What is Amazon CloudFront?
It is a highly secure and highly available Content Delivery Network (CDN) that accelerates the delivery of applications, data, and videos to users worldwide, with high transfer speeds.
It speeds up the distribution of web content, such as .html, .css, .js, and image files, to your users and delivers your content through a worldwide network of data centers called edge locations.
In a recent statement, Amazon Web Services said Kenya is the latest country to be connected to the global infrastructure network, which is designed and built to deliver the highest quality network performance.
How Kenyans will benefit from it
The improved and faster user experience, with local Amazon CloudFront infrastructure, will help in driving the development of even more web applications across Kenya, including eCommerce, education, entertainment, gaming, healthcare, media, mobile banking, and government services.
“Customers across the country can expect up to 50 percent reduction in latency for delivery of their content with the new Edge location,” the statement reads.
With this, users in Kenya can securely create, access, and stream content to end users faster than they could before.
“I am delighted to welcome AWS’s investment in Kenya. The upcoming launch of Amazon CloudFront puts us at the forefront of accelerated innovation - enabling startups, enterprises, and our government agencies to focus on building the best user experiences,” said Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Safaricom welcomes the new of Amazon CloudFront
Kenya’s leading telecommunications provider, Safaricom PLC, welcomed the news of Amazon CloudFront coming to Kenya.
George Njuguna, Safaricom’s CIO, said, “We welcome the launch of the new Edge location as this will reduce latency and performance of our web and mobile applications, resulting in a radically improved user experience for our customers.”
The Amazon CloudFront will help Safaricom improve on its mobile telephony, mobile money transfer, and e-commerce to millions of customers in Kenya.
The company did not state the cost of Amazon CloudFront for Kenya users but in the US and Canada, it is $0.085 for the first 10TB. In South Africa, its first operation in Africa, it is pay-as-you-use.
Last year, the company also launched CloudFront location in South Africa, its first African operation.
