‘Philippines has potential to become regional data center hub’

MANILA, Philippines — Can the Philippines really become a digital powerhouse in Southeast Asia?

Globe Telecom Inc. thinks it can happen given the depleting space in Singapore and the geopolitical tensions in Hong Kong.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu said the country could snatch tech investors planning to locate in Asia and the Pacific, but are discouraged by developments in usual hotspots particularly Singapore and Hong Kong.

Investor darling Singapore, for one, is running out of land for new developments that it decided in June to shut its only race track for horse racing to make way for public housing.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong has faced social unrest since the civil disobedience movement rocked its political stability in 2014. Since then, the special Chinese region has experienced a string of civil protests that led potential investors to rethink their plans.

“Location-wise, we are in the middle of Southeast Asia, not far from most capitals in ASEAN. With the added connectivity, with the added data center capacity, we believe that the Philippines will become a great alternative now for the many hyperscalers that have to serve the region,” Cu said.

Hyperscalers refer to tech giants like Amazon, Google and Meta who are always on the hunt for new data centers where they can store their applications and information.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centers (STT GDC) Philippines, a joint venture among Ayala Corp., Globe and ST Telemedia Global Data Centers, is spending $1 billion to construct the largest data center in the Philippines.

The facility, located in Quezon City, is scheduled to start operating by 2025 with an initial capacity of 28 megawatts, expandable to 124 MW in its full operations.

“We started off by looking for a very capable partner in STT GDC and they share our vision and optimism about the market, so we’re building our data centers that will be located throughout the Philippines. The largest of these centers will be in Fairview, Quezon City, and it is expected to be online in the first quarter of 2025,” Cu said.

At present, STT GDC Philippines operates data centers in Cavite, Makati and Quezon City that have a combined capacity of 5.2 MW. Globe seeks to turn STT GDC Philippines into one of the largest data center players in the country in the long term.

Consultancy giant Arizton Advisory and Intelligence values the Philippine data center market at nearly $216 billion as of 2021.

Moving forward, Arizton believes the industry will grow by an average of 4.95 percent annually to hit $288.3 billion by 2027.