Facebook to invest $1 billion in first Asian data centre in Singapore

By Fathin Ungku

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Facebook said on Thursday it will invest more than $1 billion to build its first data centre in Asia in Singapore, slated to open in 2022.

Facebook's facility will be located in the west of the island, near where Google is expanding its Singapore data centres in an $850 million investment as mobile growth, e-commerce and cloud computing demand rise across the region.

"This will be our first data centre in Asia," Thomas Furlong, Facebook's vice president of infrastructure data centres, said at a press conference with local authorities in Singapore.

He said the facility was expected to open in 2022 depending on the speed of construction.

Facebook said in a statement the 170,000 square metre facility represented an investment of more than S$1.4 billion ($1 billion) and would support hundreds of jobs.

Facebook has a number of data centres in the United States as well as Ireland and Sweden, and it is building a facility in Denmark.

"The data centre isn't country specific to where users are located...it's a dynamic process," said Furlong.

($1 = 1.3744 Singapore dollars)

(Reporting by Fathin Ungku; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Stephen Coates and Darren Schuettler)