ST Telemedia Expands Data Centre Footprint in Singapore

Singapore, 17 March 2015  - Singapore Technologies Telemedia (ST Telemedia), a strategic investor focused on communications, media and technology business globally, marks another milestone with the recent completion of its acquisition of land to develop into a high quality, state-of-the-art flagship data centre in Singapore. Today’s announcement follows ST Telemedia’s data centre investment in China’s GDS Services last year.

The Singapore facility is integral to ST Telemedia's long-term global data centre plan. Strategically located at Defu Lane and in close proximity to mature data centre clusters, the 150,000 square feet facility will be built with the highest Tier III industry standards, and critical certifications such as LEED and BCA-IDA Green Mark. The facility will be supported by a team of experienced data centre experts with proven track record of execution capability and deep industry relationships.

Demand for data centre space has outstripped supply globally and in Singapore primarily due to increasing digitisation and growth in the number of online users. According to BroadGroup's 2014 research report, utilisation of data centre space in Singapore is forecasted to remain strong at close to 90 percent by 2018.

Singapore is well positioned as both Asia’s internet connectivity hub and Southeast Asia's data centre hub, housing more than 80 of the top 100 software and services companies, of which many have their regional or Asia-Pacific headquarters here. The Singapore flagship asset will provide a crucial presence for existing data centre investments and assets within the ST Telemedia group to tap on the region's strong data centre demand.

Commenting on the investment, ST Telemedia's Executive Director, Mr Sio Tat Hiang, said, "ST Telemedia is excited to announce our data centre expansion in Singapore. We are entering the data centre market at an opportune time when the Singapore government is pushing forward its vision to be the world's first Smart Nation and data centres are important infrastructure to support this. The Singapore flagship will complement the network connectivity and service offerings of our existing data centre assets and drive greater operational and technical synergies, which will translate into a better value proposition for customers. Nearer to home, with the growing bilateral trade relations between Singapore and China, we see tremendous collaborative opportunities between our Singapore data centre strategy and GDS, our China data centre investment."

He added: "We intend to leverage the combined experience, capabilities and expertise within the ST Telemedia Group to augment our strategy to build a distinctive and sustainable global data centre company with a dynamic business model. Development of the site is quickly taking shape and plans are underway to commence construction of the state-of-the-art flagship asset in Singapore."

The Singapore flagship data centre will be carrier-neutral, offering customers a full suite of best-in-class and highly scalable data centre services including physical and virtual colocation, connectivity and infrastructure management which will also support the growth in the cloud services market.

ST Telemedia is a pioneer in data centres in this region with experience dating back to the late 1990s where it introduced advanced internet exchange services into Asia. ST Telemedia launched i-STT in 2000 which was later merged into Equinix of the US. ST Telemedia was the largest strategic shareholder in Equinix, during which time, Equinix developed into one of the world's largest carrier-neutral and advanced data centre companies. ST Telemedia has since divested its interest in Equinix. Currently, its portfolio companies, Level 3 Communications owns and operates over 350 carrier-neutral data centre facilities throughout North America, Latin America and Europe; whilst GDS Services operates 17 high-availability carrier-neutral data centres in primary economic hubs across China.