African fibre network operator and subsidiary of Econet Wireless, Liquid Telecom, this week opened a carrier neutral datacentre in Nairobi.

The East Africa Data Centre offers secure and reliable space for dedicated hosting, interconnect services, colocation, disaster recovery, network-based services, applications and cloud services to carriers, network providers and enterprises from across the continent. Existing customers include banks, mobile network operators, ISPs and cloud solutions providers.

Liquid said that the challenges facing new data centre builds in Africa are the same as those for any kind of telco activity: connectivity, security and power supply. As a result, the data centre is carrier-neutral with connectivity to the backbone and metro fibre is offered by a number of carriers including nearly all local Kenyan carriers and international carriers such as Tata, Level3 and Seacom.

The centre promises 99.982 per cent guaranteed availability and boasts a security and access control system including full-time CCTV surveillance, biometrics, metal detectors, card readers, turnstiles at various access points and staff onsite 365 days. The centre is connected to the grid 99.982 per cent of each calendar month and is backed up by two diesel generators.

East Africa Com takes place May 20-21 2014 in Kenya

East Africa Data Centre is an independent company within the Liquid Telecom Group with a separate management team from its sister companies which include Liquid Telecom Kenya. The datacentre currently occupies four floors with 500 square metres of useable whitespace and 160 racks per floor making it the largest data centre in East Africa, the company said.

Dan Kwach, General Manager at East Africa Data Centre, said “Quality data centres are an important element in the creation of an independent African telecoms infrastructure. Our significant investment in this data centre has been driven by demand from across Africa. By keeping African data in Africa we continue to help build Africa’s digital future”.