MainOne, a connectivity and data centre company and owners of the MainOne international undersea cable, says that local Internet traffic in Nigeria has surged by over 100% within a year, a trend underscoring the upsurge in bandwidth usage nationwide.
Chidinma Iwe, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at MainOne disclosed this while making a presentation at the Nigeria International Technology and Exhibition Conference (NITEC) 2016 that ended weekend in Lagos.
Attributing the massive growth in local Internet traffic to improvements and growing content development by Nigerians, the MainOne CIO told the tech forum that ”we have totaled about 29, 000,000 gigabyte of local traffic in 2015, and 61,000,000 gigabyte in 2016, which is over a 100% growth in the exchange of local traffic.”
Iwe said that the local Internet traffic surge “shows that content is coming locally into Nigeria. Something has already started to happen, and basically we find out that content is coming up.”
Nigerians have now started to understand that we have Internet service providers and other tech companies that offer the same services offered in abroad and at competitive prices, according to the MainOne CISO who reckons that patronage of local providers in also on the rise.
He asked Nigerian online businesses to take advantage of Nigerian tech companies to put their content in the local Internet market, saying that this will improve the market strength for the Nigerian Internet business ecosystem.
“Interestingly, the tariff of some of the services that we go for in the international market, we can get competitive price with what we have in the local market,” he told attendees at the tech event.
“So why empower other economies with your content, when you can empower your economy with it”, Iwe said at the tech forum that attracted key players in the Nigeria ICT sector.
Speaking on the issue of cyber security, he explained that the reason cyber attackers had advantage over the defenders was because defenders are always busy in protecting so many thing at once.
According to him, a MainOne research of 800 Chief Information Officers (CIO) and Chief Security Officers (CSO) has revealed that 42% say they are very likely to become victims of cybercrime in 2016, while 32% say they are likely to become victims.
He said organizations need to do a capability assessment to enable them make strong decisions in protecting their data online.
The MainOne CISO also advised organizations to partner with Internet organisations that have the security solutions to their Internet data.
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