Facebook plans to build its next major data centre in Singapore, despite India being hopeful it would be the location of a new storage facility.
The data centre, which will be situated on the country's western side will be completed in 2022 and will cost $1 billion (773m) to build. To help deal with the country's already oversubscribed population, the 170,000sqm facility will be built on 11 floors to save space in the area.
However, it would seem Indian tech thinkers are not happy it's been overlooked as a host for the data centre. Indian tech blogger Pankaj Mishra tweeted: "Facebook snubs India, its biggest (or second biggest?) user market, to build its first Asia data centre in Singapore," shortly following the announcement.
But Facebook wanted to stress that the conditions of Singapore were extremely well suited to its latest data centre.
"We selected Singapore for a number of reasons, including robust infrastructure and access to fibre, a talented local workforce, and a great set of community partners, including the Singapore Economic Development Board and the Jurong Town Corporation, both of which have helped us move this project forward," the company explained in a blog post.
It added that Singapore's reception to growing businesses was another reason it decided to build the data centre there rather than an alternative location.
Facebook has publicly announced that it wants all of its data centres to be powered by 100 renewable energy and this new location won't be an exception. In fact, the new Singapore facility will be the most efficient yet, with an annual Power Usage Effectiveness of 1.19.
