The Carrier and Wholesale Services (C&WS) division of e& (formerly known as Etisalat Group) announced the readiness of its SmartHub Kalba data center facility to be the future telecom hub for the MENA region.
The state-of-art Tier III data center facility in Kalba is powered by Africa-1 and 2 Africa, two new subsea telecom cable systems providing diverse and reliable connectivity to Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
The SmartHub Kalba facility, fully operational at the beginning of this year, has already been powered by the Africa-1 subsea telecom system, giving customers direct access to enhanced connectivity for addressing critical business requirements.
The addition of 2 Africa, the largest subsea system in the world, will enable SmartHub to continue meeting customer needs for new applications such as cloud computing, on-demand video and social media. It will also increase the capacity, quality and availability of internet connectivity between Africa and worldwide by offering the opportunity for global players – carriers and content delivery networks (CDNs) - to expand their regional presence through its geo-redundant ecosystem.
Ali Amiri, Group Chief Carrier & Wholesale Officer, e&, said, “As one of the biggest neutral carrier hotels, our SmartHub data centers will be an ICT bridge between continents, supporting critical business activities for global customers. SmartHub Kalba will enable us to increase our capabilities and global capacity further so that we can continue to meet our international clients’ evolving needs for infrastructure across Asia, Africa, Europe, Middle East and the Americas.”
With the launch of SmartHub Kalba, e&’s C&WS division has set a benchmark in the region in line with the company’s overall strategy to bring transformative technologies and innovative solutions to e&’s customers across various enterprise verticals such as banking, financial services and insurance. It is also aligned with the UAE leadership’s vision to continue leading as an ICT and data hub for the region, responding to the diverse requirements of global telecom infrastructure.
By directly connecting numerous countries around the entire coast of Africa to Europe and the Middle East region, businesses and consumers will benefit from enhanced capacity and reliability for services such as telecommuting, HD TV broadcasting, internet services, video conferencing, advanced multimedia and mobile video applications. The project will also underpin future mobile and fixed broadband access and help countries meet many of the SDG-related challenges related to or depending on internet connectivity.
The e&’s SmartHub wholesale data center ecosystem serves almost two billion population aiming to reach another one billion with the addition of the new subsea cable systems and data center in Kalba. Its expansion follows the opening of facilities in Fujairah and Dubai.
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