China Unicom said its Western Data Center on its 166,000 sq m campus will be ready to open in 2013.

According to the Chongqing Communications Administration, Phase 1 of the facility, located at the Shuitu Hi-tech Park of Liangjiang New Area of Chongqing, is being built at a cost of 4bn CNY.

It covers 190,000 sq m and can hold 20,000 racks (about 180,000 servers).

Hebei to launch Zhangjiakou cloud project

The Zhangjiakou Cloud Computing Data Center project, a key project of Hebei Province which is expected to generate 40bn CNY in operating income and 5.25bn CNY profit is expected to be launched within the year.

The province is investing 148.5bn CNY in the data center, which will be built as a campus consisting of different zones, including cloud computing data center zone, processing service zone, exhibition service zone, training zone and support service zone, with a floor space totaling 3.62m sq m.

Part of the project includes the development of new technologies, including operating systems, software and hardware management systems, virtual computing management systems, a distributed file system and security and business resource management.

It is estimated that 300,000 sqm floor space with 400,000 servers will be put into use upon completion of Phase 1.

The project is expected to generate 108,000 jobs following completion.

Latest Energy Saving and Emission Reduction Guide from MIIT

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released its Guide for Taking Further Measures to Reduce Energy Consumption and Emission of the Communication Industry.

The guide sets ideals for data center design in China, including Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).

It said it expects the PUE of newly built large cloud computing data centers should be below 1.5 by the end of 2015.

It also said it expects to see facilities use more alternative and renewable energy each year.

The government said it expects, through the use of new technologies which drive efficiency, it expects the average energy consumption by facilities run by the telecommunications industry to be 10% less by the end of 2015 compared with the end of 2011.

China Unicom helps Chengdu to build smart city

Chengdu is working with China Unicom to upgrade its infrastructure to become a ‘smart city’.

The Government of Chengdu’s Chenghua District and Chengdu Subsidiary of China Unicom signed a strategic cooperative agreement that will see 500m CNY invested in the Chenghua District to build s WCDMA 3G high quality network and fixed line high-speed broadband network.

The new connectivity will enhance the information infrastructure of Chengdu, providing a backbone for its smart city initiative which will promote the new ways of handling government affairs, new ways for city management, education, and other cultural services, among others.

China Unicom has signed smart city projects with more than 180 cities. It is taking advantage of its key technologies including cloud computing, the internet of things and mobile internet as well as its advanced communication infrastructures to build a unified cloud platform for smart cities with its 56 cloud computing nodes to achieve collaborative innovation of the smart industry.