French telco Prosoluce has commenced construction on a data center in Haute-Garonne, in the Occitanie region of southwestern France.

Located in Comminge Futuropole, a 'zone dedicated to innovative enterprises and new technology' [translated] in Saint-Gaudens, Haute-Garonne, the data center and new head office building will be ready for use in the summer of 2023.

Prosoluce is a small telecom operator and host formed in 2007. The company provides services across France and currently has 10 employees. Most of the company’s infrastructure is currently hosted in the Toulouse data center which was commissioned in 2014. While Prosoluce owned the servers used, customers' data is hosted in an externally owned building.

The new data center will be the company’s first fully-owned facility.

Cyril Gousse, president of Prosoluce, said of the chosen location: “It's one of the furthest points from Paris, in a safe zone for data. Saint-Gaudens is in the middle of networks and telecoms, which allows us to easily connect to existing infrastructures. The climatic zone is also important, the temperature is reasonable - which makes it possible to moderate energy consumption”.

Anticipated to cost around €3 million ($3.25m), the construction project is being partially financially supported by Cœur et Coteaux du Comminges, the Occitanie region, and the Haute-Garonne department, which in combination will fund 30 percent of the project.

Prosoluce has not released details for the data center, however, the company describes it as a ‘medium size’ facility that will be ‘as virtuous as possible.’

The facility will use hyperventilation for cooling, where a rapid pulse of air creates consistent heat evacuation, as well as an adiabatic system that passes air over fabric membranes impregnated with water to improve air quality. Excess heat will be used in the head office also located on the site, and the company is exploring the possibility of reselling the heat during the summer when it will no longer be needed.

The company is also intending to install photovoltaic panels on site.

It is hoped that the development will bring jobs to the region, and Prosoluce hopes to ‘triple its workforce’ over the next three years. In 2022, Prosoluce’s turnover reached €1.5 million ($1.6 million) and the management claims an annual growth of 35 percent over the last five years. The company is reportedly looking to develop data centers in other cities in the coming years.