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Wall’s fiber-optic hub connects the world, bets on giant data centers

Ryan Imkemeier Explains the Importance of Equipment Maintenance, Vendor Relationships, Electrical Distribution & Managing the Team

July 22, 2022

OCTOBER 5 2017, WALL NJ – It is strong enough to withstand a Category 5 hurricane. It has redundant electric systems. And it connects directly to underseas fiber-optic cables from its campus to Europe and South America.

Is it enough to attract companies needing secure places to store their data?

“We shouldn’t be backyard to New York City all the time,” said Gil Santaliz, chief executive officer of New Jersey Fiber Exchange. “Why do we have to go to New York? We’ve got our own assets here.”

A year after it opened, New Jersey Fiber Exchange is trying to capitalize on one of the township’s hidden treasures: the landing point for three underseas fiber optic cables connecting the U.S. to Europe and South America.

For now, New Jersey Fiber Exchange, a 64,000-square-foot, two-story fortress, rents space to communication companies, which then deliver data from the facility to their customers.

But Santaliz and investors have bought another nearly 50 acres next door, betting that their system can be a draw to new data centers, giant buildings filled with servers that store reams of information on the internet.

“For a user who needs international connectivity, it could be very beneficial,” said Jonathan Meisel, a senior vice president at commercial real estate business CBRE, based in central New Jersey.

Santaliz, 51, of Spring Lake, decided the venture was worth leaving what was an early retirement.

He previously started 4Connections, a company that built fiber-optic connections that were used by New Jersey government agencies and hospitals, and he sold it in 2008 to Cablevision for an undisclosed amount.

He said he often wondered how to better connect his customers with the international market, and he turned his attention to Wall, a town with a rich communications history.

It was home, for example, to Guglielmo Marconi’s Belmar Trans-Atlantic Wireless station that played a key role in overseas communications in World War I.

And it was home to TyCom, which opened a center in 2001 to operate underseas fiber-optic cables. TyCom’s parent company, Tyco, sold the division to the India-based Tata Group in 2004.

Once the data arrived through the underseas cables to Wall it was routed to Manhattan, where communication companies set up shop in what’s called a “meet-me-room” to exchange data.

Santaliz’s idea: What if communication companies could meet in Wall instead?

He and a group of investors, including Tata, bought about 1.4 acres in 2015 next door to Tata’s operations center for $400,000, according to property records. He declined to disclose how much it cost to build the structure.

A year after it opened, New Jersey Fiber Exchange hosts 10 communications companies, from Tata to TI Sparkle, an Italian carrier. It offers faster speed for data. And it gives them another option in case other communication centers are hit by natural disasters, for example.

“We allow carriers to pick their routes and have less points of failure,” Santaliz said.

The project could pay off for Wall. Santaliz and his partners purchased another 48 acres nearby that could attract data centers — buildings that store companies’ data.

The industry is growing fast, keeping up with an explosion in data use. Investors have pumped more than $45 billion into the sector the past five years with more than half of that coming since the start of 2016, according to CBRE.

New Jersey has its share, primarily thanks to financial services companies in Manhattan that could store data more securely and less expensively across the Hudson River.

That segment of the real estate market in New Jersey peaked in 2012. And other parts of the country, namely northern Virginia, have surpassed partially because of lower electric costs, CBRE’s Meisel said.

But New Jersey Fiber Exchange with its access to the international market could give it a chance to compete, Meisel said.

“We live in a global world and a lot of these data centers connect with each other around the country and now around the world,” he said.

Wall officials said they welcome the industry. It will do little to create permanent jobs; just 10 people work full-time at New Jersey Fiber Exchange. But it would turn the dusty Clayton Block Co. property into a high-tech center — without much traffic.

“We’re trying to get that property back to a use that is less impactful to residents that live around there,” Wall Mayor Nick DiRocco said.

It would be a stretch to think Wall could compete with places like Loudoun County, Virginia, which boasts of being the traffic cop for 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic.

But Santaliz thinks Wall, with its rich history and prime location, could join Jersey City as another hub.

“By having the infrastructure where all this connectivity can exist, we should take advantage of it,” he said, “and that’s what we’ve done.”

See the original article by Michael Diamond – Asbury Park Press

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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.

2017 Storms May Mean Network Rethink

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2017 Storms May Mean Network Rethink

Major hurricanes, even ones as powerful and large as Hurricane Irma, don’t disrupt subsea cables, according to industry executives. But that doesn’t mean traffic crossing those cables won’t be disrupted by the damage from hurricanes, warns one data center operator.

See the original article here: Lightreading.com

September 22, 2017

Gil Santaliz, founder and managing director of New Jersey Fiber Exchange (NJFX) , the New Jersey-based data center located next to the Tata cable landing station in Wall, N.J., says the impact of storms such as the US and the Caribbean have seen this fall isn’t in the damage done to cables or even cable landing stations. It’s in what happens to traffic after it leaves those places. He’s expecting the global industry to take a long look at how traffic is managed going forward.

“It’s the aftermath of the hurricane, it’s the widespread electric outages, it’s the buildings the subsea cables go to that nobody knows they go to,” he says in an interview. “What we should have braced for was what happens a day or two after the storm. There are subsea landing stations on the east coast, Florida, but what folks in St. Louis, Chicago and Denver don’t realize is that all of that traffic from subsea networks ends up going to central hubs — and those were the places where large-scale power outages can have catastrophic effects on our networks.”

Businesses that were impacted when these traffic hubs went without commercial power for multiple days will now be motivated to take a closer look at how their networks are set up and rethink their diversity plans, Santaliz says. As a result, the fall’s destructive hurricane season may have an impact on how businesses — and carriers — plan network diversity, in much the same way that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 changed how the industry viewed New York City as a natural location for data centers, he notes.

“Post-9/11, there was a massive data center exodus out of New York City,” Santaliz says. “Then [Hurricane] Sandy came along and all of that flooding that happened in lower Manhattan was affecting the two buildings that were critical for the Europeans to connect to everyone in North America — 60 Hudson St. and 32 Avenue of the Americas.”

The result was that connections between Europe and Chicago or even New Jersey were impacted by the flooding in Manhattan, he says. And that led to businesses seeking diverse routes for that traffic as well. Now this round of hurricanes will prompt a closer examination of where the massive amount of traffic that comes through the Caribbean and lands in the US in Florida goes, once it leaves the landing station.

“What these storms are now pointing out is that you probably should take the due diligence to know how your network really works,” he says. “On a global basis, we expect our connectivity to always work but if we don’t ask hard questions, and make sure there is true diversity, then there are going to be unpleasant surprises.”

The cable landing stations themselves are, much like the subsea cables, likely to withstand even a Category 5 hurricane such as Irma, says Nigel Bayliff, CEO of Aqua Comms and a non-executive board member for Deep Blue Cable, developer of a subsea fiber optic system in the Caribbean.

“The cables are very much more secure underground and underwater,” he says. “There is a slight chance of movement of seabed caused by severe storm surge. The issue is, even if we are not affected, virtually everything else is. Potentially the landing stations can be, but we build them to withstand category 4-category 5 hurricanes. It’s everything you connect to next that you really can’t do something about.”

Bayliff also points to better construction of facilities, including interconnection and data center facilities themselves, to withstand storms and be prepared to go without commercial power for longer periods as powerful storms hit more frequently. Santaliz says that reality may force many companies to re-write their playbooks for how they prepare for natural disasters of this type.

“These events we are having now are so wide-scale, things aren’t on the procedure books to deal with them,” he says. That includes dealing with situations where most of a state, or even an entire island nation, is without power for a substantial period of time. “This is a process that is just beginning. If you are operating a hub, and it’s going to go on generator, situations like this will test your ability to get fuel and for your employees to get to work.”

At the same time, businesses are less likely to accept prolonged outages, he adds. “You can’t tell your customers, ‘We are going to have an outage and it will take me two days to fix it,’ because in some industries, that’s a non-starter,” he says.

— Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large, Light Reading.

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About NJFX:

NJFX CEO: “We Provide Options”

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NJFX CEO: “We Provide Options”

Submarine Cable NewsFeed – Market Snapshot

Editor’s Note:

In September 2016, NJFX formally unveiled its data center campus located adjacent to the submarine cable landing station in Wall Township, New Jersey. The colorfully named “Tier 3 by the Subsea” was the first of its kind in the industry, disrupting the traditional backhaul model and redefining proximity by providing direct interconnection options at the cable-head without recurring costs on cross-connects.

“NJFX is doing something that no company has ever done before,” Gil Santaliz, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NJFX, said at the September launch. “The unique location of our campus enables unprecedented access to a number of the most sought after subsea and terrestrial assets transporting traffic nationally, as well as internationally. NJFX ensures our customers receive the flexible, reliable and secure connectivity they require to support their growing business needs.”

Since September, NJFX’s facility has continued to develop. Another expansion phase was completed in January and the concept has clearly resonated within the industry as more submarine and terrestrial cable operators make connections.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Santaliz about NJFX and what the future may hold:

Santaliz: “We have several billion dollars’ worth of assets sitting in our NJFX Campus now. We have three transatlantic cables — two Tata Communications cables, which were there when we arrived, and now Aquacomms has come in and installed their equipment in the building to provide a third way across to Europe with their AEconnect cable. Seaborn Network’s new Seabras-1 cable from the US to Brazil also will be connected when it becomes ready for service this summer. So we are continuing to be unique. We are up to four subsea cables and we’re rivalling any location in the US or the world in terms of having so much subsea cable capacity in one place.

We provide options. You can bypass New York City by using Tata from Ashburn, Virginia, or any part of the US. We have alternate paths across the Atlantic. We have two ways to apply access to Seabras-1. TI Sparkle, which purchased three fiber pairs on Seabras-1, has taken residence in our facility, and the cable also can be accessed through Tata. There’s one cross-connect in the building rather than going all around New York or New Jersey, thus reducing latency and increasing efficiency.

On the US side, we’ve had Lightower come in and install their network and they’re about to put in a second cable in the building for diversity. Altice (formerly CableVision Lightpath) has installed their network. We always had Windstream offering capacity at our facility and we’re talking to Zayo about increasing the capacity it has. So we are the center of the universe between the US, Europe and South America — between the US domestic fiber networks and the European and South America cable operators.

We made a decision about three months ago to take an opportunity to expand our property. We were always a 10-acre site with Tata and we are finalizing our joint venture to expand to 48 more acres. We had a large Fortune 100 company knock on our door and the amount of space they wanted from us exceeded what we could do for them, so we took the initiative to take up 48 more acres. We also expanded our relationship with the electric utility and now we can offer not only Tier 3 but Tier 4 for additional and increment space.

We need to all think differently because the world is changing so quickly. The telecommunications network is a global platform and the assets should reflect how we currently operate. People expect things to work whether you’re in Denmark or Frankfurt or Latin America. Content needs to move. Latency is important. Diversity is important. Our model is to give customers reliable, high-performance, reduced cost access to critical submarine cable assets so that they can do business, provide services and support all these new ideas that people have out there in the increasingly dynamic world.

Read full article at submarineworld.com/…

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July 20, 2017

Data Center Journal: INDUSTRY OUTLOOK: DATA CENTER DIFFERENTIATION

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Data Center Journal: INDUSTRY OUTLOOK: DATA CENTER DIFFERENTIATION

Industry Outlook is a regular Data Center Journal Q&A series that presents expert views on market trends, technologies and other issues relevant to data centers and IT.

May 10, 2017

This week, Industry Outlook talks with Gil Santaliz, founder and CEO of NJFX, about how data center companies can differentiate themselves in a changing landscape. Previously, Gil was CEO, founder and managing member of 4Connections LLC, a 500-mile New Jersey fiber network serving many verticals in that state. 4Connections pioneered the deployment of carrier-neutral dark-fiber services for both New Jersey and New York City. In 2008, he successfully exited the business in a preemptive transaction with Optimum Lightpath, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cablevision. Having over two decades in the communications industry, Gil’s reemergence in telecommunications demonstrates his ability to anticipate market drivers and solve complex connectivity challenges both domestic and internationally.

Industry Outlook: Are all data centers essentially built the same, with all providers using the best technologies, or can a company build a facility with some sort of “secret sauce”?

Gil Santaliz: I can definitely say that all data centers are not the same. Each one brings something different to the table. Sure, we all have standards, but in today’s market, you don’t see many shared or proprietary data centers being built because so many are already out there. They must be able to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack, and they do so through their geography, specialty ecosystems and ability to serve customers’ immediate needs. Just because a data center has a particularly robust set of carriers doesn’t mean it meets the reliability and security standards needed to keep your data safe. In the end it’s a compromise, because it’s tough to get a highly reliable, highly secure and highly connected site, but that’s the magic combination you are constantly striving towards.

IO: Can site selection alone serve as a differentiator?

GS: Site selection is always a differentiator. Geography is the most important factor for accessing and transporting your data efficiently. Don’t be fooled though, because the network ultimately determines the location of a great data center. The days of opening a facility anywhere are over. The network potential must be there first.

IO: Do you see ecosystems developing away from the traditional hubs—e.g., New York City and Ashburn?

GS: Ashburn is here to stay, but New York City is a relic. Whether people want to believe it or not, data center computing left New York City years ago, and what’s left is the legacy carrier infrastructure. Don’t get me wrong, there are things that should be there, but Manhattan alone shouldn’t support Connecticut, New Jersey, Ashburn and the like. The network design for New York City data centers was built 30 or 40 years ago, but for some reason it continues to be the hub for international traffic. When the time comes, moving that legacy infrastructure will be difficult, but the next step should be the transition of the infrastructure that doesn’t need to be there.

IO: What can data center providers do to simultaneously serve local and global customers?

GS: Combine your subsea networks with U.S. networks to create that hyper-attractive market of international and “locally global.” If you aren’t fortunate enough to have a subsea network in your facility, you need to get access to multiple systems. The idea of connecting subsea networks with the U.S. creates a unique opportunity to ensure a highly connected, globally local presence. This strategy will mean fewer points of presence and more options for point-to-point connections between locations.

IO: What is driving the changing data center landscape?

GS: I believe consolidation is critical, and it’s always driven by efficiencies across the market, not to mention the economy to scale. Customers want fewer relationships with the providers that have more assets, and we are finding that it supports this consolidation trend.

IO: How can data center providers successfully deviate from traditional offerings to meet customer demands in this landscape?

GS: The pendulum swings when it comes to cloud solutions versus proprietary data center solutions. We’re seeing customers looking for flexibility with the option of prioritizing which applications should be in the cloud and aren’t necessarily data center specific. Providers who have that flexibility can tailor their product to best serve their various customers. As I mentioned before, I believe the main driver for the changing data center landscape is consolidation along with ecosystems in the marketplace—a portal where buyers and sellers can collaborate to create solutions.

IO: Can you expand on the idea of consolidation as a major driver of change?

GS: Today, more and more data centers are seeing that the customer wants options: multiple locations with several service offerings, all within the same set of standards. This situation is forcing smaller players to work—if not merge—with larger ones. I don’t see this trend stopping anytime soon. Also is the capacity to scale that comes from multiple locations with central cabinets, billing and systems. The market has a lot of synergy. The only way to survive as an independent operator is to have something truly unique to offer.

IO: Which model is better—offering managed and cloud services on your own, or referring to third-party providers?

GS: At NJFX, we believe a third-party provider eliminates conflicts between the tenants and the landlord. No one wants to compete with their customers, and by having a model where you don’t need to, operators can enable innovation and spur opportunities for providers to come in and offer unique services. That arrangement is quite honestly the best of breed. That’s what makes NJFX special—we meet data center standards with optimal carrier-hotel connectivity.

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NJ Business: NJFX Announces Plan to Expand Cable Landing Station Campus by Additional 48 Acres

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NJ Business: NJFX Announces Plan to Expand Cable Landing Station Campus by Additional 48 Acres

March 27, 2017

NJFX, the first Tier 3 carrier-neutral colocation campus that intersects where subsea cables from the United States, South America, Europe and the Caribbean meet, announces the expansion of its colocation campus in Wall. By expanding its campus an additional 48 acres, NJFX emphasizes its commitment to developing a tenant-driven community with purpose-built colocation and disaster recovery space, as well as its ability to accommodate space for future independent cable landing stations.

With the additional 48 acres, NJFX will now span a total of 58 acres across Wall Township. The flexible site plan will include a new, two-story 80,000 square foot data center and premium disaster recovery space that will sit adjacent to NJFX’s current Tier 3 facility – just 60 miles from New York City – with a plethora of global communication providers.

NJFX announced the completion of its colocation campus in September of 2016. The new Tier 3, purpose built 64,000 square foot colocation facility boasts a 10 MW design with the ability to support high density requirements up to 8KW per rack. The location offers a unique opportunity, as it sits 64 feet above sea level, which is significantly higher than lower Manhattan that sits at less than 24 feet above sea level. Its strategic positioning allows customers to not only have direct access to Tata Communications’ subsea cable landing station, but also offers access to the most robust and diverse facilities in the market.

“I am happy that NJFX intends to expand its investment in our community,” states Mayor Dominick DiRocco of Wall Township. “NJFX’s presence in our town, and proposed future expansion, helps us to meet our goal of growing our local economy in a sensible way, while also fostering growth in a critically important sector for our regional economy.”

“We are fortunate to be located in Wall where we have access to bores and multiple subsea cables,” adds Gil Santaliz, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NJFX. “By expanding the NJFX campus, customers will now have the option to work and live in a community that supports innovation and where communications rates are extremely competitive and reliable. Furthermore, having a safe haven locked down in a pleasant and secure area, in the event of a regional emergency, is ultimately the best scenario for any business.”

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Data Center Knowledge: NJFX to Expand Jersey Data Center Campus that Links to Submarine Cables

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Data Center Knowledge: NJFX to Expand Jersey Data Center Campus that Links to Submarine Cables

NJFX says the amount of traffic has been “staggering” at its 65,000-square foot data center campus in Wall, New Jersey, known for connecting more than 240 countries and numerous communication providers via one of the largest global subsea fiber networks in the world.

And the company is preparing for it to get a lot busier.

March 27, 2017

This week it announced a 48-acre expansion to include a new two-story 80,000-square foot data center that will be adjacent to the existing campus. While the additional space is designed to draw more tenants to fill its colocation space, NJFX will also be able to accommodate future independent cable landing stations.

NJFX said it charges customers for data center space and for connections to its meet-me room: a 24-count cable to the meet-me room costs $1,500 per month. Previously, the meet-me room had been limited to carriers only, but it is now open to enterprises, such as banks and content providers.

Completed in September of 2016 and just 60 miles from New York City, the Wall Township campus is located where four submarine cables from the United States, South America, Europe, and the Caribbean land and provides a shortcut of sorts for companies wanting to connect globally. The cables connect to a Tata-owned landing station in a borough in Monmouth County.

Before the Wall campus was built, data centers needing to move traffic to Europe or South America via a landing station in New Jersey would have to work with one of the large telco carriers to backhaul traffic to and from Manhattan. But today the NJFX data center allows for direct connectivity to those geographical regions, and the company said another cable may come online later this year.

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Data Center Knowledge: NJFX to Expand Jersey Data Center Campus that Links to Submarine Cables Read More »

Capacity Magazine: NJFX announces 48-acre campus expansion

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Capacity Magazine: NJFX announces 48-acre campus expansion

The New Jersey Fibre Exchange (NJFX) has announced plans to expand its cable landing station campus by an additional 48 acres.

March 27, 2017

The first Tier 3 carrier-neutral colocation campus, that intersects where subsea cables from the US, South America, Europe and the Caribbean meet, has designed for an 80,000 sq ft expansion at the Wall, New Jersey, colocation campus.

The news comes after NJFX announced last month that a new 10,000 sq ft facility would be constructed just steps away from its subsea cable landing station campus. The third and final phase of the 64,800 sq ft ‘Tier 3 by the subsea’ carrier-neutral colocation facility was completed in September 2016, which boasts a 10MW design with the ability to support high density requirements up to 8KW per rack.

“We are fortunate to be located in Wall where we have access to bores and multiple subsea cables,” adds Gil Santaliz, founder and chief executive officer of NJFX. “By expanding the NJFX campus, customers will now have the option to work and live in a community that supports innovation and where communications rates are extremely competitive and reliable. Furthermore, having a safe haven locked down in a pleasant and secure area, in the event of a regional emergency, is ultimately the best scenario for any business.”

NJFX will now span a total of 58 acres across Wall Township. The flexible site plan will include a new, two-story 80,000 sq ft data centre and premium disaster recovery space that will sit adjacent to NJFX’s current Tier 3 facility – just 60 miles from New York City – with a plethora of global communication providers.

Mayor Dominick DiRocco of Wall Township added: “I am happy that NJFX intends to expand its investment in our community. NJFX’s presence in our town, and proposed future expansion, helps us to meet our goal of growing our local economy in a sensible way, while also fostering growth in a critically important sector for our regional economy.”

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About NJFX:

451 Research Report – NJFX

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451 Research Report – NJFX

January 6, 2017

The 451 Research Group has put out a report on NJFX. The report can be found here: https://451research.com/report-short?entityId=91179

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About NJFX:

Q&A: Gil Santaliz, founder and managing member, NJFX

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Q&A: Gil Santaliz, founder and managing member, NJFX

Gil Santaliz, founder and managing member of New Jersey Fiber Exchange (NJFX), talks to Capacity about the company’s successes in 2015 and it plans for development this year.

January 5, 2017

What have been the company’s three key highlights for 2015?

2015 was a year of substantial growth for the subsea cable industry, and therefore interconnection within the data centre. We saw a resurgence of investment in transatlantic subsea cable systems to Europe and South America, evidenced by the recent Seaborn Networks and Aqua Comms announcements highlighting route and cable diversity. Our timing is impeccable.

NJFX’s key 2015 highlights include:

1. Tata Communications investing in making its Wall, New Jersey, international Cable Landing Station (CLS) a full Point of Presence (PoP) with 100G IP, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), carrier-grade Ethernet, and global capacity

2. Windstream investing in 100G capacity on their unique routes between Ashburn and NJFX in Wall, New Jersey, bypassing legacy, congested routes in New York, Northern New Jersey, and more

3. Growing interest from metro providers seeking to partner with NJFX to build diverse on and off fiber ramps into the data center in 2016.

What are your main goals for 2016?

The first half of 2016 will be focussed on interconnecting through NJFX’s Meet-Me Room (MMR) at the Tata Communications’ CLS in Wall, NJ, to key US metro markets for customers that would like to avoid traditional routes for diversity. Midyear, NJFX will cater to our strategic “Tier 3 by the Subsea” customers with special requirements for secure and connectivity-rich deployments. To close out 2016, NJFX will open its doors to all customers that would like take advantage of the subsea cable system connections and MMR, which provide unique metro fiber options to places they want to go.

How do you expect the US metro market to develop in 2016? …

Read More: www.capacitymedia.com/…

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DataCenter Frontier: The Cloud Brings Colo to Cable Landings

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DataCenter Frontier: The Cloud Brings Colo to Cable Landings

As the cloud wars extend under the ocean, colo is coming to cable landings. At sites stretching from Canada to the tip of Florida, colocation providers are building data centers at the sites where undersea fiber optic cables arrive in North America.

December 9, 2016

These projects reflect the expanding geography of the data center business, as content providers and cloud companies seek new ways to move data around the world. Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Amazon are all investing in undersea cables, in some cases seeking new landing sites to diversify their network infrastructure.

Several entrepreneurs see an opportunity in this trend. Cable landing sites usually feature minimal infrastructure, perhaps a manhole near the beach where they come ashore and sometimes a small facility operated by the phone company or cable owner. From there, fiber routes carry the data to carrier hotels in major cities like New York or Los Angeles.

The Continental Edge

“I see a new edge,” said Hunter Newby, a principal in Fibre Centre, a neutral colo facility at a landing station in Moncton, Canada. “It’s called the continental edge. This is why I focus on subsea cables. Neutral colo facilities are moving away from the carrier hotels and moving closer to the cables. They literally cut out the toll fees.”

“If you want to go from Ashburn to London, why should you have to go through New York?” said Gil Santaliz, the founder of NJFX (New Jersey Fiber Exchange) in Wall Township, N.J.

“We believe we provide another local option for colocation customers in northern New Jersey and Philadelphia,” Santaliz added. “You can connect your networks in the first and last place your data lands in the U.S.”

The new NJFX data center (at left) next to the Tata Communications undersea cable landing station in Wall Township, N.J. (Photo: Rich Miller)

NJFX is the largest and most ambitious of those projects. It’s a 64,000 square foot Tier III data center built next to a cable landing station operated by Tata Communications. The facility is about a mile from the ocean, and with 10 megawatts of power capacity, and could support as many as 1,000 customers, according to Santaliz.

“This building is about interconnecting networks in the most unique place,” said Santaliz. “We intersect a subsea cable. There are only so many places where they actually land.”

Santaliz was previously the CEO and founder of 4Connections, a metro fiber network provider that was acquired in 2008 by Optimum Lightpath, a unit of Cablevision. Santaliz explored several opportunities in the data center business before building NJFX. He believes cable landings are an emerging focus for companies seeking to move oceans of data.

Controlling the Undersea Pipes

“There’s an explosion of content,” said Santaliz. “You see content providers investing in subsea systems around the world. Not being able to get across the oceans is unacceptable. They need to have more control. In the past, there were only a select few who could afford to be here.”

NJFX is carrier-neutral, providing broad access to its connectivity. “You don’t want a carrier controlling this facility,” he said.

Santaliz found a kindred spirit in Newby, an industry veteran who played a key role in building Telx at 60 Hudson Street in New York, one of the first major interconnection facilities.

“Hunter’s a great friend,” said Santaliz. “His vision was always to do something like this.”

Newby’s newest project also offers a route around the big-city carrier hotels, only coming from the North. Fibre Centre is a 23,000 square foot neutral colo facility in Moncton, New Brunswick, which sits atop several cables that cross the Atlantic and cut through Canada’s Maritime provinces en route to New York and points south.

A row of cabinets inside the Fibre Centre data center, located atop a cable route through Moncton, Canada. (Photo: Fibre Centre)

Newby saw Moncton as the perfect place to connect the subsea cables to their terrestrial carrier networks, and enable service providers to store data at that intersection.

“The problem is that the shared infrastructure for undersea cables, until recently, has been owned by the phone company,” said Newby. “That’s the perfect opportunity for neutral colo.”

Moncton isn’t going to explode into a major market like the colo clusters in Ashburn, Virginia or Silicon Valley. But it offers the closest carrier-neutral colo to Europe, which is attractive to some global players.

Smaller Market With Network Rewards

“It’s a much smaller market by size and trajectory,” said Newby. “That’s why the (data center) REITs can’t plant seeds there. This opportunity is not for everyone. It’s not a generic REIT product or a small business product. It’s for network architects.

“I’ve been exploring this concept for years and doing my due diligence,” said Newby, who partnered with fellow telecom entrepreneur Uri Litvinenko on the project. “As luck would have it, the Lottery Authority in Moncton was selling its headquarters and data center.”

The building already had a backup generator and 3 megawatts of power. Hurricane Electric and Hibernia are among the customers, along with numerous local businesses.

Expansion space at the Fibre Centre facility in Moncton, a city in New Brunswick, Canada. (Photo: Fibre Centre)

Newby also operates the 1025 Connect, a carrier-neutral colo facility near cable landing sites in Long Island, an effort he launched in 2009. He thinks that was ahead of the market, but says the business opportunities at cable landings were showcased by the 2012 launch of an Equinix data center at a subsea cable landing in Boca Raton, Fla. The profile of cable systems has also been boosted by the investments by hyperscale Internet companies.

“It is very interesting to see the content providers getting involved in undersea cables,” said Newby. “It’s about control and economies of scale.”

Owning part of an undersea cable ensures that companies like Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft will always have access to trans-Atlantic connectivity, and don’t rely on a third party for that connectivity – as could be the case at a landing point controlled by a single carrier.

This map at NJFX details the many undersea cables that connect at landing stations along the East Coast. (Photo: Rich Miller)

One city that has emerged as a potential beneficiary of this trend is Virginia Beach, Virginia. That’s the U.S. landing point for the new MAREA cable backed by Microsoft and Facebook, which connects with Spain.

Telefonica recently announced plans for a 23,000 square foot data center at the cable landing site, while EdgeConneX has just completed a facility about 15 miles away in Norfolk. Local officials expect additional data centers to arrive soon.

“This project significantly advances Virginia Beach’s potential for future projects of this kind,” said Virginia Beach Economic Development Director Warren D. Harris. “These companies cluster, and we plan to leverage the Telefónica announcement to bring more data centers to the City. Additionally, we anticipate even more interest because the stronger telecom infrastructure will have great appeal to businesses that require big data.”

Virginia Beach: These companies cluster, and we plan to leverage this to bring more data centers to the city.CLICK TO TWEET

The Virginia Beach site is being positioned as an additional gateway for companies seeking to move data between Europe and “Data Center Alley” in Ashburn, Virginia, which is the largest U.S. data center market.

Santaliz says that if you want to improve your Trans-Atlantic data transfer to Ashburn, you don’t have to wait for the 2018 arrival of MAREA. Ashburn and Virginia Beach may be in the same state, he said, but they are 229 miles apart, while it is 230 miles from Ashburn to the active NJFX site.

Either site will offer important new options for network builders, he said.

“Ashburn seems to be the hot spot for big pipes,” said Santaliz. “Traditionally, you had to go to New York. Now you don’t.”

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