Felix Seda, general manager at New Jersey Fiber Exchange (NJFX) has worn many hats during his tenure at the firm. 

Once dubbed the ‘Marseille of the US’, the company is an interconnection hub and subsea cable landing station operator based in Wall Township, New Jersey, founded by telecoms executive Gil Santaliz. Seda has been a mainstay at the firm, having joined in 2015 and remaining there ever since.

Originally, NJFX was established as a colocation hub leveraging the infrastructure of an existing cable landing station in Wall Township that was owned and operated by Tata Communications, but the business has since evolved into something greater.

In September 2015, NJFX announced it would construct a 64,000 square foot Tier III colocation facility next to Tata’s landing station, providing direct access to Tata’s European and South American subsea cables: TGN Atlantic and Seabras-1. Exactly one year later, NJFX launched the carrier-neutral colocation facility.

When Seda started in his role, he primarily worked on getting vendors contracted. “This included every vendor and carrier that we dealt with to get the Tier III facility up and running,” he says.

But as the business continued to develop his role started to change, and Seda and the team began having conversations with prospective customers.

During his tenure at the firm, Seda “naturally” moved into a chief revenue officer role, overlooking the entirety of NJFX’s revenue growth.

“I oversee pretty much all of our partner relationships with both existing and prospective customers to uncover and develop unique connectivity solutions,” he says.

This includes recent collaborations with the likes of Colt and Orchest.

Colt added a new point of presence (PoP) at the NJFX campus, allowing it to access the AEC-2 subsea cable and provide front-to-end solutions across the Atlantic, utilizing its own fiber assets on the European side. Orchest, meanwhile will give its customers on-demand last mile access throughout  Latin America via its automated connectivity platform.

Essential Connectivity

Seda says the Covid-19 pandemic accentuated the need for better connectivity. It also resulted in increasing traffic, and the best place to pick up that traffic is though a cable landing station.

“Not only is it going to be the best place to interconnect from an architectural standpoint mitigating additional points of failure, but it’s also the most cost-effective way because you’re eliminating the increased cost of backhaul,” Seda says.

Moving forward, the company is looking for investment opportunities.

“One of those opportunities is the Confluence-1 project, a new subsea system that’s going up and down the [US] East Coast,” he says. “It’s going to provide a diverse path from what is historically been along the I-95 (Interstate 95) corridor.”

This project and other of similar ilk, Seda adds, continue to highlight the growing importance of cable landing stations to the evolving landscape of connectivity. 

Youth Opportunity

Seda was named in Capacity’s Power 100 in 2022 and kept his place in the prestigious list this year. As a prominent voice in telecoms, Seda uses his platform to bring young talent into the industry, which he believes is the utmost importance. He has already played his part by spearheading several millennial-focused initiatives to encourage the education and engagement of young professionals in the industry.

In 2020, he created the Millennials in Telecom Reception at Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC), which aimed to bring young telecom employees together to network and engage with select industry veterans. Since then, this initiative has grown. As a member of the PTC Advisory Council, Felix was a founding member of the inaugural 2023 PTC Beyond initiative and helped establish a ‘buy one get one free’ program allowing nominated individuals under the age of 35 from member organizations to attend the conference for free. The initiative was a great success at PTC 23, which close to 50 nominees attending and becoming active participants.

Seda “absolutely” sees the telecoms industry as attractive youngsters. He leans on his own experience as evidence of this. 

“My CEO game me the opportunity to just learn everything, it was either sink or swim,” he says.

Seda says that since entering the telecoms industry, he has been able to build close relationships with people and companies that are doing fascinating things around the world. And he believed that is essential to bring in new blood and start getting them acclimated to the key conversations happening in the world on telecom.

“The veterans of the industry have done a fantastic job getting us to where we are now,” says Seda, “but at a certain point, just like any other industry, people get older and move on.”

Sunrise, Florida and Wall Township, NJ – Gold Data, a leading Latin America network provider, is proud to announce opening a strategic point of presence (PoP) at NJFX, the carrier-neutral Cable Landing Station (CLS) colocation campus in Wall, New Jersey. NJFX offers customers on-demand access to redundant subsea cable infrastructure across the Atlantic to both Europe and Latin America. The partnership allows Gold Data to provide customers with a fully diverse global solution through NJFX’s ecosystem of network operators and subsea cable systems.

Gold Data relies on more than 156. strategic points of presence, diverse submarine capacity over 15 systems, technology development and our own award-winning network to offer complete end-to-end solutions to and from Latin America and the Caribbean, with dedicated service for multinational companies, global carriers, OTTs, and Hyperscalers.

In addition, Gold Data has announced Gold Data 1 Submarine Cable; the first cable to land in Mexico in 22 years. This new US-Mexico digital highway will offer the bandwidth capacity and the quality of services required by the market and will play a key part in empowering the fast-growing Data demand in Mexico City and Queretaro. Customers will soon have a new US-Mexico digital freeway that offers advanced services on the next-generation subsea infrastructure with the best latency. Our new PoP at NJFX gratifies customer solutions seeking diversity from overly dense infrastructure across the East Coast.

“We are looking forward to this new connection to the ecosystem of NJFX, to offer a better connection to the Latin American market,” Renato Tradardi, CEO at Gold Data Group.

Gold Data’s new presence at NJFX will provide NJFX’s customers with direct access to the new submarine network consisting of 10-fiber pair cable system that offers more than 250 TBPS of capacity with Geomesh Technology offering 100% underground terrestrial paths up to Queretaro, the main market of data of Mexico, also the connections with our backbone to all Latin American and the Caribbean. By joining the NJFX interconnection community, Gold Data and its customers gain direct, on-demand interconnection with Havfrue/AEC-2, Seabras-1, TGN1, and TGN2 and are able to leverage direct, low latency routes to major US business hubs avoiding legacy chokepoints.

“We are excited to have Gold Data’s award-winning network available at NJFX with its full array of services providing end-to-end solutions throughout Latin America and the Caribbean,” Felix Seda, General Manager at NJFX.

NJFX enables enterprise, content, media, government, and communications providers can take advantage of redundancy, decreased latency, and high-quality connectivity with fewer global points of failure thanks to NJFX. Through a physical presence and access to the Meet-Me-Room (MMR) within its Tier-3 CLS campus, NJFX ensures that each carrier network interconnection is designed and maintained with reliable architectural diversity. NJFX is home to some of the biggest and most cutting-edge companies in global networking.

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About Gold Data

Gold Data is a multinational information technology company which focuses on telecommunications infrastructure, we provide direct connectivity through the Americas and the Caribbean, interconnecting more than 156 PoPs, 76 data centers with a presence in 35 countries of Latin America.  www.golddata.net

About NJFX:

NJFX is a Tier 3 Carrier Neutral Cable Landing Station campus. Our colocation ecosystem has expanded to over 35 network operators offering flexibility, reliability, and security. Our Wall, NJ location provides direct access to multiple subsea cable systems giving our carriers diverse connectivity solutions and offers direct interconnection without recurring cross-connect fees. For NJFX media inquiries, please contact: [email protected]

Weston, Florida – Orchest Technologies, a leading provider of wholesale connectivity solutions and pioneer of network automation in Latin America, is now offering pay-as-you-go services out of NJFX’s carrier-neutral CLS campus in Wall Township, New Jersey. This move provides businesses with the flexibility to connect to the right network operator while avoiding legacy congestion points, such as Miami and New York.

Orchest’s pay-as-you-go model allows customers to pay only for the services they use with a minimum consumption commitment, providing a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. Orchest customers will have free out-of-band signaling services, along with half rack specials to enable cost-effective points of presence (POPs) for LATAM networks with no recurring cross connect fees. Networks can scale their connectivity needs according to their budget, without having to worry about overpaying for unused resources.

“On-Demand connectivity opens incredible possibilities for different verticals or even carriers looking to expand into Latam while minimizing risk and cost of entry. With this unique offering we are introducing a new way to improve the traditional model, providing the right flexibility and dynamicity to scale resources as needed” said Jeremy Villalobos, COO at Orchest.

NJFX’s carrier neutral CLS campus offers a unique advantage for networks to interconnect while having direct access to multiple subsea cable systems, connecting North America to Europe, South America, and beyond. This direct access to global connectivity provides businesses with the ability to expand their reach and enhance their presence.

“Utilizing the Seabras-1 cable at NJFX, plus access to the other LATAM Subsea cables, via our 35 network operators creates diverse network connectivity and diversity from Miami,” said Gil Santaliz, CEO at NJFX.

Orchest’s pay-as-you-go services, coupled with NJFX’s direct connectivity options, makes for a powerful combination that can help businesses stay competitive in today’s fast-paced digital landscape.

For more information on this exciting new offering, please visit NJFX.net and Orchest.net

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PIT Chile is interconnecting with DE-CIX directly at NJFX to enable and access the DE-CIX New York fabric.

DE-CIX’s strategic presence at NJFX allows for fewer hops and improved latency in the exchange of traffic between Europe, North America, and LATAM. This results in improved performance and reliability for customers on the DE-CIX platform looking to gain direct connectivity to major business hubs both terrestrially and subsea.

DE-CIX provides premium services through its interconnection platform in multiple carriers and data center-neutral exchanges across the globe. PIT Chile selected  DE-CIX New York and their East Coast connectivity hub at NJFX  in order to avoid legacy chokepoints.

“For global enterprises, ISPs, CDNs, and network operators, having access to diverse terrestrial and subsea options for connectivity is the coin of the realm, the foundation of their ability to reach new customers and penetrate new markets,” said Felix Seda, General Manager of NJFX

Created in 2016, PIT Chile is the first point of exchange operating in Chile, bringing together Internet providers (ISP) with content providers (CDN), allowing bilateral peering among all its members. PIT Chile is a neutral, public, open, and transparent Internet Exchange Point (IXP) that operates from North to South across multiple cities in Chile. In Santiago, the capital city, PIT Chile has 14 points of presence in the main data centers.

PIT Chile interconnecting with DE-CIX is a perfect example of the peering capabilities also being explored at NJFX for better distribution of eyeball networks in the most efficient and secure manner possible. At NJFX, customers are now able to leverage direct, low-latency routes to major business hubs avoiding legacy East Coast chokepoints such as New York City and Florida. The LATAM market is becoming a focused region for networks to connect from NJFX to DE-CIX New York.

“We are committed to providing the best connectivity for Chile and Latin America. To fulfill that promise, we need to work with the best technology and allies, such as DE-CIX and NJFX. Chile has been recognized for its quality and speed in internet connections, and we think that our role in providing peering capabilities is crucial to these results,” explained Ivan Žilić, CTO of PIT Chile

For LATAM-based network operators, PIT Chile can be used as a blueprint for other providers looking to better exchange traffic with North American and European ISPs at a carrier-neutral connectivity hub.

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About DE-CIX

DE-CIX is the world’s leading Internet Exchange operator and serves over 2,500 network operators, Internet service providers (ISPs), and content providers from more than 100 countries with peering and interconnection services at its more than 40 locations in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America. Further information at de-cix.net/north-america

About PIT-Chile

PIT Chile is the first point of exchange operating in Chile, bringing together Internet providers (ISP) with content providers (CDN). This allows bilateral peering among all its members. PIT Chile’s IXP (Internet eXchange Point) offers neutral, public, open, and transparent operating in different Chile cities, from north to south. In Santiago, the capital city, customers can connect to fourteen (14) points of presence in the main data centers. For more information, please visit https://www.pitchile.cl/wp/