Saudi Telecom Co. to Invest $400 Million in data center expansion

Saudi Telecom (STC) is developing a set of data centers in Saudi Arabia. According to The Saudi Press Agency, STC will build data centers with up to 125MW of capacity across 1.9 million square feet (180,000 square meters) of land. The project will also cost the telco SAR1.5 billion ($400 million). According to STC, the construction of the facilities at six sites is in progress. The data centers are scheduled to be completed in 12 months.

Upon full build-out, Saudi Telecom will have a portfolio of 16 data centers. The data centers will include 17,000 storage units that are serving eight parallel sites distributed over six different cities, including Dammam, Jeddah, and Riyadh. Chief technology officer at STC, Haitham Al-Faraj, said STC has a lot of plans for its data centers. He noted that STC wants to be the top data platform to support the demand for international calling. Al-Faraj also revealed that the company wants to equip its existing data centers to meet the growing client demands in the future by doubling existing capacity to over 300MW of capacity.