A new P1 billion (US$21M) data center under construction in Makatai, Manila, for Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT), has been delayed according to reports.

The facility in the central Makati business district, which PLDT started building in May, has been delayed to the second quarter of 2016, according to the Manila Times.

makati manlia philippines thinkstock photos fazon1
– Thinkstock / fazon1

Philipppines delay

PLDT is the largest telecommunications company in the Philippines, and operates a network of data centers under the Vitro brand. At the moment, Vitro has three data centers in Subic, Cebu and Pasig, which deliver various end-to-end IT infrastructure solutions, as well as backup and business continuity services. Connectivity around the world is offered via PLDT’s networks.

“We experienced a little bit of delay (in the construction) but we are targeting the end of the first quarter [of 2016], around April or May,” Eric Alberto, vice president of PLDT told reporters on the sidelines of a product launch.

Aside from the Makati facility, PLDT also has another data center located in the Clark Special Economic Zone and Freeport in Pampanga under construction at the moment.

The three existing Vitro data centers along with another three, are operated by IP Converge Data Services, a subsidiary of the PLDT infrastructure arm ePLDT. In total PLDT Group will have eight commercial data centers with a capacity of more than 8,000 racks when the new builds are completed – a milestone that the company had been happy to highlight.

“We are not doing this just for the prestige of becoming the largest data center operator in the country,” said PLDT executive vice president and ePLDT president and CEO Eric Alberto in a statement earlier this year. “We are doing this because we want to enable local enterprises to compete in the global arena and help fulfill our country’s destiny to become the next Asian Economic Tiger.”

Philippines has the potential to be one of the largest hubs for calls and marketing centers, given that the telecom industry was deregulated in 1995. However, at least one industry expert has told us that new data center operators would first have to forge a partnership with the incumbent carriers that currently dominate the market there.

As it is, The Philippine’s data center footprint remains small despite for the population of the country (98 million). Indeed, a back-of-the-envelop calculation of the just-announced DC West data center by Singtel in Singapore – another Southeast Asia country – suggests that it can accommodate twice as many racks as the entire PLDT data center footprint.