MANILA, Philippines – PLDT on Friday, March 18, held a groundbreaking ceremony on its 11th data center facility – its biggest so far.

Located at Sta. Rosa City in Laguna, the “VITRO” data center is poised to be the largest data center in the country and the first hyperscaler facility. It will cover a five-hectare PLDT property in Santa Rosa and is expected to have a power capacity of 100 megawatts (MW).

This essentially means that PLDT would be able to meet the infrastructure, power, and connectivity demands of cloud players and other tech giants looking to expand in the Philippines.

“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,” said PLDT chief executive officer Al Panlilio.

“With VITRO Santa Rosa, we aim to set the benchmark in infrastructure resilience, operational excellence, global competitiveness, and world-class sustainability,” Panlilio added.

PLDT said that the telco-neutral VITRO data center will be the first of a series of hyperscaler data centers with a 100-MW power requirement in the medium term.

The telco will be spending around P12 billion to P13 billion for the first tranche of expenditures for this project, according to Panlilio.

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As data centers are energy-intensive, much more so with a 100-MW facility, PLDT partnered with another Pangilinan-led firm, the Manila Electric Company, for it to build a dedicated substation onsite for its power needs.

The telco is also working with London-headquartered RED Engineering to make the facility energy-efficient and sustainable.

Earlier this year, Singapore firm Space DC announced it was building a hyperscaler center in Rizal, which would deliver 72 MW of power.

The Philippines has been positioning itself as the next data center hub in the region given the availability of land and the country’s digital landscape. In 2021, the trade department hinted at talking to Chinese and American hyperscalers to enter the Philippines.

Singapore, the region’s data center powerhouse, has imposed a moratorium on new data centers on existing land. Its trade ministry announced that it would be more selective in the future given the energy requirements of the facility. – Rappler.com