NTT to Develop $90M Data Centre in Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor

The IT infrastructure division of Japanese telecom group NTT is investing THB 3 billion ($90 million) to develop a 12-megawatt data centre as the company’s largest facility in Thailand.

Located 57 kilometres (35.4 miles) from central Bangkok at Amata City Chonburi industrial estate in the Eastern Economic Corridor, the project will provide 4,000 square metres (43,056 square feet) of IT space when fully built out, London-based NTT Ltd said Tuesday in a release.

The new facility, dubbed Bangkok 3 Data Center (BKK3), is scheduled to begin operations in the second half of 2024 on a site adjacent to the 3.6MW Bangkok 2 Data Center.

“We plan to expand further in this area to create a critical infrastructure platform that supports the growth of Thailand’s digital economy, including the surge in electronic transactions and data consumption,” said Takeshi Kimura, managing director for NTT Global Data Centers Holding Asia.

Green Commitment

BKK3 is the latest data centre project under NTT Ltd’s Thai subsidiary, which was formed after the company acquired a 74 percent stake in local operator Digital Port Asia in 2013. A representative told Mingtiandi that the company’s first data centre, BKK1, began providing services in an urban location in 2005.

The upcoming facility is expected to support high densities of up to 30 kilowatts per rack while using smart operations, scheduling and technology to keep the power usage effectiveness ratio as low as 1.4, said Suthipat Lueprasert, CEO of NTT Global Data Centers Thailand and a former Digital Port Asia executive.

BKK3’s design conforms to NTT’s vision of Green Innovation towards 2040. The framework is meant to help the group achieve net-zero emissions across its operations by 2030 and its value chain by 2040, mirroring Thailand’s own commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

The Eastern Economic Corridor, about a 50-minute drive from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport, is a special economic zone across three eastern Thai provinces offering tax incentives for projects to locate there. The government has named digital infrastructure development as one its core strategies aimed at modernising the economy.

Digital Transformation

Sutas Kongdumrongkiat, CEO for NTT Ltd in Thailand, said the need for infrastructure to handle high-volume, real-time data transmission is increasingly important as Thailand makes progress with digital transformation.

“We are thrilled to kick-start the construction of BKK3 and be at the forefront of the nation’s digitalisation ambitions,” said Sutas, who is also responsible for operations in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.

The Thai project comes on the heels of NTT’s Jakarta 3 Data Center in Indonesia, completed in April 2022, and Cyberjaya 6 Data Center in Malaysia, scheduled for completion in mid-2023.

JKT3, located 30 kilometres east of downtown Jakarta, has 15.2MW of critical IT load capacity and will grow to a planned 45MW. CBJ6 will complement Cyberjaya’s CBJ5, completed in 2021, with the pair to handle a total facility load of 22MW at the science park near Kuala Lumpur.

NTT also has data centres in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam.