Where are we building data centers? Why? What markets are primed for interconnectivity glory? Which ones are getting left in the dust?
Nov 13, 2024
Data Centers: That’s a Lot of Power!
The data center market is in the midst of an unprecedented shift that started—publicly at least—five years ago with the announced moratoria on new development in Singapore and Frankfurt. Those regulatory interventions highlighted the challenges the industry faces in securing sufficient power.
Since then, it turned out that data centers would need much more power than had been realized—just at a time when regulators and community organizations were growing increasingly critical of the sector's existing demand.
Our Data Center Research Service estimates that, as of 2024, colocation operators in the top ten data center markets by MW consume about 13 gigawatts (GW) of power.
That's enough power to generate electricity for roughly 10 million homes—or, in this case, only about 1,000 commercial data centers!
Starlink, the satellite broadband provider operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX unit, is making rapid inroads in Latin America.
As of November 2024, Starlink’s services are live in 28 countries/overseas territories in Latin America, with more launches planned for 2025.
Home to several older but underutilized subsea cables, the Caribbean is a challenging market for operators. With small island nations dependent on subsea, connectivity is vital. As systems age, key stakeholders want new ones, but with difficult business cases, the debate is centering around what end of life means as the old 25-year rule continues to bend.
This is the brief for a panel TeleGeography’s Lilian Lea is moderating next month at Capacity CALA.
Nov 7, 2024
Who Orchestrates the Orchestrators?
Last week on the pod, we shared what network managers need to know about AI and machine learning. This week, we're back on the AI beat, specifically looking at how it can support corporate network automation.
Per usual, we had a little help. Our guest today is Jamie Pugh, CTO at Globalgig.
Jamie joined the show not only to ponder all things automation but also to discuss enterprise network orchestration in the era of an increasingly complex WAN.
Nov 5, 2024
Mobile Monsters: The World’s Biggest Operators
Earlier this year, China Mobile hit one billion mobile subscriptions.
In a country of more than 1.4 billion people, this may not seem like a remarkable milestone. However, the next largest national cellco, Reliance Jio in India, has less than half of this number—around 476 million subscriptions as of mid-2024.
Let’s take a closer look at China Mobile and the other giant operators.
Many of the world’s top data center markets face issues such as rising energy costs, connectivity, and in some cases, moratoriums on new data center buildouts.
To help decision-makers navigate these challenges and prepare for the future, we’ve launched the Market Connectivity Score (MCS), a dynamic tool that measures current and potential connectivity and data center market size for 3,000 cities worldwide.
As of Q4 2024, the MCS ranks Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as the fastest-growing city for near-future connectivity infrastructure growth.
It's 2024. We obviously had to do an AI episode of the pod.
Our IP Networks Research Service—which recently underwent its big annual update—includes an analysis that explores how, what, and where internet backbone providers connect.
Keep reading for a sample of our 2024 provider rankings findings, where we compare different metrics to examine which internet providers have the richest set of connections to other companies.
For our next episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet, we look to the sky.