Thailand and other ASEAN countries may see a notable increase in new data center investments in the next few years amid a rise in global data consumption, Bangkok Post said in a Thursday report.

Aside from Google's planned $1 billion investment in data centers and cloud services in Bangkok and Chon Buri, Thailand's Board of Investment said it has received applications for 46 data center-related projects totaling about 168 billion baht.

The applications for investment privileges include those from Amazon Web Services, Australia's NextDC (ASX:NXT), India's CtrlS and Singapore's STT GDC and Evolution Data, the report said.

Data center operators are looking beyond Singapore, the leading Southeast Asian country in terms of data center capacity, amid land and energy constraints, according to research firm CGS International.

New data center investments in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines could speed up in the next three to five years, the research firm said.

For Thailand, the boom could mostly benefit sectors such as electronics, industrial estate, contractors and power plants, the report said.

CGS International said electronics maker Delta Electronics (BKK:DELTA) may have the biggest gain from the data center growth among Thai companies, followed by real estate players such as WHA (BKK:WHA) and Amata (BKK:AMATA), contractors that include Infraset as well as submarine cable companies such as Symphony.

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