Belgacom's (now Proximus) International Carrier Services, BICS announced that it has established a new point-of-presence (PoP) in Nairobi, Kenya. Proximus is the largest of Belgium's three mobile telecommunications companies that competes with Orange Belgium and Base.
Brussels-based BICS is a provider of wholesale carrier for voice, mobile data and capacity service. It offers complete suite of regional traffic routing for International Voice, Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and data roaming services in Africa.
With the new PoP, BICS is extending the company’s reach in the African region to cater for the uptick in demand and the potential for future growth of connectivity and telecoms infrastructure in Africa.
According to BICS, with the new PoP in Kenya, voice and roaming data traffic now stays in the region. By keeping traffic in Africa local, customers will now benefit from an increase in the quality of services – both for voice calls and data roaming – no latency and increased Internet speeds. The PoP deployment will also minimise the cost for BICS’ operator customers by optimising connectivity within the region, thereby improving the overall customer experience.
Previously, voice calls placed in Africa have been rerouted via other international points-of-presence, impacting the quality of services as they are being connected from one African country to another, said BICS. A call made from Kenya to Tanzania, for example, would normally be routed through London and back to Tanzania, travelling thousands of kilometres in the process.
In 2014, BICS deployed a PoP in Johannesburg, which complemented the company’s existing PoPs in Djibouti and Mauritius.
Clémentine Fournier, Regional Vice President, Africa at BICS
There has never been a greater demand for bandwidth, as more customers across Africa are able to take advantage of 4G. Data-intensive apps and services are being enjoyed by a growing number of mobile users, who expect the jump in technology to correlate with a jump in quality.
