(Ecofin Agency) - Administrative Capital For Urban Development (ACUD), the company which owns and develops the new administrative capital project in Egypt, has selected mobile operator Orange to build a data center and a cloud computing platform in the smart city. The $135 million agreement was signed on January 12 between ACUD MD, Mohamed Abdel Latif, and Hisham Mahran who manages the business division at Orange Egypt.

The infrastructures will enable ACUD to offer people in the smart city improved services such as IoT solutions and cloud computing services, artificial intelligence platforms, Triple Play services (Internet – fixed phone – TV) and facility management utilities.

According to Abdel Latif, the agreement with Orange is in line with the company’s strategy to exploit all tools of modern technology to build the first smart city in Egypt. Ahmed Zaki Abdeen, Chairman of ACUD, said that Orange Egypt was chosen for the realization of these technological tools for its expertise in building and providing technological services to the latest international standards and specifications.

Located 35 km east of Cairo, the new administrative capital of Egypt will cover 170,000 feddans or 71,400 hectares. It will be the first of 14 new smart cities to be built in Egypt.