https://www.channelfutures.com/wp-content/themes/channelfutures_child/assets/images/logo/footer-new-logo.png
  • Home
  • Technologies
    • Back
    • SDN/SD-WAN
    • Cloud
    • RMM/PSA
    • Security
    • Telephony/UC/Collaboration
    • Cable
    • Mobility & Wireless
    • Fiber/Ethernet
    • Data Centers
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • IoT
    • Desktop
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Analytics
  • Strategy
    • Back
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Channel Research
    • Business Models
    • Distribution
    • Technology Solutions Brokerages
    • Sales & Marketing
    • Best Practices
    • Vertical Markets
    • Regulation & Compliance
    • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
  • MSP 501
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501 Rankings
    • 2022 NextGen 101 Rankings
    • MSP 501 Information Center
  • Intelligence
    • Back
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • From the Industry
    • Reports/Digital Issues
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Channel Futures TV
  • EMEA
  • Channel Chatter
    • Back
    • People on the Move
    • New/Changing Channel Programs
    • New Products & Services
    • Industry Honors
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Advisory Boards
    • Industry Organizations
    • Our Sponsors
    • Advertise
    • 2022 Editorial Calendar
  • Awards
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501
    • Channel Influencers
    • Circle of Excellence
    • DE&I 101
    • Channel Partners 101 (CP 101)
  • Events
    • Back
    • CP Conference & Expo
    • MSP Summit
    • Channel Partners Europe
    • Channel Partners Event Coverage
    • Webinars
    • Industry Events
  • About Us
  • DE&I
Channel Futures
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • Technologies
    • Back
    • SDN/SD-WAN
    • Cloud
    • RMM/PSA
    • Security
    • Telephony/UC/Collaboration
    • Cable
    • Mobility & Wireless
    • Fiber/Ethernet
    • Data Centers
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • IoT
    • Desktop
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Analytics
  • Strategy
    • Back
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Channel Research
    • Business Models
    • Distribution
    • Technology Solutions Brokerages
    • Sales & Marketing
    • Best Practices
    • Vertical Markets
    • Regulation & Compliance
    • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
  • MSP 501
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501 Rankings
    • 2022 NextGen 101 Rankings
    • MSP 501 Information Center
  • Intelligence
    • Back
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • From the Industry
    • Reports/Digital Issues
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Channel Futures TV
  • EMEA
  • Channel Chatter
    • Back
    • People on the Move
    • New/Changing Channel Programs
    • New Products & Services
    • Industry Honors
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Advisory Boards
    • Industry Organizations
    • Our Sponsors
    • Advertise
    • 2022 Editorial Calendar
  • Awards
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501
    • Channel Influencers
    • Circle of Excellence
    • DE&I 101
    • Channel Partners 101 (CP 101)
  • Events
    • Back
    • CP Conference & Expo
    • MSP Summit
    • Channel Partners Europe
    • Channel Partners Event Coverage
    • Webinars
    • Industry Events
  • About Us
  • DE&I
    • Newsletter
  • REGISTER
  • MSPs
  • VARs / SIs
  • Agents
  • Cloud Service Providers
  • Channel Partners Events
 Channel Futures

Telephony/UC/Collaboration


Opcenter: Collocators Do Carriers’ Cyberlifting

  • Written by Channel
  • July 31, 2000

Posted: 08/2000

Collocators Do Carriers’ Cyberlifting
By Ken Branson

If, as the conventional industry wisdom holds, you can’t have too much bandwidth, then a corollary is this: You can’t have too much collocation space.

Collocation used to be a simple matter of putting a competitive carrier’s equipment in a cage in an incumbent carrier’s CO. The idea was to connect to the frame in the CO, and to the customers whose lines came into that frame.

It’s not that simple any more, but it is very profitable.

All sorts of companies now need to be near the fiber and the bandwidth that carriers offer. So companies are building facilities to bring them together.

At first, carriers built data centers to house the equipment of other carriers, ISPs, ASPs and all sorts of Internet-centric content providers. Now, carriers are being challenged by
carrier-neutral collocation companies, which suggest that no dot com worth its domain name should anchor itself to any single carrier.

At the moment there appears to be plenty of business for both. In the United States, between carriers and carrier-neutral collocation companies, the largest markets (where the fattest bundles of fiber are) have been just about covered, and the secondary and tertiary markets are being developed.

In Europe, where collocation space was all but impossible to find a year ago, carrier hotels are being fitted out in the largest markets, and carriers and carrier-neutral collocators are opening centers in those carrier hotels.

Asia and Latin America are not far behind.

Plenty of Business

“What’s new in the business is that there’s plenty of it,” says Peter Hannaford, CEO of Waterfields Group Ltd.
(www.waterfields.co.uk), whose subsidiary, Waterfields Tech, designs and builds telco hotels–called carrier hotels or telehouses in Europe.

Waterfields provides carriers and carrier-neutral collocators for customers. “We’re being inundated with requests from all over Europe,” Hannaford says. “It’s still happening in the UK, and very much in Europe
and beyond.”

It’s no surprise that everybody and his second cousin wants a web presence, but relatively few companies selling in the electronic economy have the resources or the inclination to do the heavy cyberlifting themselves. They need someplace safe and temperature controlled to park their servers and to run those servers and manage the network they’re attached to without any intervention unless it’s absolutely necessary. They haven’t the time or the capital to do otherwise.

“Everybody is outsourcing everything,” says Jay
Adelson, CTO of Equinix Inc. (www.equinix.com). “The needs of content providers demand a quality facility that gives them strategic flexibility.”

Carrier vs. Carrier Neutral

The standard argument for collocating your equipment in a carrier’s facility is: You’re right on top of the fiber, and our network is state of the art and goes everywhere you need to go.

The standard counter-argument from collocators is: Well, duh, you’re right on top of the fiber. But you’re only on top of the one carrier’s fiber. What if, God forbid, his network goes down? What if there’s something about the service you don’t like or want to change? How are you going to get your gear out of there and take it somewhere else without losing customers? And what about price? You think the carrier is going to give you a break? We don’t think so. Once you’re leg-ironed to his hub, you belong to him.


Chart: Major Neutral Collocation Providers

The arguments are specious and self-serving to some extent; yet, they also are at least partly true. It is necessary to be as close to as much fiber as you can get. Carriers do want to keep ISPs, ASPs and even other carriers on their networks.

However, it appears that it’s possible to get close to lots of fiber without collocating with a carrier, and it also appears that some carriers have come a long way toward meeting some of the collocator’s objections.

To consider closeness to fiber, it’s necessary to review a little history. The original telco hotels in the United States–60 Hudson St. in New York, for example, or 1 Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles–became telco hotels largely because they happened to sit, literally, almost on top of a big knot of optical fiber. They met the structural requirements and their rents were relatively low because their landlords were relatively clueless about what that fiber meant.

When they filled up, or when their landlords demanded more rent without offering upgrades in service, new satellites sprang up across the street and down the block, occupied by companies that needed to be close to fiber, but also needed value-added services, better security and more space.

When noncarrier tenants began to come in and demand value-added services, carriers like the former Frontier Corp. (now owned by Global Crossing Ltd.,
www.globalcrossing.com), leased entire buildings, or large parts of buildings, and built data centers to accommodate them.

Those carriers now offer all sorts of value-added services, so that their tenants can have anything from space in a cage to full-managed network services.

Collocation companies offer the same services–and offer connections to several carriers. So the carriers and collocators compete on service and/or price, but not on access to fiber.

As to the possibility of losing everything when a host’s network dies, at least some carriers provide fiber links to other networks.

“We also have other transit providers in [our data centers], for redundancy purposes,” says Tony
Tomae, vice president of Internet and data services at Broadwing Communications Inc.
(www.broadwing.com).

But, as an executive at a competing carrier puts it, “We do not invite WorldCom Inc.
[www.wcom.com] into our facility for the purpose of selling bandwidth to our customers.”

Aha, say the collocators, that is precisely the point.

“Neutrality is key to [our] value proposition,” says Equinix’s Adelson. “We hammer on it over and over again, but we really do think of ourselves as creating value by allowing our customers to interact with each other. It’s not about the bandwidth we sell.”

Many collocators see themselves as a sort of electronic village square, or maybe village market, where people who need bandwidth meet those who have it and can be connected as quickly as possible.

For example, Exodus Communications Inc.
(www.exodus.net) has launched what it calls the Exodus Alliance Exchange to promote business-to-business activity between the 700 companies that have signed up as
"partners"and Exodus’ 2,800 customers.

An Exodus spokesman says partners will have access to information about its customers, who in turn will be able to contact the partners quickly for exactly what they need.

All this grew out of vendors installing customers’ servers in Exodus data centers and chatting through the cage wall, says spokesman Jay Mejia.

“So the person installing Hotmail’s equipment might say, ‘Hey, these people are going to give away free e-mail! Think that’ll work?'” Mejia says.

There are people engaged in the heat of battle over the issue of carrier neutrality who still see the other side. Equinix’s Adelson, for example, understands an argument for going to a carrier’s data center.

“I think that from the consumer to Amazon.com Inc.
[www.amazon.com], it’s an average of 17 hops,” he says. “That’s 17 points of failure. So, if you’re a new business, going to the carrier hosting facility makes a lot of sense. If, on the other hand, you’re an established e-commerce business with some size, that dependence on a single source will kill you.”

Paul Vixie not only sees both sides; he is on both sides. As senior vice president of Internet services at Metromedia Fiber Networks Inc.
(www.mmfn.com), he is responsible for AboveNet
(www.abovenet.net) and Paix.net Inc. (www.paix.net).

AboveNet is not carrier-neutral; Paix.net is, Vixie insists.

MFN’s main business is selling metropolitan dark fiber, and AboveNet very much is harnessed to that wagon.

“MFN acquired AboveNet last year, and the purpose for them is to be a point of sale for the bandwidth product,” Vixie says. “But Paix, which was bought by AboveNet before we bought AboveNet, is a neutral collocation company.”

The two subsidiaries go after some
of the same customers, but not for the same applications.

“Paix [centers] are small,” Vixie says. “You can put them anywhere. You would not see a customer go there to outsource their own data center; they’re just too small. None of their customers has 20 racks; Paix [centers] usually have less than 1,000 racks in a city, or about 25,000 square feet. AboveNet starts at about 200,000 square feet.”

Waterfields’ Hannaford, who has carriers and neutral collocators for customers, draws in his breath sharply when asked which choice he’d make if he were an e-commerce business trying to decide between them.

“If it was me, and I was a potential tenant, and there were two identical data centers offering the same facilities and the same price, I’d go with the neutral one, because you never know what’s ’round the corner,” he says. “Of course, when I’m in one of these [carrier] sites, and I’m hooked up and alight, I may not want to move for awhile.”

Ken Branson is business and finance
editor for PHONE+ magazine.

Tags: Agents Telephony/UC/Collaboration

Most Recent


  • Chatbot on laptop
    Avaya Reshapes Partner Landscape with New Cloud Products for a Hybrid World
    The company is offering more low code, no code solutions as well.
  • Conversation Intelligence Improves Outcomes for Contact Centers, Observe.AI Research Shows
    However, two-thirds of contact centers still rely on manual processes for critical workflows like agent coaching and quality assurance.
  • Unified Communications
    Vonage, GoTo, Cisco Among Key Companies in UC Market Approaching $190 Billion
    The rising adoption of mobility is increasing the demand for unified communication solutions.
  • Adam Wilson Vonage CP Europe Still
    Vonage a 'Single Communications Stack Provider' for Partners, Customers
    These are the biggest opportunities for Vonage partners today.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

-or-

Log in with your Channel Futures account

Alternatively, post a comment by completing the form below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Content

  • Sales Strategy
    Telesystem Promotes TBI, MetTel Vet to Channel Strategy Manager
  • Cloud Phone
    AT&T to Offer Up to 1 Million Customers Cisco Webex Calling
  • Sign a Contract
    Unisys Adds Managed UCaaS with $153 Million Unify Square Acquisition
  • Fortune 500 2021 logo
    AT&T, Microsoft, Verizon, More Tech, Telco Companies Make Latest Fortune 500

Upcoming Events

View all

MSP Summit

September 13, 2022 - September 16, 2022

Channel Partners Conference & Expo

May 1, 2023 - May 4, 2023

Galleries

View all

Images: HPE Discover 2022 Expo Hall Featuring Microsoft, Ingram Micro, VMware

July 1, 2022

Tetra Defense: Unpatched Systems Behind Costliest Cyberattacks in Q1

July 1, 2022

The Gately Report: Synopsys to Jump-Start Investment in WhiteHat Security Partners

June 30, 2022

Industry Perspectives

View all

How to Make Embracing Change Part of Your Company Culture

July 1, 2022

How to Differentiate to Leverage 5G’s Revenue Opportunity

June 28, 2022

Why MSPs are Attractive Cyberattack Targets

June 24, 2022

Webinars

View all

VEP Platform for Delivery of uCPE, SD-WAN and SASE

June 29, 2022

The Digital Worker: How to Empower Customers with a Flexible, Scalable VDI Solution to Enable Remote Work

June 30, 2022

Growing Partner Revenue and Customer Satisfaction with Power Management Services

June 23, 2022

White Papers

View all

Work Goes Remote – (and Other Top ITOps Trends)

May 25, 2022

The New Bottom Line: How MSPs Can Meet the Healthcare Crisis While Evolving Their Businesses

April 19, 2022

How to build a Security Operations Center (on a budget)

April 4, 2022

Channel Futures TV

View all

Vonage a ‘Single Communications Stack Provider’ for Partners, Customers

IBM, Partners and the $1 Trillion Hybrid Cloud Opportunity

June 26, 2022

Agents Share ‘Secrets,’ Industry Opportunity

May 11, 2022

AT&T, Microsoft, Cisco, ThreatLocker on Unlocking Partner Potential

May 6, 2022

Twitter

ChannelFutures

New @PureStorage #ITchannel leader details jump from Veritas. dlvr.it/STBsLB https://t.co/BFSmZ5ubff

July 1, 2022
ChannelFutures

New Pure Storage EMEA Channel Leader Details Jump from Veritas dlvr.it/STBrPQ https://t.co/LjFXo6FbVF

July 1, 2022
ChannelFutures

.@qumulo latest channel business to confirm layoffs impacting 80 workers. #storage dlvr.it/STBh1L https://t.co/hE10wBA3ka

July 1, 2022
ChannelFutures

Ranking on the #MSP501 isn't just an industry accolade... it brings pride to each company and their team. Congratu… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

July 1, 2022
ChannelFutures

Company culture is ever changing in today's society - here are ways to embrace that change with @coxbusiness… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

July 1, 2022
ChannelFutures

#HPEDiscover expo hall images. Featuring @IngramMicroInc @msPartner @Veeam @Commvault and more.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

July 1, 2022
ChannelFutures

.@TetraDef report shows unpatched systems behind most costly cyberattacks in Q1. dlvr.it/ST9RSF https://t.co/ovvS3aJKD6

July 1, 2022
ChannelFutures

.@HPE highlighted channel & ecosystem partners around the globe for high business & customer performance with their… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

July 1, 2022

MSP 501

The industry's largest and most comprehensive partner awards program.

Newsletters and Updates

Sign up for The Channel Report, Channel Futures Update, MSP 501 Newsletter and more.

Live Channel Events

Get the latest information on the next industry-leading Channel Partners event.

Galleries

Educational slide shows and images from live events.

Media Kit And Advertising

Want to reach our audience? Access our media kit.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • Channel Partners Events
  • Telecoms.com
  • MSP 501
  • Black Hat
  • IoT World Today
  • Omdia

WORKING WITH US

  • Contact
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter

FOLLOW Channel Futures ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2022 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X