Minister for Investments, Infrastructure and IT Austin Gatt, last week paid a visit to the maltaNET co-location facility in Balzan, to meet the technical crew of Interwetten, a large international e-gaming company currently setting up in Malta. Dr Gatt was shown around the facility, and given a high level overview of the technical set-up the e-gaming company will have.

Speaking about the future of this business, Dr Gatt commented: “Having state of the art co-location facilities on par with the rest of Europe is very important. This is a very important service, not just for the Maltacom Group, but also for the country. Companies interested in investing in Malta check out our technical infrastructure. Having these facilities up to European standards is a very important factor in bringing businesses such as these e-gaming companies to Malta”

Keith Fearne, CEO at maltaNET said:“Within the last 30 days we have had two very important customers from overseas, and we are receiving new enquiries every week. Working closely with DataStream, our sister company in the Maltacom group, we are able to provide a first class co-location service, which is difficult to beat on the island. We are also working closely with a number of legal and accounting firms, whose expertise is required to advise customers on the legal and fiscal side of setting up in Malta.”

Co-location facilities are secure computer rooms built to international standards, required to host web servers in an environment offering high throughput Internet bandwidth, resilience, power continuity, fire protection and climate control. As web applications become more critical, businesses are moving their web servers out of their offices to secure co-location facilities. With the enactment of new legislation allowing the issuing of remote gaming licensing in Malta last year, a large number of remote gaming companies have shown interest in co-locating in Malta.

maltaNET Ltd is the Internet arm of the Maltacom Group.