iColo.io is projecting data prices to drop significantly in within a short period as more subsea cables make landing in Mombasa to firm the country’s position as East Africa internet gateway.

The firm which provides collocation services to data carriers in Kenya and the region says its Ksh 2 billion iColo MBA2 data center in located in Nyali, Mombasa County already expects 2Africa subsea fibre optic cable to terminate at the new facility that can host up to 52 internet service providers.

“This data centre is a state-of-the art custom built data centre to allow four different undersea subsystems to terminate in the building. It is unique facility across the world, I would say it is within the top ten if not five from a perspective of capability and design,” said Ranjith Cherickel, iColo Chief Executive Officer during a tour of the MBA 2 facility.

Ranjith backs Kenya’s data market to become competitive with the landing of more subsea cables which drive up traffic boosted by demand for data especially among youthful population.

According to latest data by Communications Authority, total utilized undersea bandwidth capacity rose 2.2pc to 6,132.81Gbps from 6,003.17 between July and September 2022.

Of the total undersea bandwidth capacity, 4,026Gbps was used locally while 2,105.82Gbps was sold outside the country.

“There is still requirement for more systems to come into the country. So I would say as more systems come in, there will be more competition, more volume and when there is volume the general price goes down remarkably. I would say within 10 years you would not really think about the cost of data anymore. It becomes so ubiquitous that actually I don’t think it will be very expensive,” added Ranjith.

2Africa which is backed by Facebook owner Meta, and Airtel will be Kenya’s seventh submarine cable after SEACOM, TEAMS, EASSy, LION2, DARE1 and PEACE.

iColo which now operates three data centres plans to establish a new data centre in Nairobi riding on increased power generation especially from green sources and regional demand for data and cloud services.