AWS eyes Argentina or Chile for new Latam data centre
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AWS eyes Argentina or Chile for new Latam data centre

Argentina and Chile are reportedly locked in a bidding war to become the home of Amazon Web Services’ second South American data centre, with the presidents of both countries holding talks with the company over the last few months.

Amazon is looking to add a second data centre in the region as it expands its cloud computing footprint across the globe. Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, said Argentina and Chile are the two main countries in the running.

The report claims Argentine president Mauricio Macri met with Amazon’s VP for global infrastructure expansion, Elaine Feeney, in New York last year, while Chilean officials also held several meetings with the firm in 2017. This includes a visit from Chile president Michelle Bachelet to Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle in June.

A separate source told the news agency that Amazon could ultimately deploy a new site in both locations as it seeks to meet a growing demand for cloud computing services. It already runs three operational data centres in Brazil.

In 2017, Amazon Web Services signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Chile “to modernize government services within the country.” Reports then emerged that it could build a data centre in the Patagonia region at the southern end of the continent.

Chile could be of interest due to the potential development of a subsea cable that would link the country to China – a potential project worth up to $600 million which was announced in June. 

The 20,000km cable was unveiled by under-secretary for telecommunications Rodrigo Ramirez at a press conference in Santiago and would be the first to direct connect Asia with Latin America.

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