The covid 19 pandemic saw an increase in internet usage globally. This was due to the fact that most people devised means of working from home in fear of catching the disease. This meant increased pressure on broadband networks.
According to Robert Mullins, the Raxio Director they are set to construct a second data centre in Uganda. This will cost a whopping $15 USD equivalent to shs52 billion. The American group already has a state of the art and fully furnished data center in Uganda located in Bweyogerere. This is the first and only of it’s kind in the country. The major aim of this venture is to boost Uganda’s digital economy.
“This project is an anchor point for digitalization of the economy and the digital revolution in Uganda,” Mullins explained on Tuesday.
Raxio Uganda General Manager James Byaruhanga added that such a facility in Uganda will reduce the internet costs. It will also improve user experience.
“This will facilitate the growth of internet but also cheaper internet, improved user experience and fast speeds while using internet. It will also reduce the cost of doing business for a lot of entrepreneurs. Byaruhanga said.
The logic is that every time somebody uses internet, they are using the same mechanism as in Europe, Japan, USA.
Global companies such as Twitter, Google, Facebook, Microsoft among others will all have their cloud space sores locally in Uganda. This will happen once such a facility is set up here according to Raxio officials. This will in turn lower the cost of social media usage and internet. This is because these services will be accessed from a data center stationed in the country and no longer imported.
“This is going to be the heartbeat of internet connectivity and storage in Uganda. Alot of data is being generated and this facility will catalyse the use of social media and internet at large,”Byaruhanga added.
David Emiru, the network operations centre manage at Raxio Uganda said that “when one sends an email, or a message on social media or use any other internet services, the message first goes to the cloud of the mother company ie google, or facebook before reaching the recipient, a process which see the cost of using the service increased”.
Telecom companies therefore charge people for accessing data from a cloud space overseas to a closer proximity.
Emiru added that the cost of using services by these software companies will definitely go down. This will be so when they make use of the data centre to be located in Uganda.
Raxio Uganda can also be used by local companies as the major storage of their data or as back up storage with it’s 400 racks and 1.5MW.
“Telecom companies, banks, media houses and all other institutions that need to store their data can make use of the Raxio data centre in Uganda,”Emiru added.
The Raxio data centre has also been dubbed as a neutral carrier. This means it will be a Tier III facility. That translates into having an availability rate of 99.982% and experiencing an average of only 1.6 hours of downtime per year.
Raxio group also plans to build 11 more data centres across Africa in countries such as Kenya, DRC, Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa according to Robert Mullins.
This project of building these centres is expected to be completed in two to three years from now.
