Philippines eyes big expansion in hyperscale data centers: DICT chief

SINGAPORE – The Philippines is looking to match Singapore’s capacity for hyperscale data centers, according to the Department of Information and Communications Technology.

DICT Secretary Henry Aguda said the government is looking to have 1 gigawatt’s worth of hyperscalers, up from less than 200 megawatts at present.

Hyperscale data centers are cloud computing facilities that are built for massive computing tasks and data storage with very fast connectivity meant for global traffic. They consume a lot of power, with a single hyperscale facility able to consume more than 50MW.

The Philippines has been lagging behind some of its neighbors in Southeast Asia in terms of attracting investments in IT infrastructure, including hyperscalers. But Aguda said the government is looking to remedy this by bringing down power costs for data centers as well as fixing connectivity issues.

“Nagbabago na, kasi yung connectivity maaayos na by next year,” Aguda said on the sidelines of the Singapore Fintech Festival. He said the DICT is coordinating with the Department of Energy to identify areas where power costs can be much lower for data center operators.

“We’re coming up with new policies to make it more enticing for them to come over. So, next year, we might be able to announce yung mga hyperscalers na maglo-locate na sa Pilipinas,” Aguda said.

The government is looking to have “at least 1 gigawatt” of capacity.

“Parang kasing laki ng Singapore (It should be as big as Singapore’s). Where are we right now? Less than 200 (megawatts),” Aguda said.

The Philippines’ ICT chief said the country needs to have this digital infrastructure if it wants to compete with other nations in the region.

The DICT itself plans to construct three major data centers next year at a cost of P2.5 billion, with a longer-term plan to establish nine facilities worth P7.5 billion, as it pushes for data localization citing cost and security concerns. Investing P7.5 billion in nine data centers over three years was cheaper than relying on foreign cloud services that cost P12 billion each year, the DICT has said.

Mandating data localization, or storing and processing domestically-generated data in local data centers, has been pushed by Philippine industry leaders as a way to generate foreign investment from global hyperscalers like AWS, Google and Microsoft.