Converge ICT Solutions Inc. said Tuesday it is spending P1 billion to build a data center in Cebu as it prepares to serve the surge in the data requirements in the Visayas and Mindanao.
Dennis Anthony Uy, Converge chief executive and co-founder, said the rise of a new state-of-the-art data center in Cebu would support the recently unveiled strategic framework of the Department of Information and Communications Technology for the country’s full and inclusive participation in the global digital economy.
"This data center is quite important especially for the Visayas as the demand for digital services and data requirements are going up. We just bought a property in Mandaue where the site will be built,” he said, adding that construction would likely start within the year.
Uy said the world-class data center would initially have 300 racks to cater to the demand and would be housed in a six-story building that would also have a customer contact center employing thousands of Cebuanos and Visayans.
Coverge said that aside from its core fixed broadband services, it also offers data center services to enterprise clients such as network management services, multi-homed network, disaster recovery services, network redundancy solutions, 24/7 monitoring, co-location and local connectivity.
It carries numerous internet and enterprise applications including video, digital payment, online education and telecommuting. These services are based on AI, big data and cloud computing, all of which place higher requirements on data center interconnect.
After it built its first owned, NCR-based data center in 2016, Converge has been actively seeking to expand its data capacity. With its entry into the Visayas and commitment to serve more residential and enterprise customers in central Philippines, locating the second data center in Cebu is a strategic move.
Converge’s fiber backbone network would be rolled out through 15 more cities apart from Mandaue and Cebu City in the province, with its domestic submarine cables landing in four points in Cebu Island to ensure reliable and faster fiber broadband services throughout the province.
Converge invested P6 billion for its domestic submarine cable network that connected the Visayas and Mindanao to its national fiber backbone and distribution network which already reached over 69,000 kilometers as of end-April.
“Our multi-billion peso investment in the Visayas region is a signal of our commitment to provide the best fiber broadband service to the market. For our residential customers, we are glad to be able to offer them fast and reliable broadband plans at affordable prices. For our enterprise customers, we are heavily investing in digital infrastructure to cater to your increasing data service requirements,” Uy said.
Converge started the roll-out of its lightning-fast fiber broadband services in the Visayas with its grand launch in Cebu, initially serving Mandaue and Cebu City.
Converge fiber broadband would be available to serve the broadband needs of consumers and enterprises in the cities of Talisay, Cordova and Lapu-lapu in the coming weeks.