Orange Belgium opens a highly secured and eco-efficient data center in Antwerp

Orange Belgium proudly opened its brand new data center in Hoboken, Antwerp today, in presence of Flemish Minister of Innovation Philippe Muyters. The 1000 m² data center will help Orange to manage the growing demand for mobile usage of its customers by handling the billions of day-to-day connections Orange customers make to surf, call and sms. Orange Belgium invested over 14 million EUR in the construction of this best-in-class data center.

Orange Belgium started the design of the building in 2016 together with META Architects and Engineering Offices Ingenium and Deerns. The goal was to create an economic data center that excelled in performance and sustainability (with 3MW electrical capacity and a Power Usage Efficiency of < 1,2). The construction was ensured by Engie Fabricom, started in May 2017 and was finalized by the end of the summer of 2018. Today Orange CEO Michaël Trabbia and President of the Board Johan Deschuyffeleer officially opened the data center in presence of Flemish Minister of Innovation, Philippe Muyters.

A futureproof data center to meet the increasing need for mobile data and speed

The data center that will be used for radio, telecom and IT equipment offers a total capacity of more than 500 high density 52 units racks, installed on the equivalent of 12 tennis courts. The impressive building is far more eco-efficient than a standard data center, as it is able to use freecooling for 98% of the year. It is also highly secured and resilient thanks to systematically redundant critical elements.  

Philippe Muyters, Flemish Minister of Innovation, attended the opening: “I’m very pleased telecom operator Orange Belgium invested massively in this new data center. This highly innovative data center demonstrates that the increasing demand for data and digital solutions by Flemish families and companies, can go perfectly hand in hand with a sustainable ecological approach.”

Michaël Trabbia, CEO of Orange Belgium, explains: “This state-of-the-art highly secured and eco-efficient data center, together with the continuous investments in our top quality network clearly demonstrates our commitment to provide to our customers the best experience in their digital lives. Thanks to our unlimited offers, our customers drastically increased their usage of mobile data: +79% compared to last year and it is not over! That’s why we keep on investing heavily every year to support this massive data growth and to prepare for future services and technologies such as 5G. ”

Any call made from Orange to Orange is 100% CO²-neutral

The new data center has a specific energy-friendly design of closed hot aisles cooled with an adiabatic free-cooling system. This frames in its sustainable strategy that makes Orange the only CO²-neutral telecom operator in Belgium for its operations (network and buildings). After several years of efforts to strongly decrease its energy consumption, Orange became CO²-neutral in 2014 thanks to energy reduction and optimization and CO²-compensation. Orange is certified by CO² Logic.