Officials in Bangladesh announced in late March that a large scale data center project planned for the district of Dhaka was approved by a cabinet committee on government purchase.
Bangladesh State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak said that the massive Bangladesh data center will be the fifth largest in the world. The project, which will eventually become the Bangladesh National Data Center, is being built by two Chinese companies – ZTE Holding Company Limited and ZTE Corporation. It will cost an estimated $155 million and is being funded by the Chinese Exim Bank.
While the facility will most likely be a boon for the country, critics of the Bangladesh data center suggest that its location at the Hi-Tech Park at Kaliakair is dangerous as it resides within an area prone to earthquakes. Officials with the Bangladesh Ministry of Information have defended the site, noting that moving the facility to an alternate location would dramatically increase costs, with the nearest location being more than 100 miles away.
In response to concerns about earthquakes, Ashraful Islam, chief of the technical negotiation committee, said that the risks of damage will be accounted for in the construction of the facility and appropriate measures will be taken to ensure the 99.995 percent uptime necessary to receive a Tier IV certification.
Now that the plans for the Bangladesh data center have been approved by the purchase committee, construction is expected to start later this year. The latest developments with the project suggest that everything is on track so far. Once completed, the Bangladesh facility will be one of only a few Tier IV Asia data centers, putting this facility on par with two India data centers and two Indonesia data centers.
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