Mobile operator MTN Côte d’Ivoire has awarded a ‘multi-million dollar’ data centre contract to a local partner of Swedish telecom engineering firm Flexenclosure.

The local partner that will carry out the contract is Leadcom, a supplier of services in the deployment and maintenance of cellular and wireless communications infrastructures.

The data centre, which is to be located in Yopougon in the northern part of Abidjan, is expected to also serve as a switching facility for MTN customers in that country.

The facility is also dubbed an e-Centre, which is a “custom designed, prefabricated data centre solution that is fast to deploy, energy efficient and easy to expand.”

This means that the e-Centre is built in Sweden and equipped to house and power data and telecom equipment.

Meanwhile, the facility is also planned to be 336 square metres in size, comprising of a 168 square metre switching centre, an 84 square metre energy centre and another 84 square metre hosted data centre.

"This deal is yet another proof point for prefabricated solutions being the way of the future when it comes to service providers managing the on-going explosion in data traffic,” said David King, chief executive officer, Flexenclosure.

“eCentre’s unrivalled flexibility, reliability, scalability and speed of deployment makes it an attractive choice for operators wanting to expand network capacity fast,” King added in a statement.

Jerome Curtis, general manager capital programmes at MTN Côte d’Ivoire added, “The new eCentre will provide us with increased network availability, stability and geographical redundancy, and the data hosting capability will allow us to provide new value-added services to our clients.”