The new site will be located in Barka, near the capital city of Muscat, and will offer a network-dense, carrier-neutral facility servicing carriers, content providers and cloud providers. It will be operated by Equinix with 18,600 square feet of colocation space and around 750 cabinets available at full-build.
The new Equinix International Business Exchange data centre will act as a regional interconnection hub with low latencies between the Asia, Africa and Europe regions. Customers will also be able to connect to other Equinix data centres in the region, it added.
The site will also offer connectivity to Oman’s subsea cable landing stations (CLS), which include numerous cables Omantel has invested in totalling 20 in all, with six landing stations in Oman.
Eric Schwartz, president, EMEA, Equinix: "We see significant potential for Oman as a market generally and, in particular, supporting CLS requirements as subsea cable momentum accelerates. It's all about meeting the growing need for interconnection – private data exchange between businesses.
“In the digital age, companies need to reach everywhere, interconnect everyone and integrate everything, and they need to do it out at the digital edge, where commerce, population centres and digital ecosystems meet. Our joint venture with Omantel will do exactly that."
Under the terms of the agreement, Equinix and Omantel will both fund equity contributions in an amount of US$10 million for the joint venture representing a 50% shareholding each, and additional funds will be raised through debt financing assumed by the joint venture company. The shareholders' agreement was signed on June 20, 2018, and the joint venture company was established on June 26, 2018.
The facility will be built in three stages, with the initial first stage offering around 250 cabinets expected to go live in Q2 2019.
Omantel offers connectivity to more than 120 cities worldwide, with investments in AAE-1, Europe India Gateway (EIG), Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG), Gulf to Africa (G2A), and Silk Route Gateway-1 (SRG-1), among others.
Talal Al Mamari, CEO, Omantel: "We are excited to work with Equinix on this project and accelerate how users experience cloud, content and next-gen communications. Today, data centre infrastructure sits at the heart of global ICT and enables all of us to enjoy the cloud-based apps and services we use every day.
“The planned IBX data centre with Equinix in Oman represents a massive step forward for Oman and the Middle Eastern ICT markets. Working on this project will allow both companies to bring together their strong assets and enable a new era of telecommunications both locally and globally. Such partnership will further enhance Oman's competitiveness in the global digital economy and trade."
