Creating a reception for Meta’s 2Africa cable
Qatari telco Ooredoo is investing in infrastructure for Oman (pictured) to meet demand from thriving local economies in Barka, Salalah, and Sohar, it has announced. The new infrastructure will support the government’s Oman’s Vision 2040, it says. Services provided from its mobile edge computing facilities will include cloud storage, data recovery and cyber security.
The infrastructure is being built in advance of the landing of the Meta/Facebook-led 2Africa cable, which made its first landing in Genoa, Italy in April 2022. The cable has recently landed in Berbera, Somaliland (with Somcable) and Djibouti City, Djibouti in East Arica (via Djibouti Telecom). Further landings in Senegal (via Sonatel) have been announced.
At 45,000km and circling the African continent, the subsea cable is the longest in the world and will connect three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe, and 33 countries across 46 landing points. It is due to go live some time in 2023.
The Ooredoo telecoms infrastructure will support the increase in demand for mobile data services with the new nodes at Barka, Sohar and Salalah. Barka is west of Muscat, the capital city Muscat. Ooredoo Oman opened a new 7,000 square meter data centre in Baushar, south of Muscat, in March 2021, reports Dan Swinhoe at DataCenter Dynamics.
Sohar is further west along the coast close to the UAE border, and Salalah is on the south coast close to the Yemen border. Each facility will house at least 500 racks; Salalah and Barka will both house landing points for the upcoming 2Africa cable spur to the Middle East.
Ooredoo Oman CEO Noor Al Sulaiti and CTIO Ahmed Abdullah Al Abri were in attendance for a foundation stone laying ceremony in Salalah, according to Swinhoe at DataCenter Dynamics.
“Our state-of-the-art data centres mark our progress towards achieving the objectives of Oman’s Vision 2040,” said Al Abri. “Each site forms the cornerstone of the modern infrastructure required to meet the requirements of a rapidly-growing digitally-enabled society and the demand for hosting and digital data processing.”
Telco Ooredoo offers hosting services from data centres in Qatar, Indonesia and Oman.
The 2.5MW, three-story data centre is designed for 300 pre-installed rack spaces in two fully isolated data rooms, one for Ooredoo and the other for its subsidiary, Data2cloud.