China’s major telecommunication player, China Mobile, is rolling out yet another a new data center project in West China.

Work has started on a facility in Haidong Industrial Park, according to Qinghai News. The new data center will be built in three phases, and will be able to host 3,200 racks upon full completion. In Phase 1, three buildings with a total floor space of 28,205 sqm will be constructed.

The warehouse-style data center will apply virtualization, cloud and energy-saving technologies to allow flexible expansion and reduce costs. The facility will support IT platforms, as well as the core network and business platforms of China Mobile’s Qinghai subsidiary.

Expanding portfolios
In the North West of the country close to the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Qinghai is China's fourth largest province but is sparsely populated. The Haidong Industrial Park is 20 miles from the capital Xining (pictured).

As well as serving China Mobile's needs, the new site will also provide Internet hosting, system maintenance and IT support services to companies located at the Industrial Park, and is expected to provide Internet data center and public cloud services to government bodies, enterprises and individual users further afield.

This center is one of China Mobile’s latest moves to expand its data center portfolios. Earlier this month, it announced a 2.55bn CNY project capable of hosting about 11,000 racks in Gansu Province. Later, its subsidiary for international business CMI brought online 1,920 racks for its global network center (GNC) in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong development is the most significant network hub of China Mobile, as well as the first cable landing station built by China carriers outside Mainland China.

Apart from data center business, the mobile communication operator is working on expanding its mobile internet and information consumption business.

Just a few days ago, it invested 3.172bn CNY to build a R&D Center in the hi-tech district of Suzhou in East China. The facility will be used for the R&D work on cloud, big data and IT support system.