Etisalat has announced to build a third facility in its SmartHub data centers portfolio with the opening of state-of-art Tier 3 data center 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.

SmartHub Data Center is located as the centerpiece over cable landing station supported in the Middle East supported by diverse ecosystem of interconnected communities and offering  connectivity to a populous of 2 billion people billion with latency of just 30 milliseconds to help businesses on the capitalise of capital.

Etisalat opened its SmartHub Fujairah and SmartHub Dubai data center facilities in 2020.

SmartHub Kalba is Etisalat’s third wholesale data center. 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.

Furthermore, continuing SmarHub's concept of data center as CLS, Etisalat will land the Africa-1 cable system at the SmartHub Kalba data center.

The Africa-1 cable system spans 10,000km, initially landings in Kenya, Djibouti, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France. The system consists of 8 fiber pairs, featuring high performance 200/300/400 Gbps advanced coherent technology. 

The Africa-1 consortium comprises Etisalat, G42, Mobily, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limted (PTCL), Telecom Egypt, etc.. 

The Africa-1 cable system is supplied by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), to be ready for service by the end of 2023.

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.

Etisalat SmartHub Kalba data center 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 SmartHub Fujairah.

According to Ali Amiri, Group Chief Carrier & Wholesale Officer, Etisalat, as one of the biggest neutral carrier hotels in the Middle East, Etisalat’s SmartHub data centres will be an ICT bridge between continents always supporting critical business activities of global customers. SmartHub Kalba will enable Etisalat to increase capabilities and global capacity to meet international clients’ expanding needs for infrastructure across Asia, Africa, Europe, Middle East and the Americas. Etisalat is committed to making ‘SmartHub’ a preferred location for carriers, cloud service providers, Internet exchanges and companies looking for a carrier grade data centers.

For more information about Etisalat SmartHub Data Centers, please visit here.