BBC London takes a looks inside a data centre to discover why Slough is the 'perfect location'.
Many will put that down to the British sitcom The Office, yet even before that in 1937 the poet John Betjeman wrote "Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!".With its direct transport links to London, close proximity to Heathrow Airport and fast fibre optic connections, it is said to be perfectly placed for a hi-tech revolution.
So when we were invited in by Virgin Media O2, it was a rare opportunity to see inside a data centre.Tom Finch, a technical site engineer who works in the data centre, says the site is O2's largest mobile data centre in the UK and manages traffic for 3G, 4G and 5G customers. "Slough is on the data highway in the UK. It's far enough outside the capital but through here we have a lot of traffic passing," he says.
"The most recent Fortnite download for example, we saw massive peaks in the amount of data our customers were downloading. And that's why we invest £10bn in infrastructure to make sure we can provide the best service."Slough is just on the outskirts of London, near Heathrow Airport and has direct transport links into the capitalAccording to the website datacenters.com, the advantages of Slough are its strategic location with excellent transport links to London.
However, data centres are resource hungry and use a lot of electricity to keep the servers cool and the internet running.
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