August 25, 2023 - Indian operator CtrlS Datacenters has partnered with Thailand’s state-owned telco for a new data center campus in Chonburi.
The company and National Telecom Public Company Limited (NT) this week announced a Memorandum of Agreement (MoU) for CtrlS’ upcoming 150MW data center campus. The new campus will connect to a number of NT cable landing stations (CLS) and see a new teleport developed on-site.
“CtrlS Datacenters Ltd, Asia's largest Rated-4 data center operator, is collaborating with National Telecom Public Company (NT), a telecom provider that has the most extensive international communication networks and the most submarine cables landing in Thailand, for its upcoming 150MW data center campus at the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) in Chonburi, Thailand,” CtrlS announced this week.
“The greenfield data center campus in Thailand marks CtrlS’ first international market expansion as well as its first hyperscale data center campus in Thailand,” the company added.
CtrlS announced it was planning a project in Thailand last month, signing a Memorandum of Agreement (MoU) with the Eastern Economic Corridor Office (EECO) to lease a 10-acre land parcel for 50 years for a site located in Chonburi Province.
The new data center site is in proximity to submarine cable landing stations for the existing AAG (Asia-America Gateway) cable system and the upcoming ADC (Asia Direct Cable) cable system.
The companies said CtrlS and NT are entering into a 'collaboration of convergence' of data center colocation services, cable landing station, network connectivity hub, and various cloud-based services.
Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Chairman, CtrlS Datacenters, said: “Through this collaboration, we aim to serve customers’ needs for digital services, both domestic and international. The data center is designed to serve hyperscaler needs in addition to serving high-end IT/compute needs of domestic enterprises. We see this data center as a unique opportunity to contribute towards the development of Thailand’s eastern region and offer a robust diverse option for international customers and partners for establishing their footprint in the country and region.”
Ashish Ahuja, CTO, CtrlS Datacenters, added: “We are delighted to have this strategic collaboration with NT extending their AAG, ADC, and future submarine cable landing stations into this data center and jointly develop a new teleport and Point of Interconnection in the facility enabling our data center customers to have seamless connectivity within the country and to other markets in the region.”
CtrlS has an operations footprint of 1.2 million sq ft and a further five million under construction across India. The company operates data centers in Hyderabad (two), Bengaluru (one), Mumbai (four), and Noida (one), as well as two Edge facilities, one each in Patna and Lucknow. Eventually, CtrlS intended to set up over 20 Edge data centers across the country.
NT was formed in 2021 via the merger of two other state-owned telcos; CAT Telecom and TOT Public Company Limited.
Colonel Sanpachai Huvanandana, President and CEO of NT, added: “NT is very pleased to cooperate with CtrlS in building this data center campus, which is the first hyperscale data center campus in the eastern region of Thailand. This MoU marks the commitment to upgrade the telecommunications network and support the use of digital technology for the industrial sector in the Eastern Economic Corridor (ECC) through both parties’ strengths in resource, expertise, and infrastructure.”
Seikson Mitkasem, Senior EVP (Marketing and Products) of NT, said: “For this collaboration, NT is ready to support telecommunication infrastructure, especially the information communication network that covers both domestically and internationally. Currently, NT’s communication network not only features more than 10 connection points to neighboring countries but also has worldwide coverage. There are six submarine cable stations ready to connect via nine submarine cable systems, including AAE1, AAG, APG, FLAG, SJC, SMW-3, SMW-4, TIS, and ADC as well as PoPs (Point of Presence) in all regions of the world that serve as a connection point to transmit data.”
Located east of Bangkok, SuperNAP also operates a data center in Chonburi that opened in 2017.
The Eastern Economic Corridor is a special economic zone in eastern Thailand.
