Telecommunications giant PLDT Inc. is banking on reforms in the classification and localization of data to drive fresh investments and ramp up the influx of tech giants into the country’s growing data center industry.

Victor Genuino, who heads both VITRO Inc. and ePLDT Inc., said the telco firm is actively engaging with the government to push for reforms that would position the Philippines as a major data center hub.

Despite the continued expansion and strong demand for data centers in the country, limitations from current policies are seen as setbacks compared to neighboring countries that have liberalized their respective industries.

PLDT, in particular, is targeting to capture the demand of global giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which are looking for extra data storage amid rising dependence on digital technology.

VITRO, the data center arm of PLDT, earlier inaugurated the country’s first artificial intelligence (AI)-ready data center, VITRO Sta. Rosa, with the hope of onboarding these clients.

VITRO Sta. Rosa, which has a capacity of up to 50 megawatts (MW), is currently offering its data capacity to one hyperscaler—a company that offers cloud services. Genuino said there are similar firms that are planning to tap VITRO’s services.

“I’m very hopeful that once we have data classification and data sovereignty [laws], and the government actually starts moving their workload into a private cloud, hopefully all of those will start coming in. Because that’s the only thing we’re lacking,” Genuino told reporters on Monday, Sept. 29.

Genuino noted that measures identifying data classification and localization has helped countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand secure billions in investments into their respective data center sectors.

Introducing these policies, he said, would make the Philippines competitive in attracting tech companies, noting that the country has already made strides in building data center infrastructure while making sure that there is consistent and cheap power.

In terms of data classification, Genuino said there should be a policy that explicitly categorizes data based on its sensitivity and value, thereby protecting it more efficiently.

Meanwhile, data localization would step in to ensure that these data are properly stored within the country, especially the highly sensitive information that deals with national security

“That’s for all our protection. So once the data is classified by the government as highly sensitive, by default, it should be placed in the Philippines,” Genuino said.

As it stands, he said that some of the government's vital data is stored within government buildings or on the public cloud, making it vulnerable to potential threats. The government’s data center capacity is only around three MW.

Under its cloud-first policy issued in 2020, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) classifies data as non-sensitive, sensitive, above-sensitive, and highly sensitive.

Genuino said PLDT has been in talks with the government to amend this policy, introducing the localization scheme and other regulatory measures.

He added that the telco giant is hoping that these reforms will be implemented as early as this year.

Introducing these changes would further solidify the growth potential of the country’s data center sector, with PLDT taking the lead as it targets increasing its data center capacity to as much as 500 MW.

VITRO has a total output of 100 MW across its 11 data centers nationwide.

In a related development, ePLDT unveiled on Monday the country’s first sovereign Al solutions stack known as Pilipinas AI, which builds on the earlier launch of the company’s GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS).

Through GPUaaS, ePLDT offers clients on-demand access to high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs).

Under Pilipinas AI, developed with technology firm Dell Technologies and generative AI company Katonic AI, the GPU management platform is now integrated with a more robust AI control system.

Hosted at VITRO Sta. Rosa, Pilipinas AI will enable all types of businesses to leverage AI without the burden of building or managing their own infrastructure.

The service is expected to make a significant impact on key sectors, including banking and finance, business process outsourcing, healthcare, public services, and the academe.