Extreme IX, an Internet Exchange that connects Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with content providers, added 7 new points of presence (PoPs) in the Greater Mumbai and Navi Mumbai region, the company said in an announcement. It said that it has added the capacity to “meet the increased demand in internet usage and bandwidth capacity posed by COVID-19 pandemic”.

Extreme IX is now present in 20 locations in India, the company said. The company told the Press Trust of India that it plans to invest ₹15 crore in expanding its network. Extreme IX currently traffics a weekly peak of over 800Gbps, and briefly appears to have crossed the 1.3Tbps mark.

Mumbai remains Extreme’s densest point, with the city being the country’s financial capital and hosting most of the country’s undersea internet cable landing stations. Extreme said it now had presence in GPX Mumbai 1, GPX Mumbai 2, Netmagic DC in Chandivali and Vikhroli, Webwerks and Sify in Rabale, CtrlS in Mahape and Cyquator in Vashi, ST Telemedia in Prabhadevi, and independent points of presence in Chembur, Sion, and Thane.

“The Peering and Exchange ecosystem has allowed ISPs to offload about 70-80% of their traffic from IP Transit,” Extreme said in a press release. “Extreme IX targets that this figure goes up to 90% like in advanced internet economies of the world.” Extreme is essentially saying that by connecting ISPs directly to content providers, and to each other, ISPs save money on expensive links to the global internet provided by Tier 1 ISPs (i.e., Tata Communications, which is the only Tier 1 ISP in India) and telcos. The result is lower costs, something that can help smaller ISPs compete.

In August, DE-CIX India, the only other large privately owned internet exchange in the country, said that it had expanded to ten locations. In a subsequent release, DE-CIX said that it was the largest internet exchange in South Asia by number of connected networks.

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