Comtel
Italian IT services firm building its first directly operated data centre.
Comtel, until now a services provider, announced on 13 August 2026 its first venture into owning and operating a data centre outright.
Last refreshed: 14 August 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Can a data centre power a farm and make hydrogen at the same time?
Timeline for Comtel
Announced its first directly operated data centre at Figline Valdarno
Data Centres: Boom and Backlash: Florence data centre runs on 84 MW solarBackground
Comtel is an Italian IT services company that has, until now, operated in this market from the services side of the business rather than as an infrastructure owner. Its 13 August 2026 announcement marks a shift into direct data-centre operation, with a first facility planned at Figline Valdarno, south-east of Florence.
The site sits inside a wider industrial development, drawing power from an 84 MW solar plant and selling waste heat to farming operations on the same land, with surplus power directed to hydrogen production . For Comtel specifically, the appeal of the site is less the sustainability pitch than the chance to enter data-centre ownership without building power infrastructure of its own from scratch, inside a complex whose roughly €170m of investment and 300 jobs are shared across several tenants, not carried by Comtel alone.