Seacom takes aim at regional peering costs

Seacom has launched a new connectivity service aimed at extending South Africa’s internet exchange point (IXP) infrastructure into smaller towns and municipalities, targeting regional internet service providers that have struggled with the cost of reaching national peering infrastructure.

“This launch is about fundamentally rebalancing access to South Africa’s digital infrastructure,” said Prenesh Padayachee, Seacom’s group chief technology and operations officer for digital infrastructure, in a statement on Tuesday.

“Seacom PeeringReach gives smaller networks a way to connect into the national peering ecosystem while keeping costs under control.”

PeeringReach runs over Seacom’s national long-distance fibre backbone and offers connectivity into the Jinx (Joburg), Cinx (Cape Town), Dinx (Durban) and NAPAfrica internet exchanges. Bandwidth options range from 1Gbit/s to 10Gbit/s. Seacom did not disclose pricing or the geographic footprint of the initial roll-out.

Accessing South Africa’s peering ecosystem has traditionally required either indirect routing via upstream transit providers – which adds cost and latency – or direct investment in long-haul fibre, which is out of reach for most regional operators.

Local traffic

The country’s main exchanges sit in Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, leaving networks elsewhere to reach them via national transit carriers. Seacom is positioning PeeringReach as a middle path, selling so-called “layer 2” capacity rather than requiring networks to build their own long-haul infrastructure.

Direct peering has become increasingly important for South African networks as video streaming, cloud workloads and content delivery push up domestic traffic volumes. Routing via exchanges rather than upstream transit typically reduces latency and cuts operating costs for operators handling significant volumes of local traffic.

Driving greater use of local exchanges has been a longstanding industry goal, with the Internet Service Providers’ Association, which operates Jinx, Cinx and Dinx, through INX-ZA arguing that keeping domestic traffic local improves performance and reduces reliance on international bandwidth.

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Seacom said the service is designed for ISPs serving local municipalities, regional carriers, enterprises running network-dependent operations, and content and cloud providers seeking better performance in regional markets.  – © 2026 NewsCentral Media