COLT Telecom has opened their third London Data Centre for customer service. The new Data Centre is the largest opened by COLT to date with a total raised floor area of 8,600 square metres and is the 18th Data Centre. It is located outside the London M25 ring road, and is being used by a large financial services client as a business continuity site. The Data Centre also provides free air cooling, whereby outside cold air is used to cool the heat within the facility and has a dedicated 25MVA power feed from the National Grid. The company has also opened its second Data Centre in Amsterdam.

Irish carrier neutral Data Centre provider Data Electronics has announced a Euro 25 million expansion plan to add up to 60,000 square feet (approx. 5,574 square metres) of space to its existing West Dublin Data Centre at Ballycoolin. The new facility is scheduled to open in mid-2008, and when complete will have 100,000 square feet of space (9,290 square metres).

The Savvis New York Metro Data Centre will be expanded with a gross floor space of 26,000 square feet (approx. 2,415 square metres. When completed in 2008 along with other US Data Centres already being built Savvis will have a total of 31 Data Centres in operation worldwide with total capacity of 1.45 million square feet (approx. 135,000 square metres) of space.

Nokia Siemens Networks has won a US$150 million contract from IDEA Cellular Limited, an Indian GSM mobile services provider and an Aditya Birla Group company, to build and provide managed services for a Greenfield GSM network in Bihar. The three year contract includes supply of GSM / GPRS and Short Message Service Center (SMSC) equipment, network implementation, roll out project management, service for third party products and managed services.

German carrier neutral Data Centre provider E-Shelter has opened the first phase of its new 15,000 square metre Berlin Data Centre for customer service. The company reports that 60 per cent of the first phase build out has already been pre-sold. E-Shelter intends to develop a new Data Centre facility in its existing Frankfurt campus later in 2008 which will have total space of 7,500 square metres. When the proposed facility is complete E-Shelter will have some 67,500 square metres of space in the Frankfurt area alone.

Developers Lasercharm are planning to build a data centre park at the Elean Business Park in Cambridgeshire. The buildings, ranging in size from 50,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet and cover a total of 650,000 square feet. Planning permission was granted on the site in August 2003 to previous owners for a 2.2 million square feet data centre. But the new buildings will cover a third of the size and exhibitions of the plans will take place in Sutton and Mepal in January. If planning permission is granted work could start on the centre in the spring.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: DLR), a leading owner and manager of corporate and Internet gateway datacenters, has announced that Hosted Solutions (www.hostedsolutions.com) will establish a mission critical datacenter in Digital Realty Trust's 125 North Myers Street facility in Charlotte, North Carolina. The site encompasses over 15,000 square feet of space, including over 7,500 square foot of raised floor Turn-Key Datacenter space, with adjoining shell space for expansion.

Interactive Data has launched a low latency co-location facility to facilitate its PlusFeed service. Customers in Europe will have the option of co-locating their applications in data centres close to the new London-based ticker plant to take advantage of the low latency delivery of European data. The company responded to the need for lower latency data, combined with the higher data volumes expected under MiFID and other regulations.

Quang Trung Software City (QTSC) and Dot VN Ltd will jointly establish an internet data centre (IDC) in Vietnam. The 1,000sq.m centre would offer hosting and backup services to such major clients as government agencies, multinationals, financial groups and banks. The centre would also provide internet data, voice and video services as well as cutting-edge business and infrastructure applications. As scheduled, the centre will come into operation in October 2008, serving 2,500-3,000 host computers during its first construction phase, estimated to cost USD 6-15 million.

The Welsh assembly government intends to kick-start the revival of the former LG semi-conductor plant, which costs £600,000 public money a year to maintain. The proposal is to turn it into a computer data centre. If consent for redevelopment is given by councillors, the factory could be used by private companies. An assembly government spokesman said the redevelopment would meet a growing demand for data centres. A planning application for the redevelopment of the site has been submitted by the assembly Government to Newport city council.

The Indian government has approved a scheme for establishing data centres across states and union territories as a part of the national e-governance plan. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the scheme under which data centres will be set up with technical and financial support from the Centre. The scheme has an outlay of Rs1,623.2 crore, which includes both capital and operational expenses, for a period of five years, an official statement said.

UK Grid has announced an opening date of the 31st March 2008 for its new 7000sqft facility on Manchester Science Park, the data centre capital of the North of the UK. One Synergy House, as the facility is known, will provide tier II world business class data centre space to alleviate the shortage of such facilities in the North of the UK owing to a migration trend of companies moving their colocation from London due to space and power shortages, price rises and exposure to terrorist threats.