The annual gathering of Internet industry professionals, iWeek, that has been held every year for 17 years will be held in August for the first time ever, about two weeks earlier that its traditional September time slot.
Founded and hosted by South Africa’s Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA), iWeek will be held in Cape Town, the third time this conference and exhibition attracting world-renowned experts and speakers is to be held in the Mother City.
By hosting the continent’s foremost conference on peering and interconnection, with support from both INX-ZA and NAPAfrica, ISPA is able to expose its members to the latest news and developments in global peering.
Most of the conference sessions that are slated to take place from 20 to 24 August 2018 at The Westin Hotel on the city’s Foreshore are open to the public and attendance is free to pre-registered delegates.
The change in timing is to accommodate iWeek’s new partners in the form of the Internet Society and the African IXP Association (AFIX) who will hold the 9th annual Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) at iWeek this year.
AfPIF is an annual event that serves as a platform to expand and develop the African Internet. It connects infrastructure, service, and content providers with policymakers in order to identify and discuss ways to improve network interconnection, lower the cost of connectivity, and increase the number of users in the region.
More than 200 participants attended last year’s AfPIF in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire including providers of international, regional, and sub-regional transport, transit, and content as well as more than 20 IXPs from Africa and beyond.
This year’s event will be hosted in South Africa; home to the oldest Internet Exchange Point (IXP) in Africa, the highest density of IXP’s per city in Africa, and the largest carrier neutral data centre in Africa. As a thriving terrestrial infrastructure market and the continent’s most mature peering ecosystem, South Africa will provide an opportunity for attendees to learn from its remarkable experiences and explore a growing number of opportunities in the region.
“The first AfPIF was held in 2010 by the Internet Society from the realization that most of African Internet traffic is exchanged outside the continent, and the region could save costs by exchanging the Internet traffic locally,” says Dawit Bekele, regional bureau director for Africa at Internet Society.
“The target is to have at least 80% of the Internet traffic consumed in Africa being locally accessible, and only 20% sourced outside the continent by the year 2020. We are getting closer to that target every year thanks to AfPIF and many activities that promote interconnection and hosting in Africa.”
Internet Peering is a business relationship whereby two network operators agree to provide access to each other’s network at no cost. Internet users throughout Africa benefit from Peering as it enables faster, more affordable, and more reliable access to content.
Registration for iWeek is open at https://iweek.org.za/.