Data Centres & Networks

Tencent Cloud, the public cloud service provider business of multinational technology conglomerate holding company Tencent, has announced the launch of its first internet data centre (IDC) in Indonesia.

While South Africa is home to the largest concentration of data centres on the African continent, the appeal of West Africa seems to be growing, with new developments planned for both Senegal and Nigeria.

A major new announcement from pan-African data centre developer and operator  Raxio is a useful reminder of the continuing acceleration of data centre development across Africa.

Operator Ooredoo Maldives has announced the launch of the country’s first ever tier-III-ready data centre, providing connectivity, storage, security and support systems for IT-based services and operations for a wide range of customers.

TIM Brasil has announced its intention to be the first operator in Brazil to migrate its data centres to the cloud.

IBM has announced the opening of its first IBM Cloud Multizone Region (MZR) in Latin America. Building on its existing data centre footprint in Brazil, IBM says that the MZR is a result of the company's continued investment in cloud infrastructure to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption and help foster business growth in Latin America.

Botswana Fibre Networks (BoFiNet), a wholesale provider of national and international telecommunication infrastructure, has announced plans to build a data centre at the Science and Technology Park in Gaborone, the country’s capital.

Brazil’s Oi has sold off a data centre unit to Piemonte Holding for BRL367 million ($65.3 million) in a further manouevre to restructure its debt burden.

MTS Belarus registered a year-on-year mobile data traffic increase of 43.6% during 2020, driven by a 56.5% rise in smartphone subscribers on its network.

A plan to build one of the largest new greenfield campuses in the Mumbai region has been announced by Singapore-based Princeton Digital Group (PDG), one of Asia’s leading data centre providers.

Ghana’s only Tier IV data centre has reportedly been bought by fund management group African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), which now promises to make the former Etix facility the largest data centre in the country.

The  Raxio Group, a pan-African data centre developer and operator, has claimed a first. It will establish and invest in Raxio Kinshasa, the first in a series of state-of-the-art, privately owned, carrier-neutral data centres in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Chinese cloud company Tencent Cloud has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) that will see the company build a data centre in the kingdom. This will be its first MENA facility in Bahrain.

Adani Enterprises, the flagship company of the Adani Group, one of India’s largest multi-infrastructure organizations, and EdgeConneX, a leading global data centre operator with 50 facilities in 30 markets around the world, have announced a 50:50 joint venture to develop and operate data centres throughout India.

IXAfrica, the new-entrant data centre operator in Kenya, has announced plans to build what it describes as a world-leading and sustainable campus at a newly secured location in Nairobi.

Nokia has launched the 8th edition of its Mobile Broadband India Traffic Index (MBiT) 2021, outlining mobile broadband performance in India during 2020.

Oracle has announced plans to set up a new data centre in Jerusalem; it will function as a regional cloud provider for Israeli clients.

A study by Peru’s regulator Osiptel has found that an additional 36,695 base stations must be deployed by 2025 to meet growing data demand among the country’s subscribers.

Myanmar’s operators have restored internet services one day after being ordered to suspend them amid mass protests against the country’s authorities.

Teraco Data Environments, which describes itself as Africa’s largest interconnection hub and vendor-neutral data centre provider, says it has raised $170 million to fund its data centre construction efforts.

Orange Maroc, the Moroccan division of the multinational telecommunications company Orange, has acquired EtixEverywhere Maroc, part of European global data centre developer and operator EtixEverywhere. As part of this acquisition Orange is also to be the owner of a data centre in Casablanca, Morocco.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC), a data centre service provider headquartered in Singapore, has reportedly proposed plans for a greenfield data centre campus in Noida, India.

Recent deals involving Chile and Brazil underline the continuing growth of the data centre market in South America.

The formal establishment of Ethiopia’s first-ever carrier-neutral hyperscale data centre park, located in the ICT Park, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, took place this week when wingu.africa, a pan-East African data centre operator based in Djibouti, broke ground on the development.

Saudi Arabia-based operator STC launched three “mega data centres” in Riyadh, Jeddah and Madina with an investment of SAR1 billion ($266 million) pledged for the project, as part of the country’s digital transformation programme.

Liquid Telecom announced plans to build the largest African data centre outside of South Africa in Nigeria, which will lead by a new CEO in the country. 

Ascenty, a leading name in the Latin American data centre market, has announced that a second unit is now in operation on the company’s mega-campus in Vinhedo, a Brazilian city in the state of Sao Paulo.

Data centre company Ascenty has announced the opening of the Chile 1 data centre in Santiago, the company's first unit to start operating outside Brazil.

Underlining the growing interest on the part of US technology companies in India, Amazon, through Amazon Web Services (AWS), reportedly has plans to invest an estimated $2.8 billion in the city of Hyderabad, Telangana State, India, to set up a new cloud region – or AWS Region, as it is known.

Data centre specialist SpaceDC has announced the launch of JAK2, a new data centre in Indonesia sited in the ID01 campus, which will also be home to the company’s other flagship data centre JAK1.

As CSP’s experience disruption to traffic patterns as a result of the global Covid-19 pandemic, what are the key challenges facing their data centres?

African data centre developer and operator Raxio says it has officially secured land at the Ethio ICT Park in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for its newest data centre.