Arkansas Data Center Colocation Guide 2026

Arkansas is becoming a more consequential data center market in the South Central United States. Data Center Map lists 12 facilities across six Arkansas markets, led by Little Rock, while Google’s planned West Memphis campus is bringing hyperscale investment to the state. For organizations evaluating colocation, Arkansas offers lower-cost regional options—but power availability, carrier diversity, and facility capabilities still need to be validated site by site.

Arkansas Data Center Infrastructure Overview

• Listed data centers: 12 facilities across six Arkansas markets: Little Rock (7), plus one each in Clarksville, El Dorado, Jonesboro, Russellville, and West Memphis.
• Primary market: Little Rock remains the state’s main colocation hub, while West Memphis is emerging as the large-campus market.
• Connectivity: Consumer broadband speeds are not a reliable proxy for data center connectivity. Evaluate each facility’s carriers, route diversity, cross-connect options, and cloud access.
  • Carrier design: Confirm at least two viable carriers and physically diverse building entrances where resilience is required.
  • Cloud access: Ask whether public-cloud on-ramps are available in the facility or through a partner exchange, and document latency to the workloads you use.
• Electricity price: The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported an average Arkansas commercial price of 11.54¢ per kWh and an industrial price of 7.08¢ per kWh in June 2026. A specific data center’s contracted utility rate can differ materially.

Strategic Location and Connectivity

Arkansas holds a strong geographic advantage with its central position in the United States. This location allows businesses to establish low-latency connections to major markets such as Dallas, Memphis, Kansas City, and beyond.

The neighboring market directly west adds another regional choice. Buyers weighing nearby states often review colocation options in Oklahoma, which shares the same South Central corridors and connects east toward Arkansas and Memphis.

Companies operating from Arkansas can reach customers across the South, Midwest, and East Coast more quickly, supporting better service delivery and reducing network response times across a wide footprint.

The state’s transportation infrastructure further supports its strategic value. Arkansas is served by multiple interstate highways, Class I railroads, and a network of regional airports, allowing for reliable movement of goods and personnel.

This multimodal connectivity complements the state’s digital infrastructure, offering businesses multiple pathways to maintain operational resilience.

These facilities benefit from the same low-latency connections and carrier diversity, making Arkansas a strong choice for businesses requiring secure, high-performance digital infrastructure in a centrally located environment.

Google’s $4 Billion West Memphis Data Center Investment

Arkansas’s biggest recent market development is Google’s first data center in the state. Google plans to invest $4 billion in Arkansas through 2027, centered on a new cloud and AI infrastructure campus in West Memphis.

The project changes the scale of Arkansas’s data center market. Google and Entergy Arkansas also announced a new 600 MW solar project, demand-response programs, and a $25 million Energy Impact Fund. Entergy says Google will cover the project’s full energy costs, while the utility estimates more than $1.1 billion in net benefits for customers over the contract term.

For colocation buyers, the investment is a sign of growing power and network development around West Memphis—not proof that every nearby site offers hyperscale-grade capacity. Buyers should still verify energization dates, utility commitments, carrier paths, and disaster-risk controls for the exact facility under consideration.

Economic and Tax Incentives

Arkansas updated its data center incentive framework in 2025. Act 548 of 2025 amended the state’s sales-and-use-tax exemption for qualified data centers, including eligible data center equipment and other project costs.

Act 548 also expanded the incentive so a qualifying large data center may include more than one site and modernized the definition of eligible equipment and services. Qualification is project-specific, so developers should confirm current investment, payroll, timing, and certification requirements with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission before modeling the exemption.

Arkansas also enacted the Generating Arkansas Jobs Act (Act 373), which created a financing mechanism for electric-utility generation capacity serving large economic-development projects. That matters because deliverable power and interconnection timing are now among the biggest constraints on data center development.

Tax incentives can improve project economics, but they do not replace facility-level due diligence. Model the total delivered cost of power, capacity reservations, utility upgrades, redundancy, construction, network services, and any clawback terms—not just the headline tax exemption.

For a current benchmark, the EIA’s June 2026 data put Arkansas at 11.54¢ per kWh for commercial customers and 7.08¢ for industrial customers. Data centers commonly negotiate tariffs or special contracts, so those statewide averages are useful context—not a quote for a specific project.

Power Supply and Energy Planning

Power availability—not a statewide average rate—is the first constraint to test for a new Arkansas deployment. Request written information on available megawatts, substation and transmission dependencies, interconnection lead time, backup-generation rules, and the utility tariff that would apply to the project.

Cooling design also affects power and water requirements. High-density AI racks may require liquid-assisted cooling, while traditional enterprise deployments may remain air-cooled. Ask the operator for supported rack density, design PUE, water-use approach, operating limits, and the cost of any facility upgrades.

The West Memphis project illustrates the scale of new energy planning: Google and Entergy announced a 600 MW solar project, demand-response programs, and a planned 350 MW battery system. Those investments strengthen the state’s long-term story, but each colocation buyer still needs a facility-specific power and sustainability plan.

Leading Colocation Providers in Arkansas

Let’s check out some of the top colocation providers in Arkansas: 

1. TierPoint – Little Rock Data Center

TierPoint’s Little Rock facility provides colocation, cloud, security, managed services, and disaster recovery. TierPoint lists more than 30,000 square feet of total space, including more than 9,000 square feet of raised floor, with carrier-neutral connectivity, diverse fiber paths, and access to cloud on-ramps.

Facility Features

• 30,000+ sq. ft. total space and 9,000+ sq. ft. of raised floor
• A/B power distribution to support redundant deployments
• Two 2.25 MW redundant generators with at least 48 hours of runtime
• Carrier-neutral connectivity, diverse fiber entrances, and cloud on-ramps
• 24/7 security, two-factor access with biometrics, and 90-day CCTV retention

Services Offered

• Private and shared cages, cabinets, and individual servers
• Remote hands support
• Bare metal and public cloud servers
• Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
• Managed and cloud services

Compliance and Certifications

• SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II, and SOC 2 + HITRUST
• HIPAA, PCI DSS, GLBA, NIST SP 800-53, ISO 27001, and ITAR controls

2. Mainstream Technologies – Little Rock Data Center

Mainstream Technologies operates a downtown Little Rock data center for colocation, managed colocation, private cloud, and hosting. Its current facility description emphasizes raised-floor space, high-availability infrastructure, redundant power, carrier-neutral connectivity, and round-the-clock monitoring.

Key Features

• Facility: Raised-floor data center designed for high availability
• Power: Redundant power with N+1 UPS infrastructure
• Cooling: N+1 cooling and humidity control
• Safety: FM-200 fire-suppression system
• Network: Carrier-neutral connectivity with redundant network paths

Security

• Biometric and badge access on all entrances
• Security cameras with DVR coverage inside and outside

Services

• Co-location
• Managed hosting: setup, patching, backups, monitoring

3. Ritter Communications Data Technology Center – Jonesboro, Arkansas

Ritter Communications opened an $8 million provider-grade data center in Jonesboro in late 2020. The 8,544-square-foot facility brought local colocation and managed infrastructure capacity to Northeast Arkansas, reducing the need to place workloads in Little Rock or St. Louis.

It meets California seismic standards and can handle EF3 tornadoes. Features include biometric security, clean-agent fire suppression, modular-inline cooling, .75 MW power, N+2 dual-fuel backup, and carrier-neutral fiber from multiple sources. A 24/7 Network Operations Center supports customers. The site is HIPAA, PCI, and SOC 2 certified. (Ritter Communications)

Facility Features

• 8,544 sq. ft. of data and cloud storage space
• 82 full racks, four cages (4 racks each), additional colocation, and storage
• N+2 dual-fuel backup power with .75 MW capacity
• Carrier-neutral, geo-diverse fiber entrance
• Modular-inline cooling and clean-agent fire suppression
• 24/7/365 staffed Network Operations Center

Compliance and Security

• HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2 compliant
• Biometric access controls
• EF3 tornado and seismic-code compliant construction

The Data Technology Center positions Ritter Communications as a key technology provider in Northeast Arkansas, offering secure data, cloud computing, and disaster recovery solutions to regional businesses.

Is Arkansas a Good Data Center Location?

Arkansas is a credible regional option for colocation and an emerging market for large-scale development. Little Rock offers the state’s deepest provider base, Jonesboro serves Northeast Arkansas, and Google’s West Memphis investment is expanding the market’s power and network profile. The best choice still depends on workload requirements: compare facility power design, carrier paths, recovery objectives, compliance scope, remote-hands coverage, expansion capacity, and total contract cost before selecting a site.