Orange, a platinum member of the Smart Africa Alliance, supports the One Africa Network project which has the aim of reducing the cost of communication and keeping the traffic generated and destined for Africa within Africa.
Smart Africa emphasised the need to collaborate effectively with the private sector and create synergies with existing infrastructure, welcoming Orange’s collaboration on the initiative.
Orange is known for providing infrastructure through its African subsidiaries to directly interconnect African operators and it is expected to pursue this strategy by localising voice and roaming data hosting and transport on the continent.
“To this end, Orange announces the creation of two new international voice points of presence in Lagos, Nigeria, as well as the hosting of roaming data for its African customers at a data clearinghouse in Africa. These initiatives will help boost the quality of service and data security for all users across the continent,” Orange said in a statement.
In order to always better serve the needs of all customers on the continent and play a role in digital inclusion by allowing direct connections between African countries, Orange said it was working to facilitate voice traffic connections between regions in Africa, with the creation of two new Voice Tier-1 Points of Presence.
Through these PoP, Orange is offering a diverse range of services to all African mobile operators, allowing the routing of traffic across Africa.
To supplement this approach, from 1 January 2021 Orange customer roaming traffic between operators in Africa will be hosted by a data clearinghouse located in a data centre in Africa.
Lacina Koné, Director General and Chief Executive Officer of Smart Africa, stated, “We value Orange’s commitment to strengthen Africa’s capacity to manage and retain her own data. This is important for ensuring universal access through cost savings and data sovereignty which is a hallmark of our data policy.
“Therefore, this partnership with Orange goes a long way in operationalising these principles and making the One Africa Network a reality.”
