Pan African telecoms operator, Paratus Group Africa@paratus_africa is in the process of opening a Data Centre in Lusaka, which will be the company’s third Data Centre in Africa. The total investment into the Data Centre in Lusaka will be around US$5.75 million (140 million Zambian Kwacha).
Group Chief Executive Officer, Barney Harmse said in an interview that the centre is expected to open end of July. “Zambia has been a good story, a success story.”
Paratus Zambia contributes more than 10% of the Group’s revenue. The total revenue for the group in the previous financial year was around 1,4 billion Zambian kwacha.
Paratus is a Namibian ICT company that has ventured into Africa with operations in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia including its head office in Namibia. Paratus also delivers services to Tanzania and DRC from its Zambian operations. In the DRC, the company has two points of presence in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi.
Paratus serves its African markets through the West Africa Cable System (WACS), which is submarine communications cable linking South Africa with the United Kingdom WACS and the Trans Kalahari Fibre, which connects landlocked southern African countries to the undersea cable in Namibia.
“Zambia is critical to our operations; we have built local intellectual capacity.” Paratus has plans for fibres roll outs in the Zambian capital: “We are planning a big rollout for Lusaka, for the Metro area, we have done a few fibres already, we have done a significant number of base stations already on a national scale, Lusaka and other towns.”
Harmse pointed out that Zambia is centrally located in Southern Africa and says there is a market for bandwidth across the region. The company already operates two Data Centres in Angola. Paratus has also also started with the construction of a fourth centre in Windhoek, Namibia.
In the satellite business, Paratus covers the African market with ten satellites through its hubs in Luanda, Windhoek, Johannesburg, and Europe. “The VSAT hubs (earth stations) talks to all the satellites directly on which we rent transponder space.”
Paratus Group is now the selected partner for the Google Equiano subsea cable at Swakopmund, on the Atlantic Ocean. Equiano is a private subsea cable that will connect Africa with Europe. Paratus investment in the Equiano cable will also serve land-locked neighbours including Zambia.