Singtel embarks on AI flavoured data centre push

In this pursuit Singtel’s Digital InfraCo unit will become a cloud partner of Nvidia, and it links the whole endeavour to Singapore's National AI Strategy 2.0, which was set up to ‘drive innovation and create new value through AI.’

They represent the first of a new ‘brand’ of data centres called Nxera, and will be loaded with Nvidia Hopper architecture GPUs and use Nvidia AI reference architectures. Singtel’s first AI services will be available in Singapore, with future data centres under construction in Indonesia and Thailand. According to Nvidia, the new data centres will act as ‘trusted engines of generative AI’ to firms in the region.

Singtel is pushing its wider set of products as a selling point as to why firms might want to turn to it as a regional AI player, with its fixed broadband network, submarine cables, 5G network, and the Paragon cloud platform which will ‘orchestrate their AI workloads in a multi-network and multi-cloud environment.’

“The launch of the Nxera data centre brand is a key milestone for our data centre business as we look to expand our footprint in the region beyond 200MW over the next three years,” said Bill Chang, CEO of Nxera and Singtel's Digital InfraCo unit. “As we build out our data centre business, we are putting in place a purpose-driven, fully aligned group of ecosystem partners with distinctive capabilities and unique platforms that will help us grow this digital infrastructure in an AI world – sustainably and responsibly. This means democratising AI access for enterprises, introducing renewable energy and sustainable technologies, and helping produce the talent for our new generation of data centres.”

“The launch of the Nxera data centre brand is a key milestone for our data centre business as we look to expand our footprint in the region beyond 200MW over the next three years. As we build out our data centre business, we are putting in place a purpose-driven, fully aligned group of ecosystem partners with distinctive capabilities and unique platforms that will help us grow this digital infrastructure in an AI world – sustainably and responsibly. This means democratising AI access for enterprises, introducing renewable energy and sustainable technologies, and helping produce the talent for our new generation of data centres.”

The announcement makes a big thing of how sustainable the new data centres will be, and intends to set up a co-innovation platform to develop and test liquid and immersion cooling and also water-saving technologies. When these technologies are in play, Singtel says, they will be implemented in DC Tuas in Singapore and other data centres in the region. DC Tuas will have a PUE of 1.23 at full load, which will apparently mean it’s one of the most efficient data centres in Asia.

Nxera also intends to develop a smart IoT and digital twin platform with software company Red Dot Analytics to monitor, manage and optimise its data centre operations, using the platform’s predictive and simulation capabilities.

AI will no doubt present a major theme of MWC this year as telcos work out how much of a player they can be in the space. For a deep dive into the effects AI is having on telcos and the opportunities it presents, check out our recent article The implications of AI for telecoms.