A consortium including NTT is looking to turn Ishikari City in Japan into a new large data center cluster.

NTT East Corporation recently announced that it will join the Ishikari Data Center Consortium alongside data center operators located within Ishikari City, as well as power and telecommunications infrastructure operators.

Ishikari is a city located in Ishikari Subprefecture, on the west side of the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

The company said the Ishikari Bay New Port area has ample renewable energy resources and low disaster risks. The new consortium aims to promote Ishikari City as a domestic data center hub and one of the leading data center clusters in the country.

Other members of the consortium include Sakura Internet, Kyocera, Tokyu Land Corporation and its affiliate Ishikari Renewable Energy Data Center No. 1 LLC, Flower Communications, Broadband Tower Inc., NTT ME Corporation, Ishikari Regional Energy LLC, Liene Inc., and Hokkaido Integrated Communications Network Co., Ltd (aka HotNet).

The group aims to establish and strengthen infrastructure necessary for data center operations, such as power infrastructure and communication infrastructure, and work with the local government to establish incentives for development.

“We will ensure that citizens and local businesses experience the social value of the DC, and powerfully promote the appeal of Ishikari City as an "unprecedented DC cluster" to the entire country,” NTT said in the announcement.

According to Data Center Map, there are nine data centers on the island of Hokkaido, centered around Sapporo. Local operators include SoftBank, Kyocera, HotNet, Sakura Internet, KDDI, and Rakuten. Eurus Energy is developing a wind-powered facility in Wakkani.

Sakura Internet has operated its data center in Ishikari since 2011, and has recently been expanding and deploying GPUs at the site.

Tokyu Land, Flower Communications, and Broadband Tower partnered on a 15MW data center project in Ishikari in 2024, which is due to launch this year.

In Japan, NTT operates multiple telecoms units – including NTT East, NTT West, NTT Docomo, and NTT Communications. NTT East offers services from around 30 data center locations, including facilities in Tokyo, Yokohama, Chiba, Saitama, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, and elsewhere.