Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor, In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment said that a Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre, which first be­gan un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, is not yet com­plete even as it moves ahead with pro­pos­als for two new da­ta cen­tres with Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) min­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

A da­ta cen­tre is a cen­tralised phys­i­cal fa­cil­i­ty packed with servers, stor­age dri­ves and net­work­ing gear that acts as a mas­sive dig­i­tal ware­house, stor­ing, pro­cess­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing da­ta, host­ing every­thing from cloud ap­pli­ca­tions to web­sites. On the oth­er hand, an AI da­ta cen­tre (some­times called an AI fac­to­ry) is a high­ly spe­cialised fa­cil­i­ty pur­pose-built to train and run ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and ma­chine learn­ing mod­els.

The da­ta cen­tre un­der con­struc­tion is a Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre for the for­mer gov­ern­ment’s dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion ex­pan­sion for the pe­ri­od 2024–2027. As it stands, T&T al­ready has five da­ta cen­tres—Fu­jit­su, TSTT, Dig­i­cel, Ca­ble and Wire­less, and Air Link—which are clas­si­fied as Tier 3 da­ta cen­tres.

Guardian Me­dia was told that “some of the elec­tron­ic gear for that da­ta cen­tre ar­rived and was put to use in TSTT’s da­ta cen­tre to be moved when the Tier 4 fa­cil­i­ty was com­plet­ed.”

On Sun­day, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that a Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre project be­gan in 2022 un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion and was to be lo­cat­ed at the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. That ini­tial ten­der had al­so in­clud­ed a so­lar park ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing 500 kilo­watts of elec­tric­i­ty and stip­u­lat­ed that the da­ta cen­tre should be “at a min­i­mum Tier 3 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at the point of com­mis­sion­ing if the el­e­ments for Tier 4 are not avail­able with­in the time­line spec­i­fied.”

It was fund­ed by a US$120 mil­lion loan from CAF – De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean – and was un­der­tak­en through the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal­iza­tion, now the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (MPAAI).

“Tier 4 da­ta cen­tres pro­vide the high­est lev­els of in­fra­struc­ture re­dun­dan­cy, fault tol­er­ance and avail­abil­i­ty. Im­por­tant­ly though, the Tier dif­fer­ences have noth­ing to do with scale; you can have a small Tier 4 fa­cil­i­ty,” an in­formed source ex­plained.

“The Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion is in­tend­ed to sup­port key gov­ern­ment mis­sion-crit­i­cal op­er­a­tions, not ded­i­cat­ed AI min­ing. AI min­ing work­loads typ­i­cal­ly have much high­er and more con­sis­tent pow­er con­sump­tion than gov­ern­ment mis­sion-crit­i­cal sys­tems. In ad­di­tion, the users of gov­ern­ment mis­sion-crit­i­cal ser­vices are pri­mar­i­ly do­mes­tic, mak­ing lo­cal in­fra­struc­ture es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant. By con­trast, AI min­ing gen­er­al­ly serves off­shore cus­tomers and there­fore de­pends more heav­i­ly on in­ter­na­tion­al fi­bre con­nec­tiv­i­ty than on do­mes­tic in­fra­struc­ture,” the source ex­plained.

Min­istry’s state­ment

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from MPAAI, “the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment pro­posed a Tier IV Na­tion­al Da­ta Cen­tre at Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate to sup­port Gov­ern­ment dig­i­tal ser­vices, strength­en na­tion­al cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and re­duce the State’s re­liance on cost­ly ex­ter­nal da­ta host­ing arrange­ments. De­spite those plans, the project was nev­er com­plet­ed or op­er­a­tionalised by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

“A Tier IV Na­tion­al Da­ta Cen­tre is de­signed to pro­vide se­cure Gov­ern­ment da­ta stor­age and dig­i­tal ser­vices. Its Tier IV clas­si­fi­ca­tion refers on­ly to the re­li­a­bil­i­ty and re­silience of the fa­cil­i­ty; it is not a mea­sure of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ty,” the state­ment said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the hold­back was civ­il works be­ing man­aged by an­oth­er state com­pa­ny.

In De­cem­ber 2025, ac­cord­ing to pro­cure­ment no­tices by the MPAAI, the Gov­ern­ment sole-se­lect­ed and leased land for 20 years for the da­ta cen­tre.

In an ad­di­tion­al no­tice, it sole-se­lect­ed a con­trac­tor to con­duct civ­il works for the da­ta cen­tre, which were to be com­plet­ed last month (June), with a 10-day stand­still pe­ri­od.

It al­so pro­cured rat­ed en­gines, equip­ment, op­er­a­tions staff, jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices, se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance ser­vices for one-year pe­ri­ods.

The state­ment did not dis­close who the con­tracts were award­ed to or whether the lo­ca­tion was still at the in­dus­tri­al park, as it is not list­ed among the es­tate’s ten­ants. Guardian Me­dia had re­port­ed that the lo­ca­tion of the da­ta cen­tre has not been dis­closed by the Gov­ern­ment, nor whether it has es­tab­lished agree­ments with the coun­try’s util­i­ties.

In­stead, on Ju­ly 10, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T signed three MOUs, two of them for the pro­posed es­tab­lish­ment of large-scale da­ta cen­tres and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) in­fra­struc­ture—one with Ernst & Young (EY) LLP to part­ner with third par­ties on a 300-megawatt da­ta cen­tre and an­oth­er with Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings for a pro­posed 150-megawatt cen­tre with the abil­i­ty to scale up to 500 megawatts.

“Pro­cure­ment is not proof that a fa­cil­i­ty has been com­plet­ed or com­mis­sioned, and an MOU is not a con­struc­tion con­tract or fi­nal in­vest­ment ap­proval,” the min­istry’s state­ment said.

The min­istry’s state­ment not­ed that the AI fa­cil­i­ties con­tem­plat­ed un­der the Gov­ern­ment’s Mem­o­ran­da of Un­der­stand­ing with Ernst & Young LLP and Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings are pro­posed com­mer­cial, high-per­for­mance com­put­ing fa­cil­i­ties in­tend­ed to sup­port en­ter­prise AI and oth­er ad­vanced com­put­ing ap­pli­ca­tions.

“They in­volve a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent tech­ni­cal ar­chi­tec­ture, in­vest­ment mod­el and pur­pose,” the state­ment said.

The Gov­ern­ment’s da­ta cen­tre, as well as the pro­posed Hum­ming­bird and EY cen­tres, would be clas­si­fied as Tier 4.

An in­dus­try source raised con­cern about the Gov­ern­ment sign­ing MOUs with com­pa­nies rather than a coun­try, for in­stance the Unit­ed States. He not­ed that un­der the coun­try’s pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions, if the project ad­vances, it will have to fall un­der the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion.