Australia’s first T3 data centre constructed in a regional area has been visited by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday.
The new Pulse Data Centre is currently under construction at Charlton near Toowoomba and is designed to support corporate and enterprise customers, local, state and federal government plus global technology giants.
Pulse Data Centre manager Peter Blunt said the facility brings wide-ranging benefits for regional businesses and our agriculture sector.
Mr Blunt said much of the new developments in agriculture are based around digitization with this creating a need for storing and processing data.
“This Pulse Data Centre will bring the digital economy to regional Queensland,” he said.
“The data centre will provide large corporate companies, government agencies and other businesses the infrastructure for their digital operations to be based in regional locations.”
It was also flagged by construction company FKG’s chief financial officer, Grant Statton, more data centres will be built in regional areas across Australia if Toowoomba’s facility proves viable.
Moving a data centre to a regional location is a change in status quo with all previous T3 standard digital facilities constructed in major cities or services provided by overseas data companies.
“We see numerous multinational businesses coming to areas like Toowoomba collecting information on weather, crop growth, soils and other types of data and it’s all taken to big cities or overseas companies for processing,” Mr Blunt said.
This Pulse Data Centre will bring the digital economy to regional Queensland.
- Peter Blunt, Pulse Data Centre manager
“We are losing control over all that data, so this complex allows our data collection industry to remain here in regional Queensland, instead of capital cities or even overseas.”
The agricultural sector is set to benefit will more innovation and technology development done locally, which has potential to increase fit-to-purpose agricultural technology services and also employment opportunities in agriculture-based digital fields. Employment opportunities in general digital technology areas are also expected to be created by the Pulse Data Centre.
“The Toowoomba base will also give local businesses an opportunity to provide additional support industries to the data centre,” Mr Blunt said.
“This technology park will help many business sectors across the Darling Downs and any future regional data centres will bring digital economy opportunities to areas outside major capital cities.”
Mr Blunt also added large corporate business will potentially utilise the data centre, therefore creating more local business investment and corporate employment opportunities for regional people.
During a speech in Toowoomba on Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said decentralization was part of the federal government’s current policy approach.
Mr Joyce said his experience was people are willing to move to regional locations for employment and gain many lifestyle benefits. He used the example of the government’s Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine Authority being successfully moved to an Armidale head office in New South Wales.