Singapore’s Digital Infrastructure Bill which introduced two new licensing regime, was passed in Parliament yesterday. The new law aims to strengthen the foundations of Singapore’s digital economy, provide regulatory clarity, as well as ensure the environmental sustainability of data center operations.
In September, the bill was tabled in Parliament for First Reading as per w.media report.
The new law prescribes licensing for data centers with a critical IT load of at least 3 megawatts (MW); major co-location and cloud data centers with a critical IT load of at least 10MW, as well as major cloud service providers whose Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service services generate at least S$100 million (US$78.2 million) in average annual revenue from users in Singapore over the past three years.
Major DCs will have to implement processes to ensure the physical and cybersecurity of their services, put in place business continuity and disaster recovery plans and notify the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) of prescribed cybersecurity incidents or service disruptions.
Singapore currently has more than 1.6GW of existing data center capacity across 70 data centers which includes 200MW of new capacity awarded to four operators in August.
Details, which are still being worked out, will be introduced in subsidiary legislation and Codes of Practices.