LHASA, March 28 (Xinhua) -- A cloud storage center will be built in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, to service investment and trade between Chinese companies and their counterparts in South Asia.
Construction started on the center on Monday, with a total investment of 10.5 billion yuan (about 1.54 billion U.S. dollars). Occupying 400,000 square meters, the center will be put into operation at the end of next year, Wang Jun, chief engineer of Ningsuan Technologies, investor and operator of the center.
The center will mainly process data for Chinese companies engaged in investment and trade in Nepal, India and other South Asian countries, where big data service fees are high, Wang said.
"With the construction of the South Asian passages, many Chinese companies have crossed borders for investment and trade. The demand for data storage and processing is high," he said.
The center will also be a major data storage facility for local Tibetan firms in the electricity, finance and Internet industries, he added.
Electricity consumption accounts for about 60 percent of the costs of keeping a big data center up and running. The cool climate and low energy costs in Lhasa will help the company lower costs, he added.