Data Centers in Manila

Manila – Southeast Asia's Emerging Digital Hub

Manila is rapidly becoming a critical digital gateway for Southeast Asia, attracting global hyperscalers and enterprises. Its strategic location, improving connectivity, and large domestic market make it an essential hub for deploying infrastructure to serve the Philippines and the wider region, ensuring low-latency access for a massive consumer base.

Manila: At A Glance

Network & Connectivity Ecosystem

Manila's connectivity ecosystem is dense and expanding, offering excellent options for reaching local and regional end-users. The market is defined by its growing number of international connections and a competitive carrier landscape.

Carrier Density & Carrier Neutrality: With over 10 unique network providers present, as of September 2025, Manila offers solid carrier diversity. Carrier-neutral facilities are the primary points of interconnection, providing choice and resiliency for colocation customers.

Direct Cloud On-Ramps: The market features over 1 direct cloud on-ramp, enabling dedicated, low-latency access to 1 cloud region as of September 2025. AWS provides a local on-ramp, allowing enterprises to build secure, high-performance hybrid cloud architectures.

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs): The primary exchange is the Philippine Internet Exchange (PhIX), which facilitates the majority of domestic traffic peering. Utilizing PhIX is critical for any organization aiming to deliver content and services efficiently within the Philippines.

Bare Metal: Bare metal cloud solutions are available from multiple providers in Manila. Companies like Hivelocity offer dedicated server infrastructure for performance-sensitive workloads that require direct hardware access.

Power Analysis

Average Cost Of Power: Industrial power rates in Manila average US$0.11/kWh as of December 2024. This price point is competitive for a major metropolitan market in the region and is a key factor in total cost of ownership calculations. The grid is primarily powered by fossil fuels (~68%) with a significant and growing renewables share (~32%).

Power Grid Reliability: The power grid supporting Manila's central business districts is well-engineered, with data centers benefiting from redundant feeds from multiple substations. While the broader national grid can face challenges, premier colocation facilities provide extensive N+1 or 2N UPS systems and generator backup to guarantee uptime.

Market Access, Business & Tax Climate

Proximity To Key Business Districts: Data centers in the Manila metro are strategically located near major commercial hubs like Makati, Bonifacio Global City (BGC), and Ortigas Center. This proximity provides low-latency connectivity for the country's financial services, business process outsourcing (BPO), and corporate enterprise sectors.

Regional Market Reach: Manila serves as the primary digital hub for the entire Philippines, a nation of over 115 million people. Its strategic location in the South China Sea also makes it an effective point of presence for reaching other major markets across Southeast Asia.

Tax Advantage For Data Centers: The Philippines does not currently offer specific tax holidays or financial incentives for data center construction or operation. Businesses should plan for the standard corporate tax structure and the 12% Value Added Tax (VAT) on all services.

Natural Disaster Risk

Manila is in a region with high exposure to natural disasters, rated High with an INFORM Risk score of 5.4 out of 10 as of September 2025. This requires that all data center infrastructure be engineered to withstand significant environmental threats.

Key risks include:

• Earthquake: Extremely high risk (9.7/10) due to proximity to the Marikina Valley Fault System.
• Tsunami: High risk (9.4/10) for coastal areas.
• Tropical Cyclone: High risk (9.2/10), as the Philippines is in a major typhoon belt.
• Coastal Flood: High risk (8.9/10) due to low-lying coastal areas and heavy rainfall.
• River Flood: Moderate risk (6.7/10).