Australian network infrastructure company Fibre Expressway has announced its plan to build three data centres in the country that would cost a total of $1.5 billion.

Project Koete will see the company build three greenfield Tier IV data centres in Northwestern Australian cities Perth and Dampier, and the Northern Territory’s capital city of Darwin.

All three data centers will have a combined capacity of 20Megawatts (MW). Once completed, they will be able to serve not only Indigenous communities in the region, but also expand the cloud capacity of APAC markets, such as Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore.

“This will be the most significant technological investment Western Australia and the Northern Territory have ever seen,” said Gary Kennedy, CEO of Fibre Expressway.

“This facility will combine the benefits of greater interconnectivity between north and western Australia and the world, encouraging greater investment in the region, and improving data security and sovereignty,” he explained.

Peter Bannister, Group Managing Director at Fibre Expressway, also said that under Project Koete, the company is partnering with wind, solar and, in the longer term, ocean and clean hydrogen providers to satisfy the need for 100% renewable energy access over time.

“We’re targeting 30 plus years’ scalability assuredness, enabling customers to plan for decades, not just years. By working with our global partner network, we’re confident Project Koete will be delivered under world-leading governance and rule-of-law standards,” he added.

An 800km subsea cable will also be constructed as part of this project, which will link Perth and Darwin, and stretch across Southeast Asia to Malaysia via Indonesia and Singapore.

The data centres are estimated to be ready for service in 2023, whereas the subsea cables are scheduled for completion by 2025.

Australia’s data centre landscape

Australia’s data centre industry is one of Asia Pacific’s strongest, with Sydney being ranked as the third largest market in the world. Its major players include Equinix, homegrown data centre provider NextDC, and homegrown telcos Telstra and Vocus Group.

Such is the booming state of the Australian market, that rural regions are not left behind either. In March, local company Leading Edge Data Centres announced its plan to roll out modular data centres throughout regional New South Wales.