Data Centres & Networks

PLDT chairman and CEO Manuel Pangilinan said a deal is on the boil for a 49% stake in the operator group’s data centre business, despite negotiations with Japan-based Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) collapsing.

The first phase of OADC Texaf Digital, a joint venture between African data centre company Open Access Data Centres (OADC) and TEXAF, a major long-term investor in the economy of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is now live in Kinshasa in the DRC.

A number of news outlets in India are suggesting that cloud services provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) is looking to expand its data centre presence in Hyderabad, India, where it already has facilities that include three big data centres and its largest corporate building globally.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) said on Thursday that its data centre in Jakarta will host a new node for the Indonesia Internet Exchange (IIX) under a new partnership with the Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association (APJII).

Global data centre company Vantage Data Centres officially broke ground on its second Malaysian data centre in Cyberjaya on Tuesday, whilst also signing a deal with electricity company TNB to power it.

Indonesia's state-owned service provider Telkom Indonesia, the country’s largest telecommunication group, is widely reported to have appointed leading global investment banking, securities, and asset and wealth management firm Goldman Sachs and local investment bank Mandiri Sekuritas to help it find a strategic investor for its data centre business NeutraDC.

Singapore-based data centre provider ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) says it has signed a deal to use Malaysian telco U Mobile’s 5G connectivity to help its new data centres in Malaysia better support edge applications.

ArtificiaI intelligence (AI)-ready data centres are in the news this week, with Malaysia and Indonesia playing host to new or planned facilities.

Google’s application for its Teros data centre project in the Parque de las Ciencias free trade zone in the Canelones department in the south of Uruguay has now been approved by the country’s Environment Ministry.

Digital infrastructure giant Equinix has announced yet another deal in Asia. This one is an estimated US$5 million investment to acquire land from former landowner and now tech hub developer Cyberview in ICT-focused city Cyberjaya in Selangor state.

East African carrier-neutral data centre operator Wingu Africa, and Gebeya, a pan-African company that specializes in SaaS-enabled custom talent cloud innovation, have announced the launch of what they call a groundbreaking ‘talent cloud solution’ aimed at developing human capital for the data centre industry in East Africa. 

Digital infrastructure company Equinix has announced its planned entry into the Philippines with the acquisition of three data centres from Total Information Management (TIM), a technology solutions provider.

Nairobi-based IXAfrica Data Centres and Schneider Electric have launched what they say is the first AI-ready hyperscale data centre in Kenya, and the largest such data centre in all of East Africa.

The second Mexican data centre from Brazilian company Odata, a provider of data centre services for Latin America that is controlled by US group Aligned Data Centres, has been reported as having started operations.

With Vietnam's rules on storing data locally causing a surge in demand, local data centre operators are apparently unable to cope. Thus Vietnam has decided that foreign investors can now own data centres in the country.

Vietnamese ICT company CMC Corporation has launched a data centre subsidiary. The new company – CMC AI Digital Infrastructure, or CMC ADI –will be constructing and operating hyperscale data centres.

TelCables South Africa, which offers a range of secure connectivity solutions to the Southern African market, says it has upgraded its backbone network infrastructure to accommodate the rapidly growing data traffic across its network and to provide faster, more secure connectivity.

Philippine broadband provider Converge ICT Solutions announced on Wednesday that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with US-based IT solutions provider Supermicro to help it build three 'green' AI data centres in the Philippines.

Operator MTN Nigeria is widely reported in the African press to be building a 1,500-rack Tier IV data centre in Lagos, which would make it West Africa’s largest data centre.

A previously little-known company with the interesting name of Natural Environment Solutions (NES) has announced that it has launched a 5 MW data centre in Pune, India, marking its entry into the country's fast-booming data centre industry.

Digital infrastructure company Equinix has announced its expansion into Chennai with what it describes as its first International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre, called CN1.

Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) has approved financing worth R$41 million (US$7.5 million) for Um Telecom, a B2B operator focused on Brazil's Northeast region, to deploy the first Tier III data centre in the State of Pernambuco.

A financing package from development finance institutions IFC  and Proparco has been announced for digital infrastructure provider WIOCC Group. WIOCC says the package will fund its expansion strategy in three African countries.

Malaysia’s data centre gold rush continues as Telekom Malaysia (TM) and Nxera, the regional data centre arm of Singtel’s Digital InfraCo unit, announced on Tuesday they have formed a joint venture to develop data centres in the country.

Indonesian data data centre firm NeutraDC Nxera Batam announced on Friday that it has begun construction of a new hyperscale data centre in Batam designed specifically to support artificial intelligence infrastructure.

A data centre campus, Narra Technology Park, is being planned in the Philippines, with a launch date for the first phase of the development taking place in late 2025.

A group of telcos and data centre providers in Southeast Asia have formed an alliance called ASEAN Connect.One that aims to make it easier for data centres, carriers and OTT players across the region to collaborate on connectivity services.

Amazon Web Services announced that its long-planned AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will go live in early 2025 as it makes good on its earlier pledge to invest more than 190 billion baht (US$5 billion) in Thailand by 2037.

Malaysian property developer Mah Sing Group threw its hat in the country’s increasingly crowded data centre ring on Thursday by launching a new site in Southville City and announcing Bridge Data Centres (BDC) as its first partner.

Multi-service operator Orange Middle East & Africa (OMEA) and cloud technology provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced plans to bring AWS Wavelength, a new type of AWS infrastructure designed to run workloads that require low latency or edge resiliency, to Morocco and Senegal later this year.

Data centre operator Raxio Data Centres has announced the opening of Raxio Mozambique (Raxio MZ1), the country’s first Tier III Uptime-certified data centre. Plans for the centre were revealed in 2021. Building began in late 2022.