August 07, 2023, /DCD/ - Philippines-based telecommunications company Converge ICT Solutions is planning to spend $60 million on the development of three new data centers in the Philippines, CEO Dennis Uy said.
The Internet service provider is intending to develop data centers in Pampanga, Quezon City, and Cebu in the next 18 to 24 months.
Each data center will house 600 racks with the potential to expand to 1,000 racks, and will cost at least $20 million each.
The new data centers will accompany the existing facilities in Clark and Pasig which are used for internal operations, and the third will join the 49MW upcoming hyperscale data center planned in Paranaque City.
The company signed a 14MW geothermal energy contract in November 2022 with Greencore Geothermal to power its parent company's ComClark Network and Technology Corp's data center in Angeles City.
Its two current data centers are also powered by a geothermal energy contract for 48MW of power that is set to expire this year. It is unclear what this will mean for the existing or future data centers operated by Converge. The company has a net-zero target of 2050.
Alongside Keppel, Converge broke ground on a cable landing station for the Bifrost cable in February of this year. Construction is expected to be completed by 2024.
The Philippines is predicted to experience increased demand for data centers, with real estate company JLL Philippines stating that: "As more companies digitize and turn to cloud platforms for seamless operations, we expect this increased reliance online to translate to greater data consumption that will prop up demand for data centers in the future."
Several companies have shown interest in deploying cloud services in the country, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Oracle, and IBM.
Philippine Telco PLDT announced its plans earlier this year to expand two of its data centers, adding 1,820 new racks and an incremental 14MW of capacity to its Paranaque and Makati facilities. The company is also working on a 100MW data center in Santa Rosa outside of Manila.
