South Korea will soon be home to a $315 million data centre

The 21-megawatt project will come with eight storeys, built to Tier 3 standards 

On 30 September, two of the largest conglomerates in the country Actis and GS E&C Group announced that they will be constructing and operating a 21-megawatt data centre worth USD315 million in Seoul, South Korea, reported Construction Review Online. 

The eight-storey facility will be able to host superior cloud service providers (CSPs), enabling them to support the demand in Seoul. 

With one of the highest smartphone penetrations in the world at 95 percent, the traffic for mobile data accelerated by 26 times since 2012. 

The data centre will be built in the Pyeongchon Cluster in Seoul, an area known to have the highest concentration of CSPs. This facility will be constructed to Tier 3 standards, featuring 400 low-density racks for co-location customers and 1,600 high-density racks for CSP clients. 

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Brian Chinappi, the head of Asia real estate at Actis, said that Seoul has always had a strong appetite for data, but since the capital only has less than five leading non-owner occupied data centres in the country, the demand has not been met.  

“This investment, where land and grid power have been secured, in an area popular with CSPs, will directly help to address that challenge,” said Brian. 

 “We are pleased to be working with GS E&C, an experienced local contractor that has built 185MW of existing IDC capacity. Together, this project will deliver another critical piece of digital infrastructure for Korea.”