Cirion to wrap up expansion of Brazil’s Cotia datacenter in 2024

Cirion expects to complete the expansion of one of its main datacenters in Brazil, in São Paulo’s Cotia city, in 2024.

Initially, the site was planned to be finished by December this year.

“Work is underway, but due to the volume and size of the project, it will not be completed this year. It should be in the first half of 2024,” Cirion’s VP of operations, Tatiana Fonseca, told BNamericas.

Cotia is one of the 18 datacenters Cirion currently owns and operates in Latin America. One site in Chile and one in Peru, each with 20MW capacity, are in development.

The Cotia site is expected to gain some 2MW of capacity in a first expansion phase.

“This is one more expansion and other expansions are planned, which we will announce in due course,” Gabriel del Campo, the company's datacenter VP, told BNamericas in August.

Overall, Cirion is investing US$250mn in Latin America this year to build datacenters and ramp up network capacity.

CABLE RESTORATION

Fonseca, who spoke to BNamericas during the Futurecom event, also said that repair on the Rio de Janeiro-Fortaleza stretch of the 20,000km South American Crossing (SAC) submarine system, which Cirion owns together with Telecom Italia’s Sparkle, are underway.

The section had been disrupted on September 11, affecting different internet service providers (ISPs) that use the cable.

According to Fonseca, initial investigations indicate that the anchor of a vessel caused the damage. The incident occurred 200km off Rio de Janeiro, she said.

“We were not the only ones affected and we will seek accountability. Around 80% of our IP traffic was routed within five days. Obviously, this brings greater latency, because [the route] goes around South America on the other side,” said Fonseca.

Cirion has also enabled new land routes to mitigate the problem.

The restoration of the cable itself began on October 5 with the arrival of a specialized boat in the region, according to Fonseca. The repair is carried out on the surface and should last five days, depending on the level of the damage, she added.

Cirion operates a network of submarine systems covering 86,000km in Latin America.

The company owns three pairs of fiber in the SAC system, while Sparkle owns one. 

Built by Nokia’s ASN, SAC was activated in 2000. It circles South America, connecting Argentina, Brazil, the US Virgin Islands, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Peru and Chile.