Telecom Industry News

Telx customers will now be able to buy metro cross-connects directly from the firm in New York and Dallas. In New York, Telx has large presences in carrier hotels 60 Hudson and 111 8th Avenue. In Dallas, Telx runs the meet-me room at the Univision Tower (2323 Bryan Street), and a colocation facility at 8435 Stemmons Freeway (which is not the Dallas Infomart, at 1950 North Stemmons). Telx is using Ciena optical gear to light dark fiber between the two pairs of locations, which customers will be able to order from Telx in various sizes, up to 10 gigabit.

This service is similar to those offered by competitors Switch and Data, Equinix, Telecity, Interxion and CRG West between their respective facilities. One question that T1R is often asked about these sorts of services is, how can a supposedly carrier-neutral colocation provider operate a network? The answer is 'very carefully.' Equinix took a chance when it started providing this service, very quietly, a number of years ago. Surprisingly, there was little complaint – the service is simply too useful for carriers to make much of a fuss over. These services are also an essential part of making the economics of colocation and interconnection work in facilities that are part of a single metro region – they help extend carrier density between sites. Of course, the price differential between local fiber cross-connects and this sort of lit service is steep, which will always limit its appeal.

This is a good step for Telx – clearly, such services are now expected amenities, anywhere in the US or Western Europe.

Managed hosting provider 7Ticks, which specializes in providing managed network and server services to the financial industry, has expanded its footprint into Telx's colocation and interconnection facility at 111 8th Avenue in New York. The 111 8th building, which is the size of a city block, is home to numerous colocation facilities and carrier POPs, which was clearly one of the primary attractions for 7Ticks, which needed low-latency high-bandwidth connectivity back to its other two datacenter locations, the Telx facilities at 350 Cermak and 600 S. Federal in Chicago.

Most of 7Ticks' business revolves around servicing firms that do business with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange/Chicago Board of Trade. The two key drivers for 7Ticks' expansion to New York were increasingly limited available colocation space in Chicago (T1R wishes them luck finding more space in New York) as well as an increasing list of New York-based customers who would like some sort of mediated access to Chicago commodities trading activities. T1R also wonders if the pending acquisition of the New York Mercantile Exchange by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has anything to do with the expansion – it would be a logical move.

7Tick's next expansion will take it to Germany, for interconnection with the Eurex Exchange in Frankfurt. Luckily, transatlantic fiber capacity is at an all-time low, cost-wise, which will facilitate these sort of Europe-bound expansions going forward.

No word on the terms of the deal with Telx, but multi-site deals are always nice, due to increased deal size, not to mention

AT&T has disclosed plans to increase network capacity in most North American carrier hotels. AT&T has identified 26 carrier-neutral facilities and will be expanding both Internet transit and private-line service in 'most' of them. T1R can certainly guess which sites fall into the 26: Equinix Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Jose, Ashburn; Switch and Data's PAIX; 111 8th Avenue and 60 Hudson in New York; 56 Marietta in Atlanta; 200 Paul and 365 Main in the Bay Area; the Westin building in Seattle and One Wilshire in Los Angeles. There are also several other possibilities.

AT&T will offer private-line service at DS-3 to OC-192 speeds (45Mbps to 10Gbps) and Internet transit at OC-3 to OC-48 (45Mbps to 2.5Gbps) as well as gigabit Ethernet and 10-gigabit Ethernet. AT&T is not, however, offering 10-gigabit IP transit to all takers and notes that 10 gig is subject to availability.

T1R is happy that AT&T is continuing its work with carrier-neutral facilities – that is a subject that has occasionally been a question mark, as AT&T has been considerably less sanguine about a presence in 'other people's buildings' than its competition. This move shows a new commitment to carrier-neutral datacenters and shows a welcome awareness that more capacity and service availability will lead to more revenue. While T1R understands AT&T's periodic frustration over long-term difficulties in securing more space and power in highly subscribed facilities (e.g., Equinix), we believe that carrier-neutral datacenters are an incredibly vital part of the Internet value chain and T1R is very happy that AT&T is agreeing. Also, the fact that it's tough to get space and power indicates that these carrier-neutral facilities are red-hot locations for selling network services.

Dallas has placed number three in T1R's 2007 Carrier Neutral Colocation Report – a fact that Telx was happy to quote in its latest press release. That's because Telx, already a player in the Dallas market, has now expanded its offering with the acquisition of a second site in a building on the Stemmons Freeway just west of downtown. The expansion space, at 21,000 square feet, more than triples Telx's sellable space in Dallas. More importantly, it allows the company to provide a geographically diverse offering to its northern Texas customer base.

Telx is already present in nine markets, some with multiple sites. Besides Dallas, they include Santa Clara, San Francisco and Los Angeles in California; Phoenix; Charlotte, North Carolina; two sites in Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, and three sites in the New York City area. With the second site in Dallas, it brings the city into the same camp as New York, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. Keep in mind that this has happened just over a year since Telx's westward expansion. It was November 2006 when Telx announced that it would be taking over the meet-merooms within many Digital Realty Trust buildings. Telx's expansion is moving at breakneck speed.

Fiber?

The site at 8435 Stemmons Freeway is an existing datacenter, complete with DC and AC facilities – a necessity for the businesses that Telx attracts. T1R was not surprised by the release stating that over 70 networks are available within the existing Telx meet-me room at 2323 Bryan Street – that's the Digital Realty Trust building. T1R liked the statement from Telx that the new site would be connected to the existing site via fiber; it seems to imply Telx will be reselling services on that link. However, something's missing: an explicit statement that the new site would have native telecom facilities available to customers, facilities independent of 2323 Bryan Street. Having a second site that can, during a major outage, stand alone as a communications or interconnection point is vital. If this site is simply a slave of the primary site, then it's not as useful. T1R hopes this is just an oversight within the release.

Digital Realty Trust has been awarded LEED Gold Certification for a 20,000-square-foot raised floor datacenter build in Chicago's 350 East Cermak building. The Cermak building (home to both Digital Realty enterprise customers, as well as Equinix, Qwest, Telx, and (soon) Savvis) is Chicago's top carrier hotel facility, as well as a key hub for Chicago-area financial firms.

The LEED Gold space in Cermak has been built for an unnamed Fortune 500 enterprise as 'built-to-suit' rather than as a Digital Realty Trust's 'Turn-Key' product – the former being more of a custom construction project. The space boasts a 200 w/square foot power density – useful for enterprise applications. The LEED Gold certification is reportedly the first such certification for a US datacenter and is doubly unusual due to the age of the building – 90 years old. Needless to say, LEED couldn't have been easy to achieve for this project.

That being said, its worth noting (as Digital Realty has pointed out to T1R in the past) that there are numerous aspects to LEED that have nothing to do with data centers or outright power savings – bicycle racks and 'yoga rooms' earn LEEDs points, as do features like automated lighting. Still, there is no denying that Digital Realty is one of the greener datacenter firms with an interesting emphasis – saving money (and the environment) by conserving materials during the construction process, rather than simply focusing on operations. Digital Realty has also done impressive public education, through some excellent webinars with its engineering leadership that were heavy on substance and light on marketing – but not so light that folks didn't realize who they were getting value from.

LEED Gold is the penultimate level of LEED certification, which runs the gamut from LEED Certified to LEED Silver, Gold and Platinum. Digital Realty is working on three other LEED-approved projects: 54,000 square feet in Chicago; 32,000 square feet in Northern Virginia; and 30,000 square feet in Santa Clara, California. All of those datacenters are being built as 'Turn-Key Datacenters.'

T1R was rather surprised to see Telx announcing that they were providing colocation and interconnection services to the Georgia Aquarium - and more surprised that it involved a dark fiber connection from the aquarium to Telx's 56 Marietta Street facility in Atlanta. So, is this a fishy tale, or the real deal?

It turns out that the Georgia Aquarium is vieing to be a top research institution. As such, they need connections to the top research networks - Internet2 and the National Lambda Rail. Internet2 is an IP transit network for researchers and Universities - the place where Internet "land speed records" co-exist with massive illicit file sharing. National Lambda Rail is a optical transport service for connecting those same researchers.

Telx's 56 Marietta facility houses the Southern Crossroads (SOX) peering point for Internet2, as well as a National Lambda Rail connection point. That attracts a number of educational and research institutions, such as Georgia Tech, not to mention the Georgia Aquarium. Hosting such "attractors" is a great move for a data center realty or colocation provider, and is sure to bring in additional customers.

"telx and iNETWORKS Group share the same commitment to providing the highest-level of customer service in a timely manner," states David Smat, CEO of iNETWORKS Group, Inc. "Access is critical in today's communications landscape. Our clients require next-generation services, like streaming video and video conferencing. With our new PoPs at telx, we are enhancing our ability to offer our customers more cost-effective and intelligent access solutions."

"iNETWORKS Group's diverse portfolio of network services enhances the telx marketplace and the communications industry as a whole," states Hunter Newby, Chief Strategy Officer at telx. "We're proud to have this leading network solutions provider join the telx roster. We're confidant iNETWORKS Group will find a variety of interconnection opportunities to further ensure its customers thrive in today's competitive communications market."

About iNETWORKS Group, Inc.
iNETWORKS Group, Inc. delivers "Intelligent Networks of Tomorrow." Staffed by industry veterans with a deep knowledge of the telecommunications industry, network infrastructure and services, the company's mission is to understand each customer's objectives and challenges and then develop and deploy cost effective, reliable network solutions. For company inquires, please contact iNETWORKS Group at (312) 212-0822 or at \n info@inetworksgroup.com This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

About telx
With thirteen locations nationwide telx has solidified itself as the leading provider of carrier-neutral core interconnection and Meet Me Room facilities in North America. telx's "best-of-class" network facilities deliver quality solutions for telecommunications carriers, ISPs, & Enterprise networks. One deployment at telx can seamlessly connect you to an abundance of global networks & major peering exchanges in multiple markets. telx is a privately held company headquartered in New York City, USA, with operations in Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Phoenix, San Francisco, Santa Clara, and Weehawken. telx delivers improved performance, reliability, and security for your mission critical operations.

NEW YORK, June 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Deutsche Telekom International Carrier Sales & Solutions (ICSS), a tenant of telx in 60 Hudson Street, 111 8th Avenue in New York, 350 East Cermak, Chicago; 600 West 7th Street, Los Angeles; and 200 Paul Street, San Francisco announces a new offering enabling telx customers to expand reach and manage hybrid network requirements. The Deutsche Telekom International layer 2 Ethernet transport service is accessible today from five of telx's core interconnect facilities within the US.

The ICSS solution enables companies, specifically colocated with telx, flexible connectivity options. "This solution is a perfect example of why we're a neutral interconnection provider. Deutsche Telekom, one of the world's largest network operators, offers our customers the capability to connect between our core interconnect facility locations and beyond, simply by being within our facilities," says Eric Shepcaro, Chief Executive Office of telx. "This further extends our customer's ability to reach peering exchanges, content providers, voice network interconnections, streaming and web hosting facilities," continues Mr. Shepcaro. "Our vision of being the core interconnection specialists with the most network density services is further realized through the ICSS solution."

Helmut Angst, Senior Executive Vice President, International Carrier Sales & Solutions Deutsche Telekom says, "As a result, telx customers can benefit with the opportunity to expand their networks to new locations, colocate their equipment with one provider, while also enabling companies to integrate and operate Ethernet access technology to a broader range of potential customers."

ICSS Layer 2 Ethernet solutions are offered in three flavors:   
-- Transparent Circuit Port Ethernet   
-- Transparent Circuit Port VLAN   
-- Multi Circuit Port

telx customers and companies considering a carrier-neutral colocation interconnection facility, are encouraged to leverage their presence within the five telx facilities to gain access to the largest pan European network, with a state of the art MPLS based service that offers scalable and flexible speeds from Fast-E to Gig-E and beyond. As a telx customer, short provisioning lead times are guaranteed, as an ICSS Layer 2 network solution customer, provisioning intervals are further accelerated.

Benefits for telx customers include:  
-- Companies, such as ISPs and ASPs, can get dedicated Ethernet to any or multiple IP Peering exchanges on the East and West coasts and in-between.   
-- Customers benefit from a virtual presence to any carrier or provider already in one of the five telx core interconnection and Meet Me Room locations that the ICSS MPLS service interconnects.   
-- VoIP carriers benefit from lower latency between any ICSS connected facility.   
-- Hosting, Media and Content providers can leverage the low cost and flexible bandwidth to directly connect the East and West coasts to quickly transport communications.

To find out how you can colocate with telx or to find out more information about our 13 sites please contact telx directly. For information about the ICSS Layer 2 Ethernet solution, please contact Deutsche Telekom International Carrier Sales & Solutions directly.