Leading Edge Data Centres puts AU$20 million towards Newcastle data centre campus
Leading Edge Data Centres has announced it will be investing AU$19.6 million to build a Tier 3 1.5-megawatt data centre campus in Newcastle, New South Wales.
The campus will serve as the home to four 375-kilowatt facilities, which Leading Edge has touted will provide cloud services for local enterprises in the Newcastle and Hunter region, removing the reliance on metro-based data centres.
"Enhancing regional connectivity is of strategic importance to Australia's digital infrastructure upgrade. For booming regional areas like Newcastle and the Hunter, taking the compute capacity closer to the source of deployment and usage is paramount," Leading Edge Data Centres CEO Chris Thorpe said.
"The reliance organisations have on fast access to data and compute capacity that is comparable in terms of speeds and pricing to metro access is essential to ensure a level playing field with metropolitan locations."
The initial stage of the Newcastle campus is scheduled to open by November.
According to Leading Edge, the development of its Newcastle campus is part of its phase 1 rollout of 14 regional data centres in NSW. The company said many of those locations are currently in the development approval process with local councils.
The company added there are also plans to expand its footprint into regional Victoria and Queensland.
Leading Edge is not the only company expanding its data centre footprint. Earlier this year, Equinix opened the doors to its fourth data centre in Melbourne following a $77.5 million investment in the facility.
ME2 is situated in Melbourne's Fishermans Bend region adjacent to ME1 and initially includes more than 29,300 square feet of colocation space. Once fully built out, the facility will span more than 88,000 square feet.
Meanwhile, last month, Microsoft announced plans to establish its first New Zealand data centre region.
The New Zealand data centre region would be in addition to its global data centre footprint in 60 other regions, with Microsoft Azure being available in over 140 countries.
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