Querétaro, strategically located in central Mexico, has low susceptibility to earthquakes and is near to Mexico City. These attributes, along with local government incentives, have attracted data centre operators, bringing investment to the area. But data centres need water – and this requirement is adding to pressure on local water supplies that are already suffering due to drought.
The latest big player to be attracted to the area is Arelion, a global internet services provider. It has deployed a new dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) route from Monterrey to Querétaro, providing wholesale and enterprise customers with high-capacity optical transmission services and direct access to Arelion’s local ecosystem of cloud, content and security applications.
This new route, says Arelion, serves Querétaro’s data centre, cloud and AI/ML demand with terabit-scale capacities. It utilises completely underground fibre construction, offering reliable connectivity options to current legacy infrastructure, and connects Mexico’s number one digital hub to Arelion’s fibre-based backbone.
This network expansion continues Arelion’s ongoing investment in Mexico to support the country’s cloud, information communications technology (ICT) and manufacturing sectors through low-latency connectivity services.
It also reduces the risk of service outages and improves customer experiences, supporting content localisation in Querétaro. In addition this new route offers end-to-end connectivity on Arelion’s fibre backbone to US markets.
Querétaro is leading Mexico’s data centre boom, with studies estimating that 73 data centres will be established in the region by 2029. A number of major cloud providers have established cloud regions in Querétaro. That’s no surprise, given its location, its lack of earthquakes and a supportive local government.
But as news agency Reuters points out, there’s been a two-year-long drought in the semi-desert municipality of Colon in Queretaro and the already high use of water to cool data centre servers is set to increase with the growing use of AI.
How much water? Reuters reports that both the companies building data centres in Colon and Querétaro’s government are not saying.
It is true that air-cooled data centre designs, new technology and greater water efficiency may lessen reliance on this scarce resource. It’s also true that much of the drought is related to abnormal rainy seasons and deforestation for cattle ranching.
However, environmental activists argue that more data centres will exacerbate water shortages. And even a small number of data centres could use many millions of litres of water a year. But they could also bring billions more dollars of investment to Querétaro.
Still, barring an incredible leap forward in data centre design that limits or negates water use, it is unlikely that this issue will go away any time soon in Mexico – or indeed a number of other countries. As we reported in February, data centres are also a cause of controversy in parts of Chile and Uruguay, where drought is, or has been, an issue, albeit Google recently convinced the government of Uruguay that adjustments to its facility in Canelones meant it would be less likely to exacerbate the country’s water shortage.
