Globe to put up 2 new cable landing stations, expand data center portfolio

MANILA  -The Ayala Group’s Globe Telecom announced plans to invest in two new cable landing stations and the expansion of its data center portfolio amid surging demand for internet services and content.

In a statement, the telco giant said it was building two additional landing stations “on the eastern and western coasts of the Philippines”. These will be connected to new international submarine cables meant to boost internet capacity.

Globe did not disclose the locations of the new cable landing stations. It currently has three such locations: Nasugbu, Batangas; Ballesteros, Cagayan, and Brgy. Talomo, Davao City.

READ: Globe fiberoptic cable lands in Zamboanga

Globe, thought its data center venture with strategic partner Singapore-based ST Telemedia Global Data Centers (STT GDC), will also expand three existing facilities in Makati, Cavite, and Quezon City.

“With a combined capacity expansion of 5.2 megawatts set for the third quarter of this year, the company is poised to surpass the capacity of most single data centers locally,” Globe said.

READ: Ayala, Globe aim for PH data center dominance

Data centers are high-tech warehouses that house servers and other hardware. While critical internet infrastructure assets, they are also notorious for their high energy usage.

Next data center hub in region

The company’s ongoing 124-MW data center in Fairview, Quezon City, touted to be the largest, most interconnected, sustainable, and carrier-neutral data center in the country upon completion, is also progressing as planned, Globe CEO Ernest Cu said.

“We started off by looking for a very capable partner in STT GDC. They share our vision and optimism about the market, and 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 is expected to be online in the first quarter of 2025,” he said in a statement.

Cu said the Philippine could soon become the region’s next data center hub as tech giants expand their presence in the country.

“We’ve got a tremendous number of people, population-wise, that live in these regions, and we have to be served by the hyperscalers. The adoption of cloud is also growing in the region. So we think that there’s going to be a huge demand for data centers,” Cu said.