V.tal, a Brazilian fiber firm part of telco GlobeNet announced its launch of a new Edge data center in Fortaleza, Brazil. The new data center known as 'Big Lobster' will start with a capacity of 4MW spread across four data halls that can hold a total of 400 racks. The new data center is connected to the company's neighbouring Fortaleza cable landing station.
The Big Lobster
The combined two facilities provide 7,000 sqm (75,350 sq ft) with a capacity of 600 racks and more than 5MW of capacity. The new edge data center is fully integrated with its undersea Cable Landing Station (CLS). It features connection redundancy, providing secure data transmission. Additionally, the unit will be linked with the company's other edge data center in Fortaleza. Since 2002, the CLS has been in use. The Fortaleza site was initially scheduled to launch in Q3 of 2022 when it was first announced in September 2021. The company has reportedly invested USD 59 million into the project.
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Cicero Olivieri, vice president of engineering at V.tal said, "With the kick-off of the new edge data center complex, V.tal consolidates itself as an ecosystem of neutral infrastructure solutions that provides its customers with robustness, resilience, redundancy, capillarity, and very low latency."
Four Edge Data Centers
V.tal now has four complete edge data centers currently in operation with two in Fortaleza, one in Rio de Janeiro and another one in Barranquilla, Colombia. These data centers are connected by 26 thousand kilometers of undersea optical cables that connect Brazil to Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Bermuda and the United States.
Eduardo Silveira, vice president of strategy at V.tal said, "V.tal will invest to expand its data center park, as it complements its capillarity and footprint in all Brazilian regions, in addition to meeting the present and future requirements of its customers, due to innovations and new technologies that have been emerging."
Last year, BTG purchased a 57.9% equity stake owned by Oi SA in the company's fibre-optic infrastructure assets unit, now known as V.tal, and planned to merge it with GlobeNet.
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Through a capital expansion underwritten by BTG and funded by money from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), V.tal closed funding in November, totalling 2.5 billion reais (USD 470 million).
GlobeNet is a wholesale telecom operator owned by BTG Pactual Infrastructure Fund II. It has several submarine cables in Latin America as well as cable landing stations in Brazil, Colombia, and the US in New Jersey and Florida.
Plan for new Data Centers
The company is also planning for a new facility in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. However, the details regarding the new facility are not available other than the fact that it will be retrofit of an existing building. A second site in Barranquilla is also in development.
