In the Asia-Pacific digital infrastructure landscape, the development track of Hong Kong Hutchison Telecommunications (HGC) data center is constantly updated, and the sale of the HK $14.497 billion fixed-line business that hit the market in 017 not only marked the strategic shift of Li Ka-shing's telecommunications empire, but also revealed the unique position of HGC data center in the global competition. HGC once occupied the leading position in fixed line services in Hong Kong, and after the capital transfer and business divestment, the evolution path of its data center is becoming a key sample to observe the development of Hong Kong's digital infrastructure.

HGC's technical DNA was already showing its edge in 2013. At that time, in the face of the surging demand for high bandwidth from commercial users and home users, HGC spent HK $700 million to launch the fiber backbone network upgrade program, which will increase transmission speed from 10Gbps to 100Gbps. This technological leap not only supported the local optical fiber access of more than 10,000 buildings and 1.6 million households in Hong Kong network services, but also through the cooperation with TVB, achieved the 2014 World Cup ultra-high-definition signal transmission breakthrough. Technology director Byron Chiang has pointed out that the network is designed to accommodate millions of users accessing 4K content at the same time, laying the physical layer foundation for multimedia services in subsequent data centers.

The stake sale in 2017 thrust HGC into the capital markets spotlight. Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong sold the fixed-line assets containing the data centre business to private equity firm I Squared Capital for a final consideration of HK $14.527bn (on a transaction adjusted basis), with key restrictions buried in the terms of the deal: the former group cannot operate data centres or provide related services in Hong Kong for three years. This decision seems to shrink the front line, but it actually contains strategic implications - by divesting the asset-heavy sector, the parent company can focus on the core business of mobile communications, and HGC will accelerate the globalization layout with its independent operating identity.

After separating from Hutchison system, HGC data center gradually shows the strategy of alienated competition. Its computer room not only provides traditional cabinet hosting and network access, but also integrates value-added services such as cloud computing, network security and data backup. Particularly noteworthy is the application of dynamic resource allocation system: Through software-defined network (SDN) technology, customers can adjust the bandwidth configuration in real time, and the peak processing capacity can reach 10Gbps to meet the sudden needs of cross-border e-commerce, financial high-frequency trading and other scenarios. This flexibility highlights the value of the global wave of remote working in 2020, an international investment bank relying on the HGC data center to build a hybrid cloud architecture, the Asia Pacific trading system latency from 83ms to 27ms, daily order processing increased by four times.

​ Its "dual channel" architecture is typical: one route guarantees low latency for mainland visits via CN2 GIA, and the other is directly connected to Europe and the United States via an international backbone network, with separate data isolation zones to meet the dual requirements of the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPL) and the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This design played a key role in the data sovereignty dispute of a multinational logistics company in 2023, which enabled the company to localize data migration within 48 hours and avoid regulatory fines of more than HK $200 million.

Faced with the explosion of computing power demand caused by generative AI, HGC data centers are promoting the deployment of third-generation liquid cooling technology. The experimental data show that the energy consumption efficiency ratio (PUE) of the GPU cluster using the submerged cooling scheme is reduced to 1.08, which saves 35% of power compared with the traditional air-cooled system. At the same time, its AI computing power rental platform in cooperation with Nvidia has entered the testing phase, and plans to provide Southeast Asian startups with hourly billing A100/H100 chip call services. Analysts predict that such innovations could push HGC's data centre business revenues above HK $5 billion by 2026, an increase of nearly 300% from the initial stage of the sale.