Equinix and Vodafone Collaborate to Build Digital Hub in Genoa, Connecting Africa, Europe and the Middle East

Rhea-AI Summary

Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX) and Vodafone announced plans to build a new subsea hub, GN1, in Genoa, Italy, enhancing global connectivity. This hub will serve as a landing point for the 2Africa cable, a major telecom project aiming to connect 16 African countries to Europe and the Middle East. GN1 will provide secure colocation and interconnection services and is set to utilize 100% renewable energy. The project responds to the increasing demand for digital infrastructure and aims to boost economic development in the region.

Positive

• GN1 will enhance connectivity between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East through the 2Africa project.
• GN1 is designed to leverage renewable energy and meet global environmental standards.
• The 2Africa cable will significantly increase internet capacity and reliability for millions.

Negative

• None.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. and BERKSHIRE, England, Feb. 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the world's digital infrastructure company™, and Vodafone today announced a plan to build a new subsea hub in Genoa, called GN1. Situated on Italy's northwest coast, Genoa has a rich history in maritime trade and is well-positioned to be a key location on the global subsea cable map. Vodafone, which is the cable consortium's lead for European landings, will land the 2Africa cable system at Genoa and use Equinix's GN1 facility as a strategic interconnection point for the subsea cable system, creating stronger connectivity in Europe and contributing to building an inclusive digital society for all.

2Africa is one of the world's largest submarine telecommunications cable projects, driven by a group of partners. The cable will circumnavigate the continent of Africa, directly connecting 16 countries to Europe and the Middle East. This will deliver much-needed internet capacity and reliability, underpinning the further growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for hundreds of millions of people. The project will also drive the growth of increasingly digitized economies across Europe by strengthening connectivity between European countries.

GN1 will have a direct fiber connection to ML5, the soon-to-be opened Equinix flagship data center in Milan, and will allow Equinix customers to increase the number of partners they connect with and expand their reach into new markets.

The combination of 2Africa's landing in the new Genoa site and the direct connection to Milan means GN1 will offer a new, complementary and diverse alternative option for the Mediterranean region. Indeed, as Genoa's first carrier-neutral data center, GN1 will offer customers secure, resilient colocation and interconnection services, as well as the ability to directly leverage Equinix's digital ecosystems and colocation facilities in Milan. It will provide a capacity of 150 cabinet equivalents, and colocation space of approximately 6,000 square feet (560 square meters).

2Africa is expected to deliver more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa today, with a design capacity of up to 180 Tbps on key segments of the system. This will be vital to help build a digital society ready for services that require a large amount of data transfer, such as cloud computing or video.

The need for robust digital infrastructures can be seen across the world, and Africa is no exception. The continent is experiencing a critical period of digital transformation and development of its digital economy. In the next few years, digital technologies are expected to be a factor in improving African people's quality of life and driving economic development in the region. The GSMA predicts that the number of mobile internet users in Africa will continue to grow rapidly, primarily due to the popularization of smartphones and lack of fixed-line infrastructure, which has led to a boom of new services such as mobile payment, instant messaging, online streaming media and short video.

Highlights/Key Facts

• The 2Africa project includes partners from China Mobile International, Facebook, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, stc, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC. The cable system will underpin digitization across the African continent by bringing greater capacity, quality and availability of internet connectivity between Africa and the rest of the world.
• Responsibility for landing the 2Africa cable is split between the 2Africa parties depending on location. Vodafone is leading all European landings, along with selected other sites.
• As the home of the interconnected cloud^®, Equinix is a natural destination for subsea cable systems and a gateway to new opportunities for system operators and their customers. Equinix hosts over 2,950 cloud and IT service providers on its global platform and can support subsea cable systems in 40 subsea-enabled metros around the world. When subsea cable systems are linked to cloud and content ecosystems on Platform Equinix®, users can access a variety of scalable cloud services almost anywhere they need to be. And because Equinix is carrier-neutral, subsea system operators can offer excess network capacity to customers who otherwise couldn't as quickly or efficiently reach the markets being served by new subsea architectures.
• GN1 is being built in line with global environmental standards and will contribute to a portfolio of some of the most energy-efficient data centers in the world. Indeed, GN1 is expected to utilize 100% renewable energy. As the world's digital infrastructure company, Equinix is working to protect, connect and power a more sustainable digital world by proactively addressing its ESG impacts. Equinix recently scored the highest rating on its first response to the DPP's Committed to Sustainability survey, and joined European cloud infrastructure and data center providers and European trade associations to form the Climate Neutral Data Centre Operator Pact and Self-Regulatory Initiative.
• ML5 will be a new flagship International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center in Milan that offers state-of-the-art colocation, as well as a host of advanced interconnection services—including Equinix Fabric™ and Equinix Internet Exchange^®—enabling virtual interconnections to some of the largest cloud providers in the world, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Google Cloud. When opened, ML5 will provide capacity of 500 cabinet equivalents and colocation space of approximately 15,000 square feet (1,400 square meters).
• The Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 4, a market study recently published by Equinix, forecasts that overall interconnection bandwidth—the measure of private connectivity for the transfer of data between organizations—will achieve a 45% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2019 to 2023, globally. The expected growth is driven by digital transformation, and specifically by greater demands from enterprises extending their digital infrastructure from centralized locations to distributed edge locations.

Quotes

• Nick Gliddon, Director, Vodafone Carrier Services:
  "The 2Africa project is vitally important to improving connectivity between Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and will also improve intra-European connectivity. By linking Spain and Portugal directly to Genoa and Milan, the system will avoid fiber bottlenecks that naturally occur between France and Spain, further strengthening Vodafone's Gigabit networks."
  
  
• Emmanuel Becker, Managing Director, Italy, Equinix:
  "Italy is an important growth market for Equinix in EMEA, as it's a strategic interconnection point for the region and beyond. We are working to give our customers improved access to the expanding global subsea cable network, so they have increased opportunities to expand internationally. Thanks also to the opening of our new data center in Milan, ML5, we are creating an interconnected metro area where customers can connect with strategic business partners in Italy and across the world."
  
  
• Eugene Bergen Henegouwen, President, EMEA, Equinix:
  "I am thrilled we are adding a new metro to our EMEA portfolio. Equinix's Genoa site provides a great landing hub for subsea cable operators, whilst at the same time boosting the digital ecosystems at our recently announced Milan flagship, ML5. Equinix continues to focus on expanding its position as a global connectivity service provider. Our commitment is always to support the increasing demands we're seeing from companies globally to accelerate their digital transformation. We're helping businesses connect to everything they need to succeed, and will continue to do so."
  
  
• Marco Bucci, Mayor of Genoa City:
  "We are very excited to be the host city for the new subsea hub GN1, that will serve as a landing point for the 2Africa cable in the north of Italy. Genoa is known for the central role it has played in maritime trade for many centuries. Thanks to GN1, the city will become one of the main digital harbors of Europe, and play a key role in global data transfer."

Additional Resources

• Annual Market Study Reveals Pace at Which COVID-19 Is Accelerating Digital Transformation [press release]
• Equinix Submarine Cable Momentum is Accelerating [blog post]
• Equinix to Open New Flagship Data Center in Milan [press release]
• Global Interconnection Index (GXI), Volume 4 [report]
• Learn more about Equinix in Italy [website]
• Learn more about Vodafone cable systems [website]
• Learn more about Vodafone's investment in 2Africa [blog post]
• Vodafone global co-location services [website]

About Equinix
Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX) is the world's digital infrastructure company, enabling digital leaders to harness a trusted platform to bring together and interconnect the foundational infrastructure that powers their success. Equinix enables today's businesses to access all the right places, partners and possibilities they need to accelerate advantage. With Equinix, they can scale with agility, speed the launch of digital services, deliver world-class experiences and multiply their value.

About Vodafone
Vodafone is a leading telecommunications company in Europe and Africa. Our purpose is to "connect for a better future" and our expertise and scale gives us a unique opportunity to drive positive change for society. Our networks keep family, friends, businesses and governments connected and – as COVID-19 has clearly demonstrated – we play a vital role in keeping economies running and the functioning of critical sectors like education and healthcare.

Vodafone is the largest mobile and fixed network operator in Europe and a leading global IoT connectivity provider. Our M-Pesa technology platform in Africa enables over 45m people to benefit from access to mobile payments and financial services. We operate mobile and fixed networks in 21 countries and partner with mobile networks in 48 more. As of 31 December 2020, we had over 300m mobile customers, more than 27m fixed broadband customers, over 22m TV customers and we connected more than 118m IoT devices.

We support diversity and inclusion through our maternity and parental leave policies, empowering women through connectivity and improving access to education and digital skills for women, girls, and society at large. We are respectful of all individuals, irrespective of race, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, belief, culture or religion.

Vodafone is also taking significant steps to reduce our impact on our planet by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2025, purchasing 100% of our electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and reusing, reselling or recycling 100% of our redundant network equipment.

For more information, please visit http://www.vodafone.com, follow us on Twitter at @VodafoneGroup or connect with us on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/vodafone.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX data centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix products and solutions, unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenues from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; a failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; risks related to our taxation as a REIT; and other risks described from time to time in Equinix filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see recent Equinix quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

 

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SOURCE Equinix, Inc.

FAQ

What is the purpose of GN1 in Genoa?

The GN1 subsea hub is designed to enhance connectivity between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East by serving as a landing point for the 2Africa cable.

How does the 2Africa project benefit digital infrastructure?

The 2Africa project will provide increased internet capacity and reliability, connecting 16 African countries directly to Europe and the Middle East.

What are the environmental impacts of the GN1 facility?

GN1 is set to utilize 100% renewable energy and meet global environmental standards, contributing to sustainable digital infrastructure.

What is Equinix's role in the 2Africa project?

Equinix will host the GN1 facility, offering secure colocation and interconnection services linked to the 2Africa cable.

When is the 2Africa cable project expected to be completed?

While specific completion dates are not mentioned in the press release, the 2Africa project is recognized as one of the largest subsea telecommunications initiatives.