Putrajaya, 31 May 2022 – DE-CIX Malaysia, the region's leading Internet Exchange (IX) operator today announced its partnership with Northern Gateway Sdn Bhd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Ministry of Finance (MOF), to extend its existing DE-CIX Malaysia Interconnection Platform into Kota Perdana (which will soon be officially renamed as Delapan Special Border Economic Zone), a high-tech area in the town of Bukit Kayu Hitam, strategically located near the border between Malaysia and Thailand.
The extension of the existing DE-CIX Malaysia Interconnection platform will be housed in Open DC’s soon to be built tier-3 data centre at the country's northern border. This project aims to facilitate traffic exchange in the region and pave the way for low latency and high-speed connectivity across borders in Southeast Asia. It will provide businesses on both sides of the Malaysian-Thai border with the opportunity to connect to each other directly and exchange data with high performance and reliability. In addition, it opens up access to the wider DE-CIX Asia interconnection ecosystem for businesses and network operators from both Malaysia and Thailand, e.g. to source content and applications and access clouds directly from Singapore.
In Malaysia itself, all Internet sectors rebounded strongly in 2021 with double-digit year-on-year (y-o-y) growth, while Malaysia’s Internet economy is expected to reach US$35 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 14%. Local access to a wide interconnection ecosystem and state of art interconnection services in the North of the country will play a significant role in strengthening the digital infrastructure in Kedah and Perlis, with a flow-on effect for the economies in the region.
The Northern Gateway project will also highlight DE-CIX’s capabilities in enabling seamless data exchange for regional tech players, content providers and businesses on a cost-neutral basis through interconnection services such as peering and direct cloud connectivity. Connecting to DE-CIX and exchanging traffic directly across the interconnection platform further ensures that data streams arrive at their respective destinations via the shortest and most cost-effective route, thereby improving the performance of clouds and content. This project is expected to strengthen Malaysia's position as a critical regional interconnectivity hub, providing secure and reliable connections from Singapore to the Thailand border, as well as between East and West Malaysia, via the establishment of interconnection platforms IXs across the country.
“The extension of the existing DE-CIX Malaysia Interconnection platform to the Northern Gateway is a significant step in strengthening the digital ecosystem throughout the ASEAN region,” said Ivo Ivanov, Chief Executive Officer of DE-CIX International.“It will not only bring low-latency and high-speed connectivity to currently underserved areas but also enables cross-border data flows. By facilitating the local exchange of traffic, but also the direct interconnection with networks at other DE-CIX IXs in the region, DE-CIX gives people and businesses in Kedah, Perlis, and across the border in Thailand the digital infrastructure they deserve.”
Wong Weng Yew, Founder and Managing Director of Open DC, said “the interconnectivity hub will complement the development of Kota Perdana as a vibrant business hub in the north, allowing tech players to develop business hosting with better connectivity through Open DC’s data centre, and at the same time to benefit from DE-CIX’S IX to obtain low latency connectivity to the Internet and cloud services”.
Echoing this, Razwin Sulairee Hasnan Termizi, Chief Executive Officer, Northern Gateway said, “This partnership with DE-CIX signifies another major milestone for Delapan. DE-CIX @ Delapan will strengthen our border ecosystem to benefit Malaysia, Thailand and also Indochina. NGX will continue to invest in developing critical infrastructures to position Delapan as the most sustainable gateway to the Indochina market.”
The project is expected to be completed by 2024, enabling prospective collaborative efforts with other regional tech players and the industry’s private sector to further improve the country's Internet performance.
