South Korea’s largest telecommunications company plans to enter the Thai data centre market by building a hyperscale facility with a Thailand-based telecommunication services company. The facility will be built by both the two telecoms’ subsidiary Jasmine Telecom Systems (JTS). When built, the data centre will be rolled into a new Internet Data Center (IDC) business.
The Head of the Korean telecom noted that the IDC business partnership with the Thai firm is a great opportunity to prove its business capability in the global market. The telecom’s team is ready to expand its outreach to global markets through this endeavour in Southeast Asia, which is a newly emerging IDC market.
In March this year, the Korean signed a $19 million contract with the Thai group’s other affiliate, 3BB TV Co, to provide commercial IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) services in Thailand. The President and Director of the Thai firm stated that the hyperscale data centre and cloud service business will be a foundation to add value to the Group’s network business. Through the joint development of the IDC business, the company looks forward to long-term cooperation with the Korean telecom giant.
The rise of data centres
Asia Pacific data centre and cloud providers are among the fastest-growing in the world, with cloud revenue far outstripping data centre revenue, a new study by specialists in data centre research reportedly notes.
In particular, forecasts by the firm pegged cloud revenue in the region at four times more than data centre revenue over the four years to the beginning of 2025, with cloud revenue projected to increase by 87 percent and data centre revenue by 22 percent.
Fast growth
The new report looked at the market landscape for data centres and cloud services in the region, namely Southeast Asia countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as Australia, China (and Hong Kong), Japan South Korea, and Taiwan.
According to the report, there is one sq m of data centre space for every 522 people in the Asia Pacific region, with hubs such as Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore having a notably higher data centre floor space “per head” than the rest of Asia.
China has the largest data centre space in the APAC (and second-largest globally), accounting for 43 percent of data centre space in the region with 1.7 million sq m of space forecast for 2021. Elsewhere, the next largest data centre market in APAC is Australia and Japan with 11 percent each, with Singapore in fourth place with 10 percent. Singapore is understood to be under a moratorium on new data centres that could last until 2021, though it is unclear if it is still in effect.
Smaller data centre markets are poised for further growth – with South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam forecast to have the highest increase.