Google Reveals Plans For Second, Larger Singapore Data Centre

Google is planning to build a second data centre in Singapore that will be up and running by mid-2017, the company said today.

The expansion to the existing Singapore data centre will take Google’s data centre investment in the region up to $500 million (£328m), and bring its long-term investment into data centres in Asia as a whole to over $1 billion (£660m).

Demand

Announcing the build on its Asia Pacific blog, Google said that the new facility will be built on the same principles as the existing data centre, using 100 percent recycled water for its critical operations and providing a large number of jobs in the area.

The search giant’s $130 million (£85m) first data centre in Singapore went online in 2013 to meet the rapidly growing demand of Internet users in Southeast Asia.

“In the year and a half since our first data center in Southeast Asia came online in Singapore, more than 400,000 Singaporeans got online for the first time,” wrote Joe Kava, vice president of data centres at Google.

“The smartphone penetration rate grew from 72% to 85%, and the majority of Singaporeans signing up for new home Internet access got connected with speeds exceeding 100Mbps.”

Google said as the build starts, it will continue to work with the local community and provide bi-annual grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 for NGOs that help with local partnerships.

“We couldn’t be happier to be literally building on Southeast Asia’s extraordinary growth (again),” said Kava.

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