The Tier 3 wholesale facility will follow the opening of data centres in Fujairah and Dubai last year.
Kalba (shown in the above picture render) will be the landing facility for the new Africa-1 subsea cable that will connect Africa, the Middle East and Europe. SmartHub Kalba will therefore play a key role in supporting faster connectivity and lower latency for global customers.
Ali Amiri, group chief carrier and wholesale officer at Etisalat, said: “As one of the biggest neutral carrier hotel platforms, Etisalat’s SmartHub data centres will be an ICT bridge between continents, always supporting critical business activities of global customers.
“SmartHub Kalba will enable us to increase our capabilities and global capacity to meet our international clients’ expanding needs for infrastructure across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas.”
Kalba is scheduled to be operational by the first quarter of 2022, said Etisalat, and will also be offered as a disaster recovery hub for Etisalat’s customers at the Fujairah SmartHub data centre.
The Africa-1 subsea cable is due to come into service by the end of 2023.
Also in the UAE, Moro Hub and Huawei recently announced plans to build a 100MW solar-powered data centre on a Dubai solar farm, which is being billed as the largest solar-driven facility in the region.
