From Skyfall to The Matrix, several Hollywood movies have talked about the concept of data centres and their crucial role in the daily operations of big corporates. Now, imagine a building that is key to maintaining data connectivity and telecommunications for top telcos like Verizon and AT&T and cloud services for Amazon and Google. In today’s world, it would be at the heart of the operations of big corporates as well as their service to customers.
One such building, One Wilshire, located in downtown Los Angeles, recently became the most valued commercial property in the United States of America (USA), commanding monthly rental at the rate of $855 per square foot or $9,000 per square metre.
What are carrier hotels?
These buildings serve as anchor points for high-speed fibre optic cables. One can find rows of servers, switches, and routing equipment within their walls. The servers here store, process, and transfer the data we send and receive over the Internet.
What is a meet-me-room?
A typical MMR has cabinets and racks with the tenant’s hardware for fast data transfer. These rooms allow ISPs and organisations hosted in the same data centre to connect, enabling them to exchange data physically.
Why do companies opt for carrier hotels?
Moreover, it allows the companies to avoid failures in an emergency as the carrier hotels have multiple power sources and internet connections.
Moreover, these buildings also allow customers to choose the best-suited provider for their needs.
A carrier hotel is generally run by large management companies maintaining close relationships with carriers and providers for connectivity. They provide large spaces to the Service Providers or Enterprises, and in turn, their tenant builds out their data centre inside these hotels.
The biggest carrier hotel in the world is Telehouse West, located on Coriander Avenue in London. It also has data centres in Hong Kong, Paris, Frankfurt and New York.
60 Hudson Street is among the oldest carrier hotels in the world (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Although the companies can easily use carrier hotels located on other continents as they are densely connected, ST Telemedia or STT, has established several data centres in Mumbai. One of their facilities is located in Prabhadevi, one in Andheri and another in Bandra Kurla Complex.