What makes a city a hub? And what makes a hub healthy?
Before we answer these questions, we must acknowledge that the interconnection market is not a homogeneous thing. It's an ecosystem comprised of numerous critically interdependent parts, much like a body or a machine.
Hello, gentle readers, and welcome to the 2025 State of the Network Report—our eighth edition.
The TeleGeography team spent the last year compiling market surveys, building algorithms, and analyzing emerging trends, and now we're ready to share the highlights.
In November, we unveiled our new Market Connectivity Score (MCS) and dropped our first public rankings of the top ten most connected and fastest-growing cities in the world.
Because we update the MCS quarterly, it's time to see how those rankings have changed.
Happy holidays, TeleGeography Explains the Internet listeners.
We hope you're savoring the brief week between Christmas and New Year's when the world takes a moment to pause and reflect. School is out, schedules are topsy-turvy, and cookies are acceptable for breakfast. Perhaps like some of us, you've lost track of movies watched and presents wrapped.
If you're looking to take a break between the winter gatherings, grab some headphones. We've got you covered for an hour or so.
Last month, I had the pleasure of speaking at Cairo ICT about colocation and connectivity trends.
I covered global bandwidth first, followed by a rundown on bandwidth in the Middle East and Africa.
Next up, data centers and interconnection hubs, with a discussion on where the hubs are, what makes a hub, and how hubs grow. Finally, I talked about end-user demand, which is very important with the growth of internet and demand.
You can catch a video of this presentation and download my slides below.
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!
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.
Competition between the United States and China continues to be a hot topic.
Take The Economist, which recently published America v China: who controls Asia’s internet?
While this piece did a great job highlighting the impact of geopolitical tensions on telecom infrastructure throughout Asia, my colleague Alan Mauldin and I want to expand on this coverage by offering updated data on two important areas of the story: cloud and cables.
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