PLDT’s 50-MW data center launches this month

The PLDT Group is set to double its data center capacity to 100 megawatts (MW) this month with the launch of its 11th hub in Laguna as it seeks to accommodate growing demand for facilities that house critical servers due to accelerated digitalization.

Victor Genuino, president and CEO of PLDT data center arm ePLDT, told the Inquirer that the newest facility was “on schedule to be energized this July.”

The facility, dubbed Vitro Sta. Rosa, is designed to have a capacity of up to 50 MW—the biggest for any data center of ePLDT. The PLDT unit currently has 10 data centers with a total of 50-MW capacity.

“We’re now finalizing site selection for our next wave of data centers,” he added.

Genuino previously shared that three more data centers were undergoing the design phase. One of them is eyed to have at least 100 MW in capacity.

Data centers are facilities housing critical servers and networks. Demand for these hubs is on the rise due to the growing needs of hyperscalers, or entities providing cloud, networking and internet services such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, Alibaba AliCloud, IBM and Oracle.

Apart from PLDT, other players like Globe Telecom Inc., Converge ICT Solutions Inc. and Digital Edge have been pouring in investments in this space.

PLDT, meanwhile, is also wrapping up the partial sale of its data center business—valued over $1 billion—to a foreign buyer.

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Manuel Pangilinan, president and chair of the telecom giant, earlier said they were aiming to finalize the binding sheet agreement this month.

He noted PLDT would keep 51-percent ownership post-transaction, proceeds of which are allocated for debt payments.

The group’s data centers are complemented by over 1.1 million kilometers of fiber cable network here and abroad.