CAT Telecom plans to spend 560 million baht to double the capacity of its data centres to cater to soaring demand for digital media and entertainment data storage.
Data centre operators are expanding their facilities to accommodate the need for increased security, energy efficiency and new applications/services.
Yuttasart Nitipaichit, assistant vice-president for data centres, said the expansion is expected to be completed this year.
The expansion is needed to meet the increasing demand from 24 digital television channels, digital entertainment content, mobile apps and e-learning content, he said.
Of the 560 million baht budget, 500 million baht will go to doubling the capacity of the data centre in Bangkok's Bang Rak district. It will also upgrade the networking and storage of its Bang Rak headquarters to provide subscription-based IT services.
CAT is also providing infrastructure for government cloud services. "We believe cloud-based services will continue growing significantly as they can reduce the cost of IT investment and maintenance by 40-60%," said Mr Yuttasart.
The state telecom enterprise has major data centres in Bang Rak, Chaeng Watthana and Nonthaburi, plus three other sites in Chiang Mai, Phuket and Surat Thani.
Mr Yuttasart said CAT did not see a high attrition rate from the December 2013 power cut at its internet data centre in Bang Rak caused by anti-government protesters. The cut lasted over 10 hours and incurred losses of 300 million baht for the state enterprise.
The Bang Rak headquarters handles most domestic internet exchange centres and international internet gateways. The site's optical fibre transmission system is linked with major telecoms operators from fixed-line telephones to mobile phone and internet services.
CAT has 92,000 customers, from large companies to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Mr Yuttasart said CAT has overhauled its power standby system and computer server to enhance efficiency. The enterprise also upgraded its disaster recovery site to deal with future incidents.
CAT expects revenue of 225 million baht from its data centre and cloud services this year, up 30% from last year. "We expect the figure to reach 300 million by 2015," he said.
Currently, data centre and cloud businesses contribute less than 1% of total revenue, and it expects the proportion will reach 10% within five years, Mr Yuttasart said.
CAT is one of seven members of Acasia Communications, an alliance of Asean telecommunications companies which recently launched its global data centre. The other members are PT Indosat of Indonesia, Philippines Long Distance Telephone, Singapore Telecommunications, Telekom Brunei Berhad, Telekom Malaysia and Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group.
Acasia initially offers 33 data centres that cover Asean, Hong Kong and Australia.
Acasia's global data centre offers customers the largest single integrated data centre via its one-stop-shop facility.