Uztelecom has launched two new data centers in Bukhara and Kokand, marking a significant expansion of Uzbekistan's national digital infrastructure and deepening the country's capacity to support artificial intelligence, cloud services, big data processing and high-performance computing. The facilities were inaugurated on September 22 by Minister of Digital Technologies Sherzod Shermatov and Japanese Ambassador to Uzbekistan Kenji Hirata, with the ceremony held at the Uztelecom booth on the opening day of ICT Week Uzbekistan 2026.
The two facilities operate as part of the unified national UzCloud platform, whose portfolio spans Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, Software-as-a-Service, S3 object storage and Backup-as-a-Service, with customers billed only for the computing capacity they actually consume. A dedicated area within the platform focuses on delivering computing resources for artificial intelligence through AI Cloud and GPU-as-a-Service offerings. The Bukhara and Kokand sites are equipped with specialized GPU servers required for training and running AI and machine learning models, big data analysis, image recognition, video processing and the creation of digital twins.
Located more than 300 kilometers from Tashkent, the new data centers are Uztelecom's farthest from the capital. The geographic distribution of computing capacity is intended to improve infrastructure resilience, allowing workloads to be transferred to another site in the event of a failure at one facility. Both projects have received Tier III Design certificates from the Uptime Institute, confirming that their design solutions comply with international requirements for the reliability of engineering systems and continuity of operations. The facilities are equipped with backup cooling and power systems as well as additional communication channels, and equipment can be serviced without interrupting services. They are connected to Uztelecom's backbone network and the national internet traffic exchange point TAS-IX.
The company's infrastructure is being developed in accordance with the ISO/IEC 27001 international standard for information security management, and Uztelecom plans to confirm that its data centers comply with the PCI DSS standard for data protection. Umar Izbasarov, director of Uztelecom's Department of Strategic Development and Investment Projects, said the launch of the new facilities continues the development of national digital infrastructure and expands access for the government and businesses to computing resources and AI capabilities.
The next stage in the network's development will be the launch of a data center in the Zangiata district of Tashkent Region. The project has also been certified by the Uptime Institute under the Tier III standard, with commissioning scheduled for autumn 2026. The new facility will become the fifth site in Uztelecom's geographically distributed network and the company's first where, under the IOWN concept, a photonic APN network is planned to be introduced jointly with Toyota Tsusho, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS and NEC. On the same day, Japan's Vice-Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Hideo Fuseda launched the pilot project.
According to the Uptime Institute registry, Uztelecom holds active Tier III certificates for commercial data centers and is the only company in Uzbekistan's information technology market with such certificates for commercial data center projects. More than 13 million people use Uztelecom's digital services and solutions.