The Kingdom of Belgium, also known as the Battlefield of Europe or Belgium, is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe. Located between the Netherlands, Germany and France it is a multilingual nation that speaks Dutch, French and German. Belgium has a population of over 11.29 million and an internet literacy rate of % (9.59 million million internet users).
The total GDP of the Belgium is over US $455 billion and with a contribution of 4.8% from the digital economy, Belgium’s data center industry is thriving. Besides Belgium’s data centers, the digital economy includes 4.48 million fixed line telephone subscriptions and 12.93 million mobile telephone subscriptions.
Belgium contains several data center clusters throughout the country providing plenty of colocation opportunities. The primary colocation data center markets in Belgium are:
Belgium provides an important connection between the United Kingdom and Europe through submarine cables. There are 79 Belgian data centers, the majority of these colocation facilities are located in and around Brussels. Large carrier neutral Belgian data centers feature rich ecosystems and state of the art equipment, ensuring maximum uptime and connectivity to over 421 service providers.
Energy is a significant issue for data centers and Belgium has good coverage of the energy sector. Belgium is energized by 26.3% renewable or green sources, with the remaining provided by fossil/nuclear fuels. This gives Belgian colocation facilities significant opportunities to take advantage of green energy. In addition to green energy, data center consumers enjoy a range of PUE scores between 1.15 and 1.40. The average PUE for Belgian data centers is 1.32. Belgian colocation facilities provide over 26.23 MW of power and has a range of rack power options from 2.50 kW to 2.50 kW.
Belgium enjoys relative safety from natural disasters with a low risk of 3.07% according to the Work Risk Index. The most prominent risks to Belgium include flooding and storms.