Thailand Plans £800m National Data Centre

The Thai government has revealed plans to build a national data centre which will cost the country up to £805 million.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Pridiyathorn Devakula the build will be part of the government’s digital economy initiative, a program started to help Thai citizens gain better access to the Internet.

Private sector

Devakula told journalists: “The investment money will not come from the government. The private sector will be invited to invest in the project.” The data centre is expected to be complete by the end of 2016, and will cost between 30 and 40 billion baht.

Last year, analysts Frost & Sullivan said that the Thai data centre market had seen “unforeseen business growth”.

Teera Kanokkanjanarat, senior ICT industry analyst, Frost & Sullivan said: “The result from our research shows that Thailand’s data centre industry had a strong year of growth in 2013. The overall industry growth rate was approximately 21% compared to the year earlier with total revenue over 1,700 million Baht.”

Thailand has the third-largest Internet user base in Southeast Asia, with 28.9 percent of the population having access to the web in 2013.