Iraq Plans to Build 5 Data Centers in Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 26, the Iraqi Ministry of Communications announced a new round of data center construction plans, proposing to build 5 data centers in Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul to enhance the country's domestic digital infrastructure and provide hosting capacity for international technology companies to deploy content and services locally in Iraq. Of these, 3 are planned for Baghdad, with 1 each in Basra and Mosul.

The 3 data centers in Baghdad are planned to be located respectively at the Al-Sinak communications complex, Al-Intisar, and the communications tower campus in Al-Mamoun. Ali Yassin, head of the General Company for Communications and Informatics under the Iraqi Ministry of Communications, stated that the above data centers are part of new projects the department plans to implement and are currently still in the planning and construction stage.

The Basra data center is planned to be built near a submarine cable landing station. This site selection can directly connect to Iraq's international submarine cable communications gateway, providing network access conditions for subsequently carrying international data traffic and enterprise localized deployment. Mosul, meanwhile, is planned to host another regional data center, forming a distributed node layout covering central, southern, and northern Iraq.

The Iraqi Ministry of Communications disclosed that these facilities will focus on serving large international enterprises, allowing relevant companies to deploy content and digital services in data centers within Iraq. At this stage, officials have not yet announced the individual scale, IT load, investment amount, construction contractors, or specific start and commissioning dates for the 5 data centers.

In recent years, Iraq has also been advancing the partitioned construction of its national communications network. The communications infrastructure investment plan publicly disclosed by the National Investment Commission divides the national network into 3 regions: northern, central-western, and southern, with Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra respectively located in different network regions. The city layout of this round of 5 data centers corresponds to the existing regional structure of the national communications backbone network.