Interchange Limited highlights importance of having Data Centres

October 17, 2024 9:51 pm | Posted in Business News | Share now TwitterFacebook

By Adorina Massing.

Interchange Limited has shared exciting news about the Government’s plans to build new data centres and the importance of subsea cables in Vanuatu as innovative steps towards achieving national and global data coverage.

Interchange Ltd General Manager (GM), Niall Downey said global markets are looking for new localities to store their international data into, and that is where Vanuatu will be prominent in the upcoming years and decades.

“That is the global trend for sea cable providers, the majority of data being consumed is no longer from network operators but through data centres, with client services with users pulling from the cloud,” he said.

“These things costs millions of US dollars so they are not cheap exercises but once that infrastructure is put in, it’s there for 30 years and so the real side of this industry is you are future proofing the data demand for their citizens.

“I think there’s a big appetite for it as it would also help with the mobile network operators delivering their services and will enable tourist attractions because there will be data, and will also help those islands build their own data centres.”

Mr. Downey said all those plans will probably happen but when will it happen depends entirely on the process.

“But Vanuatu isn’t a good location for that and because there is a second sea cable being build, so without doubt, redundancy of the international data centres is required.

“Even the Government data centres wouldn’t happen because it’s too risky to just have one link to the international community whereas when you have two, you’re becoming much more bulletproof.

“In terms of the Government’s plans to build a domestic sea cable, he said those are plans, “there’s nothing concrete but the plans are to build a cable from places to Malekula to Tanna, to Santo which will greatly be of service and help local development.”

GM Downey explained that it is important that Vanuatu builds up its capability and oversee things like energy and operational costs as well as meeting high-end demands.

“It’s not just about maintenance but mainly operational costs, the expense of this component is in building them, because you have to build landing sites, which means any sea cable from here to Santo needs two landing sites and then you have to get the expertise.

“The demand for subsea cables is immense that you have to book in a slot, the earliest you can book is 18 – 36 months, same with sending satellites to space at the moment, if you had all the money in the world you can’t get your satellite into space because SpaceX is the biggest rocket launcher and they have a 3-4 year waiting list so that’s what the demand is.

“A lot of people think it’s quite a complex business, getting the funding in place, booking a slot and you’ll need to do marine surveys to map out an area and to test the seabed, since Vanuatu has underwater volcanoes, the volcanic areas can ruin chances of building a subsea cable across the seafloor.”

He further clarified that the internet speed provided by subsea cables are faster and deliver large amounts of data than as compared to our local network providers and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.

“That technology won’t be surpassed with sea cables, the speed of data is the speed of light, literally when you try to login to check up a soccer score coming from a premiership, that server collects information from London to Singapore, to Sydney, to Fiji and finally reaches Vanuatu.

“The sea cables are the only ones with the capacity to deal with vast sums of data so people are talking about the LEO satellites, they’re good for using and streaming services for small businesses but for big data you can only use sea cable.

“Starlinks are satellites, but they do not bring in sovereign data like we do, as their landing stations are in Australia and Indonesia, meaning you have no control over that information.

“They are quite expensive exercises so those sort of projects would need grant support.”

Mr. Downey added that the advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is how it is now being used everywhere, most specifically in apps and Google and the way we consume entertainment through TV or music streaming.

“Data consumption globally, is going up by 45% per hour, so more and more people, obviously the youths are always on their phones using data all the time.

“Again, cloud services are hosted by data centres, but these centres no longer keep their data in one location. Traditionally, data centres in countries like the United Kingdom, Norway, or the United States housed Google servers.

“However, with globalisation, these servers have become fragmented; there could be 52 different servers hosting fragments of information. If they get hacked, the information becomes useless.”