[nycbug-talk] Carrier Neutral Colocation Facilities, and Fiber Contractors.

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007, Charles Sprickman wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Apr 2007, alex at pilosoft.com wrote:
> 
> > * 111 8th: Probably the most important carrier hotel, all major
> > players have their own suites in the building. Unfortunately, getting
> > between the suites in there is complicated. You want to be in NYCC,
> > the building-sanctioned meet-me-room (which was recently sold to
> > TelX), where almost everyone is.
> 
> Not only complicated to get stuff (I gave up trying to get something
> from Level3 to Broadwing - they are across the hall from each other),
> but also expensive.  Maybe TelX will be cheaper than the
> building-management-run facility was.
Right. To get from one to the other, you will have to go through NYCC. No, 
the NYCC *is* the building-management-run facility, and that's where you 
really want to be if you are a carrier.

> I think part of Alex's point is that you can pick a decent carrier and
> deal with them.  The carrier neutral stuff will not be financially very
> smart if you're just going to hook up to one or two other people.
Exactly.

> It seems some of these places also get full at some point, and there's
> no bargains at that point.
Yes, colo prices are going through the *roof*. 100% increase in about 2 
years. 

> > * 25 Broadway: Only one facility, Telehouse, which is carrier-neutral.
> > There are good and bad sides about telehouse...And its beyond scope of
> > this discussion. You probably don't want to be here.
> 
> If you understand the value of the facility, and you're not putting all
> your eggs in one basket, it can't have gotten that much worse than it
> was.  I have to imagine that by now they got that whole electricity
> thing figured out (or not...).
...not really...

> When I used to be there they had something I've not seen since:  
> one-time cross connect fees.  You pay $800 or so for a cat5 run to a
> neighboring cabinet or $2k for fiber to someone *once* and that's it.
Yes, that's great. :) Plus, since its so ghetto, they won't know if you 
ran crossconnect yourself at night, etc. Anyway.

> Over in Level3 we're paying $250/month on each DS3 to a cabinet that's
> less than 50' away from our cabinet.  Quite a racket, but I guess that's
> how most places do it.
> 
> Like Alex said, why build a datacenter when you can rent?
> 
> If you want bandwidth for the office, you can certainly get something
> affordable out of your rented datacenter space to your office.  I've
> been really happy with ConEd (now RCN) and their metro ethernet service.  
> We get 10Mb from 111 8th to our soho office for $400 (plus $200 or so in
> cross-connect fees to Level3).  We can bump that to 100Mb for another
> $600.  Much more reliable than any telco-provided circuit I've seen.  
> Pricing may not be as good after RCN bought them, but that's just an
> example of another option...
Yep, if you are in a lit building, you generally get decent options. If 
you are in da bronx, eh, "not so much".

-alex