May 16, 2024

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Anticipated location for LG Uplus’ new data center at LG Display's Paju business complex (LG Display)

LG Uplus, one of the nation's top telecom carriers, said Wednesday it plans to build a large-scale data center in response to the growing demand for such facilities, largely driven by the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence and cloud servers across industries.

To build the new data center, the company is set to acquire land and buildings located in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, from LG Display, a panel manufacturing arm of LG Group. The exact investment amount and construction timeline were not disclosed immediately.

According to LG Uplus, this new facility will span approximately 73,712 square meters, equivalent to nine soccer fields, and surpass the size of the company’s two existing large-scale data centers in Pyeongchon, south of Seoul.

The decision to build a new data center aligns with the company's strategy to meet the increasing demand for large-scale data centers fueled by the increasing adoption of generative artificial intelligence and the acceleration of cloud transitions by information technology businesses.

With this addition, LG Uplus will operate three large-scale data centers for commercial purposes in South Korea, each capable of accommodating more than 100,000 servers.

These large-scale data centers can also cater to businesses seeking to enhance server stability and security by duplicating their data servers.

The Paju data center will feature an insulating fluid-based cooling system from the start of construction, as liquid-based systems offer greater energy efficiency and superior cooling performance.

LG Uplus said it intends to develop the Paju data center as the country's premier artificial intelligence data center optimized for managing high-performance graphics processing units, or GPUs.

"Securing a site for constructing a hyperscale data center enables us to proactively respond to the explosive growth in demand for data centers,” an LG Uplus official said. “Building on our expertise in servicing data centers for IT companies both domestically and overseas, we will continue to strengthen our competitiveness in the data center business."

Positioning its data center business as a core business of its future growth, LG Uplus’s annual revenue reached 326.4 billion won last year, marking a 16.3 percent increase from the previous year.

By Hwang Joo-young (flylikekite@heraldcorp.com)