Uruguay’s state-owned telecommunications operator Antel plans to begin building a US$70 million data centre in Las Piedras in July 2027, with the facility expected to start operating in the first half of 2029.
The timetable was set out at a presentation in the Canelones city on 10 November. The project had already been announced earlier in the year, but the presentation provided a more specific schedule and further details of the planned building, including four rooms with capacity for 330 equipment racks.
The centre is intended both to expand Antel’s computing capacity and to provide a geographically separate counterpart to its existing data centre in Pando. It is also being designed for equipment that needs more power per rack, including systems capable of running artificial intelligence workloads.
A second location for computing services
Antel currently operates three data centres, two of which provide services to external customers. The Las Piedras facility would add a separate site for services now supported from Pando, also in Canelones. Its location near the junction of routes 5 and 48 was chosen with access to telecommunications networks, electricity and the site itself in mind.
Geographical redundancy means that facilities in different places can be used to support the continuity of services if one site is affected by a disruption. Antel says the new centre will complement Pando in this way. That is an intended capability of the completed project, rather than a guarantee that every service will remain available in every circumstance.
The company says the facilities will occupy about 2.5 hectares within a 6.5-hectare site owned by Uruguay’s National Public Education Administration. Antel plans a facility with Uptime Tier III certification, a standard associated with the design and operation of data-centre infrastructure. The centre has yet to be built, so the certification should be understood as part of the plan.
Space for higher-density equipment
A rack is a frame used to house computer servers and other equipment. The power and cooling required can vary considerably depending on what is installed in it. Antel says the new centre’s design will support a greater energy density per rack, allowing it to house more powerful infrastructure as computing needs develop.
Antel’s president, Alejandro Paz, has previously said the project is intended to run artificial intelligence models rather than train them. He described four megawatts of power availability for information technology at the planned centre. That figure refers to capacity available for computing equipment, not a prediction that the site will continuously consume that amount of electricity.
The company also expects to add computing capacity at its Pando centre in the first half of 2027, before the proposed Las Piedras facility opens. Antel says it already operates infrastructure for artificial intelligence workloads using graphics processing units, specialised processors used for demanding calculations.
Paz has presented domestic processing capacity as part of the company’s aim to give organisations an option to handle data within Uruguay. The new centre is intended to serve Antel, its customers and government users, but the announcement does not establish which future workloads or customers will use it.
Cooling design and employment estimates
Antel says the planned cooling system will use water in a closed circuit, with the same water recirculated rather than continually consumed during normal operation. The circuit still needs to be filled initially, and Paz has acknowledged that a leak or other problem could require additional water. The design also includes a system intended to use cool outside air when conditions allow, reducing the energy needed for cooling.
Plans include green roofs, landscaped areas using native species and the reuse of rainwater for toilets and irrigation. The operator says the design draws on LEED criteria for sustainable buildings; it has not presented the unbuilt centre as already having achieved that certification.
Antel estimates that construction will generate about 250 direct jobs and involve around 40 subcontracts, with further indirect employment. Once the centre is operating, it expects approximately 60 people to work in activities linked to it. Those figures are projections, not counts of jobs already created.
The dates remain a construction and operating schedule rather than evidence that work is under way. An earlier account of the project had pointed to a possible start in the first quarter of 2027; the schedule presented in November places the intended start in July instead.
