Pacnet plans to spend $300 million over the next three years on building data centers around the region.
The Hong Kong-based carrier will convert three of its ten Asian landing stations into “data landing stations” by summer.
CEO Bill Barney says the company is preselling capacity in the data centers and expects revenue from hosting services to account for 40% of revenue in four to five years, up from about 6% today.
Barney would not name the initial sites, but he told a Hong Kong press briefing on Tuesday that the company planned to build three large data centers and convert ten landing stations.
The large centers would be ten times the size of the current generation of data centers, Barney said. Pacnet is seeking partners to co-invest in the projects, which can run at up to $250 million per site.
Construction of the larger data centers is expected to start this year. Because of the huge power draw – as much as ten times the existing generation of data centers - access to electricity was often the most important issue in selecting a site.
The smaller data centers (consuming up to 5 MW of power) would consist of facilities hosting 200-1,000 racks each.
Barney said advancements in technology now allowed it to move data direct
from the internet to its fiber network, most of which is IP-enabled.
A recent Frost & Sullivan study said demand for data center hosting in Asia was out-running supply. More than 80% of Asia’s big data centers were running at close to 90% capacity, it said.