Tier 1 networks, and pan Africa international carriers, including direct interconnections to all five undersea cables serving the South Atlantic Coast of Africa including Equiano and in the foreseeable future 2Africa and every country on the Atlantic coast of Africa.
Rack Centre became the first International Finance Corporation (IFC) EDGE-certified data centre in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Officially making this the first Green Certified Data Centre in Africa and the most connected facility in the region, according to its PeeringDB ranking.
