April 1, 2016 By Hassan Gbassay Koroma
In a bid provide quality communication to their consumers, Airtel Sierra Leone yesterday commissioned a US$10m data centre in Freetown.
Speaking during the auspicious ceremony at Spur Road, Managing Director of Airtel Sierra Leone, Dapo Olasope, said the company had commenced the huge project in June 2014, aimed at modernising and expanding their network infrastructure to standards akin to technologically advanced counties in the world.
He said they were deploying the latest technology to guarantee network availability, stability, redundancy and capacity, as well as to provide the foundation for new value added services to their customers.
Mr. Olasope said the state-of-art Network Operating Centre would be centrally managed, adding that Airtel and Sierra Leone would be brought to par with standards provided by the most technologically advanced companies in the world, in terms of Information Communication Technology infrastructure.
He revealed that the data centre has the capacity to serve ten million subscribers and that it can give support to two thousand sites, adding that the commissioning of the data centre meant that Airtel and Sierra Leone have bequeathed to the people a befitting edifice with the latest technology to further the development of ICT.
Also speaking, Chairman of the National Telecommunication Commission, Momoh Konteh commended Airtel for their effort to add value to the communication infrastructure in the country.
He said the data centre commissioning came at a significant period in the history of communication in the country, on the eve of the launch of the liberalisation of the gateway. HE said NATCOM was friends with all telecommunication companies in the country and promised to continue working with all companies to promote communication in the country.
In his keynote address, the outgoing Information and Communications Minister, Alhaji Alpha Kanu, commended Airtel’s strides to embark on such a monumental development project, adding that the data centre would help improve communication.
He said government was in discussion with another company to see how they could build a data centre worth US$25 million before Airtel invited him to witness the construction of their data centre, adding that the development has helped save money that government would have spent on the project.