Singapore-based ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) is investing at least $1 billion in a 124-megawatt data center facility it is jointly building with Globe Telecom, a top company official said on Thursday.
The two partners on Thursday broke ground on the data center that will rise in a 28,000-square meter compound in Fairview, Quezon City.
STT GDC Philippines — the joint venture — already operates five data centers in the Philippines with a total IT capacity of 22 megawatts, but this latest facility will be the biggest in the Philippines, company officials said.
"The actual investment will be north, much north of one billion US dollars. And that’s not a small amount because it will filter out in terms of value. That’s just the capital expenditure that we will put in, but there’s also the flow-over effects of investments,” STT GDC President and Group CEO Bruno Lopez said in a media briefing.
The data center is expected to generate thousands of jobs, while serving so-called hyperscalers or cloud-based businesses.
“Every 20 megawatts that is built delivers close to five billion US dollars GDP boost as well as close to 28,000 to 38,000 jobs because this is what it does. A digital infrastructure spawns more applications being developed, government digitalization enterprises,” Lopez added.
The Fairview data center facility is expected to be ready for service by 2025.
STT GDC Philippines President and CEO Carlo Malana said: “The design is 90% complete. We are starting early works activities right now.” He added that the first phase will be available by early 2025.
The groundbreaking ceremony comes over a year after the STT GDC bought into Globe’s data center unit KarmanEdge with a 40% stake in March 2022. It was the maiden investment by the Singapore data center company in the Philippines.
STT GDC has the financial backing of Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings. Globe, meanwhile, is partly owned by Singapore’s largest telco firm Singtel.
Source: https://www.cnnphilippines.com/business/2023/5/19/ST-Telemedia-Globe-data-center.html