Santiago has risen to the top of the South American data center scene thanks to recent interest from many major cloud services and ever-larger builds to support them. Despite the far larger populations in nearby nations such as Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Peru, Chile’s strong economy (particularly on a per capita basis), lengthy coastline offering cable landing hubs, and resources tailored to renewables-focused growth will lead Santiago to function as a regional hub beyond immediate local requirements.
The Chilean economy has traditionally focused on resource extraction, albeit for minerals increasingly necessary to a world focused on renewables. Longtime market leader copper is crucial for various uses in wind and solar power production, with increasingly rare lithium important for battery storage of these renewables. Resource extraction of this type requires an ever-increasing amount of computing power to predict proper locations for removal and ensure less environmental damage.
Federal government requirements are also leading to changes across Chile, with the signing of a $100 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank to assist in creating digital services for citizens. An official release at the signing suggested that although most government procedures have been digitized, less than half of the back-end processes inside individual agencies had done the same. The 25-year loan is viewed as a service equalizer to other regional countries that have shifted ahead with their government processes despite having lower per capita incomes.
Chile’s nearly 6,500 kilometers of coastline offers ample opportunities for cable landings, with the country’s hub located in Valparaiso, just 140 kilometers from Santiago. Valparaiso offers direct access to five major subsea cables and twelve regional nations and territories, including other key peering points in the United States and Brazil. While trans-Pacific cables have been considered to link Chile directly to growing markets across Asia, these have yet to transpire but would provide an excellent opportunity for south-south traffic.
With an economy of ever-growing importance to global renewable infrastructure and plenty of local requirements, growth in Santiago is expected to continue for the rest of the decade. Further investment in this key regional market is coming soon!
The EdgeConneX campus in Santiago is a first-of-its-kind multi-tenant, purpose-built wholesale data center in Chile and offers a secure, carrier-neutral environment for all deployments.
- Availability up to 20MW
- Tier III design 21 kilometers from downtown Santiago
- Ten networks available
- Engineered for customers requiring the lowest possible latency
- Oracle Cloud FastConnect cloud on-ramp
To learn more, download the EdgeConneX Santiago data sheet HERE.
Schedule a virtual tour: https://edge.1.aordev.com/virtual-tours/
To tour our Santiago location, please contact: info@edgeconnex.com