Pan-African telecommunications operator, Seacom, which is best known for building an undersea fibre cable along Africa’s east coast seven years ago, has gone live with a point of presence in Slough, about 30km west of London.
Slough contains some of the UK’s largest co-location data centres serving London’s financial services sector and other key commercial clients, Seacom said on Monday.
“The area is also a key hub for transit of traffic between London and major global financial centres such as New York,” the company said in a statement.
“The new POP is significant for African financial services institutions that trade in equities. It will give them a direct route to one of the UK’s most important financial interconnection points, delivering better performance and lower latency.”
Seacom said its Internet protocol transit network now offers African operators and Internet service providers direct connectivity to a range of tier-one networks in Europe.
“Financial services institutions in Africa need fast, reliable connectivity with the world’s financial centres, which is one reason we have invested in this new POP,” said Seacom head of engineering Mark Tinka in the statement.
Seacom now has POPs in Europe’s five business centres for Internet traffic: Stockholm, Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt and Marseille. — © 2016 NewsCentral Media