MTN buys datacentre for Ivory Coast

Pre-fabricated datacentre specialist Flexenclosure said Friday it has received an order from African carrier MTN Côte d’Ivoire to deliver a 336 square meter customised datacentre in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast.

Together with system integrator partner Leadcom, Flexenclosure will install and activate the multimillion dollar project by the first quarter of 2014. The project will have the dual role of both a switching centre and a datacentre where MTN’s data customers can be hosted.

The order from MTN comes hot on the heels of two similar orders from Vodacom in Mozambique, as datacentres see rising levels of adoption in Africa. Last month African fibre network operator and subsidiary of Econet Wireless, Liquid Telecom, opened a large carrier neutral datacentre in Nairobi.

”This deal is yet another proof point for pre-fabricated solutions being the way of the future when it comes to service providers managing the on-going explosion in data traffic,” said David King, CEO of Flexenclosure, saying that the company has already provided more than 4,500 sqm of eCentres for MTN in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon through third-party channels.

“The new eCentre will provide us with increased network availability, stability and geographical redundancy, and the data hosting capability will allow us to provide new value-added services to our clients,” said Jerome Curtis, General Manager Capital Programs, MTN Côte d’Ivoire.