Philippine telecommunications company PLDT announced its plans to build a 100 MW, 5-hectare data centre in Sta. Rosa, within the province of Laguna, south of Metro Manila, to accommodate for booming demand for Internet and cloud services.
In addition, PLDT also affirmed its goals to activate the US-Transpacific Jupiter cable system in July 2022, which will provide PLDT customers with greater capacity while enabling PLDT to re-route digital traffic when undersea cable cuts occur.
By building a new data centre and activating the Jupiter cable system, PLDT is taking important steps to position its business for the hyperscaler era and bolster digital transformation in the Philippines.
Accelerating the Philippines’ Standing as Competitive Digital Hub
The VITRO Sta. Rosa data centre is PLDT’s eleventh and largest hyperscale Tier-3 certified data centre facility, which PLDT designed to be energy efficient and innovative in cooling and power redundancy.
Furthermore, with 100 MW of capacity, PLDT’s new data centre facility not only exceeds the combined 48 MW capacity of PLDT’s existing data centres within the Philippines, but also exceeds the total data centre capacity in the Philippines, which consultancy firm Santos Knight Frank estimates to be 94 MW at present.
The data centre, which is located at Sta. Rosa for Sta. Rosa’s protection from natural disasters and easy access to urban areas, will host the Philippines Internet ecosystem and premier Internet exchanges.
In a press release statement, PLDT President and CEO Alfredo S. Panlilio noted that “the PLDT Group is one with the nation in building a digitally advanced Philippines and making our country the next hyperscaler destination in Asia Pacific. With VITRO Sta. Rosa, we aim to set the benchmark in infrastructure resilience, operational excellence, global competitiveness and world-class sustainability.”
However, PLDT is set to face considerable competition in the Philippine data centre industry, as major companies are increasing their investments in the country for their own hyperscale data centre expansion plans.
As such, PLDT is also embarking on plans to reaffirm its commitments in the Philippines, by activating the US-Transpacific Jupiter cable system. The Jupiter cable system is a joint project from several global providers, which spans 14 000km from the US and the Philippines. Notably, this cable system can increase and reinforce PLDT’s resilience to service disruptions from cable cuts, and will also increase PLDT’s international capacity from 20 terabits per second to 60 terabits per second.
Jojo G. Gendrano, PLDT and Smart FVP and Head of Enterprise Business Group, said that “investments on infrastructure like Jupiter allow PLDT to provide the vital connectivity that powers our digital economy, enabling us to help transform the country into a globally competitive and digitally-empowered nation.”
“Specifically, this will fortify the Philippines’ position as the next strategic data centre hub for global hyperscalers.”
“Outstanding Data Center Projects” is an awards category for this year’s W.Media Asia-Pacific Cloud & Datacenter Awards. Thinking of nominating or sponsoring? Visit our Awards Page for more information. Nominations are open until 31st July.
