The internet is a way to unite a country made of over 7,000 islands. Not only is it a driver of change and a solution in the new normal for a slew of activities, but it is also a great business opportunity. Despite the significant challenges the implementation poses, a leading fibre company is taking up the gauntlet. They are one of several that is looking to take advantage of this booming market sector. in the Philippines.
Established as a provincial cable television operator, it has now evolved into the country’s sole pure ‘end-to-end fibre internet service provider for residential and corporate users and is currently expanding its coverage to the entire country. The construction of its P1-billion data centre in Cebu is expected to begin this year. In a statement, the company said the construction of a data centre in Cebu is part of its preparations to “serve the surge in the data requirements in Visayas and Mindanao amid its aggressive expansion in central and southern Philippines.”
The company’s CEO stated that the move was a strategic bet as it seeks to widen its presence across the Philippines and reach a target to cover more than half of the country’s households by 2025. In the next weeks, it intends to roll out in Talisay, Cordova, and Lapu-Lapu. The investment comes on top of the company’s domestic undersea cable project that will connect Visayas and Mindanao to its national fibre and distribution network.
With the domestic undersea cable project, Mindanao is now connected to its national fibre backbone with the landing last of its submarine cables in Cagayan de Oro earlier last week. The company landed its cables in the Visayas through San Remigio in Cebu province. For its national fibre backbone project, the company said that it is bringing world-class technologies used by market-leading countries in broadband like South Korea and Singapore.
With the fast connectivity, bringing the latest technologies to the country is an attainable goal, ultimately providing customers with a better internet experience. This is more pertinent at this time when many people are staying inside their homes for work, education, health services and needed transactions apart from entertainment and shopping.
The fibre-fast broadband services are seen as supporting the recovery of small, medium and large enterprises (SMEs) in the Visayas and Mindanao once launched in those regions this year. This data centre is also considered important, particularly for the Visayas, as demand for digital services and data requirements increases. While the company’s IDC services are expanding, customer demand is growing even faster — bandwidth demand has increased tenfold within two years, and traditional DCI systems in data centres are having trouble keeping up with the demands.
As smart cities flourish amidst rapid urbanisation and information and communication technology development, the demand for building more and more data centres is rising. Major corporations, establishments and governments need data centres as a mission-critical facility to enable countless electronic transactions to take place any minute of the day. Their functional importance ranges from health, transport, payment, etc., all the way to entertainment activities.
Internet usage and social media trends have increased the demand for faster internet networks and data centres to store data generated by them. Internet penetration is one of the strongest drivers for the data centre market in Southeast Asia. Social media usage among consumers and digital transformation by enterprises across industry verticals are other major factors promoting data centre growth.
Over the next five years, the data centre market across Asia will eclipse that of the US. New data centres will be built, new fibre communications links established, and lots of high-value jobs created.
