Singapore/Manila (Philippines), 2 November 2022. DE-CIX, the world’s leading Internet Exchange (IX) operator, and GetaFIX, the Philippines’ largest neutral IX dedicated to its members and improving Internet access for all, today announce a strategic partnership that will connect the Philippines to DE-CIX’s Southeast Asian distributed interconnection ecosystem. Through this partnership, GetaFIX will be able to interconnect their members with the DE-CIX ecosystem via Singapore, offering optimized, low-latency, resilient, and secure access to cloud players like AWS and Azure, as well as dedicated connections to the Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Dynamics software-as-a-service clouds. The partnership will add a further 40 networks to the DE-CIX Southeast Asian interconnection platform. Beyond Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, this is the fourth major market integrated into the DE-CIX neutral interconnection ecosystem.
“ASEAN has the fastest-growing Internet market on the globe, with a high adoption rate of ICT and digital technology across major sectors of the economy. Such adoptions as e-wallets, e-commerce, e-learning, tele-medicine and, in the near future, self-driving automobiles, demand the best interconnection infrastructure in order to provide high-speed, seamless, and secure connectivity for the many critical use-cases. Latency is a global currency of the 21st century,” explains Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX. “However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the digital divide among ASEAN countries has become more apparent in terms of accessibility to high-speed Internet services for people and businesses.”
With a population in excess of 110 million, the Philippines tops the world listing for the country that spends most time consuming digital content on social media. However, fixed-line Internet penetration rates for individuals remain low in comparison to its Southeast Asian neighbors, as does the broadband available for business applications. Furthermore, as around 85% of the content consumed – be that on social media or from the cloud – is sourced from Singapore, latency can also pose a challenge to user experience.
“Our mission at GetaFIX is to help local ISPs improve the quality and lessen the cost of providing Internet to a population that is hungry for better and cheaper Internet services in the Philippines. By helping improve their networks, we hope to make better Internet for all Filipinos a reality. We have amassed the largest number of networks peered. We also have the largest number of content providers and CDNs peered and cached, resulting in lower latencies and costs, which translates into better experience and cheaper services to the users. On top of that, we have offered optimized and resilient connections to transit providers, IXs, and cloud services in both HK and Singapore,” says Gio Bacareza, Head of GetaFIX. “With this partnership, we increase the breadth of options available to our local ISPs for them to further improve and optimize their network – and thus further improve their services to Filipinos. More than helping our members, this partnership will also augment the overall volume of business in the ecosystem because we will be buying capacities from the largest local networks. GetaFIX is primarily located in the premier data center locations of ePLDT Vitro; We are especially excited about strengthening the connectivity of Vitro with this new partnership with DE-CIX to further drive the attractiveness of international companies to put their POPs into the Philippines at Vitro,” Bacareza emphasizes.
GetaFIX is the only carrier neutral, data center neutral, professionally-managed Internet Exchange in the Philippines – as well as the largest in terms of networks peered, content hosted, and traffic.
“By enabling networks in the Philippines to interconnect directly with content and cloud networks in Singapore via the DE-CIX platform, latency can be significantly reduced, and the performance of content and digital applications like the Microsoft 365 business applications improved. This is part of our ongoing process of creating a distributed interconnection platform across Southeast Asia. With our service offering, we are supporting the ongoing transformation in the ASEAN region – over the last few decades Singapore has become – and it remains – the gravity center of the Internet for the ASEAN region – now we will see many CDNs and OTTs hosting their offerings within the target markets across the region,” concludes Ivo Ivanov.
DE-CIX’s partnership model enables partner IXs to benefit from DE-CIX’s world-leading ecosystem building. The DE-CIX ecosystem in Southeast Asia encompasses IXs in Singapore, Johor Bahru and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and Brunei on Borneo Island, with further markets to come. The DE-CIX Internet Exchanges in Southeast Asia offer a shared interconnection fabric where participants at one IX can interconnect directly with networks at other DE-CIX IXs in the region. This means that through the connection to DE-CIX Singapore, networks from the Philippines can also interconnect with networks connected to the DE-CIX IXs in Malaysia and Brunei at no extra cost.
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