Converge ICT Solutions Inc. has earmarked P1 billion for the construction of a data center in Cebu within the year which will address the increasing demand for data
in Visayas and Mindanao.
“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,” said Dennis Anthony Uy, Converge chief executive officer and co-founder, adding that construction will likely start within the year.
Last week, Converge launched its fiber broadband services in the Visayas, initially serving Mandaue and Cebu City. It will also be available in the cities of Talisay, Cordova and Lapu-Lapu in the coming weeks.
The world-class data center will initially have 300 racks to cater to the demand and will be housed in a six-storey building that will also have a customer contact center which will employ thousands of Cebuanos and Visayans.
In addition to its core fixed broadband services, Converge 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.
As such it also carries numerous internet and enterprise application, including video, digital payment, online education and telecommuting. These new services are based on artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, all of which place higher requirements on data center interconnect.
After it built its first owned, National Capital Region-based data center in 2016, Converge has been actively seeking to expand its data capacity. The company said with its recent entry into Visayas and its 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 will be rolled out in 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 said it has 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 pointed out.
