Etisalat has added a third facility in its SmartHub data centers portfolio with the opening of state-of-art Tier 3 data centre facility in Kalba, which has been selected to be the landing for Africa-1, a new subsea telecom system connecting Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
The 10,000km subsea cable system will deliver 8 fibre pairs to connect Africa and the Middle East eastward to Pakistan and westward to Europe, increasing the available transmission capacity between Asia and Europe.
The cable will also feature ASN 1620 Softnode transmission equipment, featuring high performance 200/300/400 Gb/s advanced coherent XWAV line cards.
SmartHub Kalba is Etisalat’s third wholesale data centre, following the opening of 2 facilities in Fujairah and Dubai last year. The new data center will offer geo-redundant ecosystem for global players to expand their regional presence. This gives SmartHub Kalba a pivotal role in catering towards facilitating faster connectivity to various global partners.
With the launch of its latest facility, Etisalat’s Carrier & Wholesale Services (C&WS) has set a benchmark in the region, and is a testimony to the company’s strategy to ‘Drive the digital future to empower societies’. It is also in line with UAE leadership’s vision to continue leading as an ICT and data hub for the region addressing the diverse requirements of global telecom infrastructure.
Commenting on the development, Ali Amiri, Group chief carrier & wholesale officer, Etisalat, said,“As one of the biggest neutral carrier hotels, Etisalat’s SmartHub data centres will be an ICT bridge between continents always supporting critical business activities of global customers. SmartHub Kalba will enable us to increase our capabilities and global capacity to meet our international clients’ expanding needs for infrastructure across Asia, Africa, Europe, Middle East and the Americas. We at Etisalat are committed to making ‘SmartHub’ a preferred location for carriers, cloud service providers, Internet exchanges and companies looking for a carrier grade data centres.”
The new facility is scheduled to be operational by the first quarter of 2022 providing a robust data centre infrastructure evolving to meet future demands including landing of a new generation of submarines as well as becoming a disaster recovery hub for Etisalat’s customers in the Fujairah SmartHub.
