LONDON, UK – July 13, 2021 – Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the world’s digital infrastructure company™, and Crosslake Fibre, a leading provider of network services, today announced that CrossChannel Fibre, a new international fiber-optic cable project, will connect to Equinix data centres in London and Paris. The new system will be delivered by Crosslake Fibre to Equinix’s International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centres—LD4 in London and PA7 in Paris, via landings in Brighton and Veules-les-Roses. CrossChannel Fibre will be the first subsea fiber-optic project laid across the English Channel in nearly 20 years and is due to be ready for service in Q4 2021.
Built by Crosslake Fibre and terminating in Equinix data centres, the 520 kilometre build with 96 fibre pairs will be capable of delivering over 20 terabits per fibre pair, with the new network due to be the lowest latency fibre network between London and Paris. The project marks the second collaboration between Crosslake Fibre and Equinix, the first being connectivity between Toronto and Secaucus, New Jersey.
Crosslake Fibre selected Equinix data centres LD4 and PA7 as landing hubs due to the comprehensive digital ecosystems housed there, including a variety of key business partners such as network service providers (NSPs), cloud service providers (CSPs), and leading companies across the financial services, media and entertainment, gaming and ecommerce industries.
Data traffic is proliferating around the world, and 99% of global transoceanic traffic is being delivered via subsea cables. As global enterprises look to capitalise on business opportunities in Europe, they are finding they also require more capacity to run distributed IT operations at the digital edge, including cloud-based applications. By connecting to Equinix data centres, Crosslake Fibre and its users can leverage Equinix’s mature business ecosystems and interconnection platform—Platform Equinix®—which connects close to 10,000 businesses in over 60 markets around the globe.
Highlights/Key Facts
- Using new methods of construction to develop next-generation networks, Crosslake Fibre has built new Internet infrastructure that provides material advantages to customers. The direct access from CrossChannel to the business ecosystems inside Equinix is a significant advantage for Crosslake Fibre’s customers, as it provides a new geographically diverse, low latency route to critical partners in the major economic centres of the UK and France. This also attracts businesses looking for wholesale dark fibre and bandwidth capacity in and out of these markets, including content, cloud and network service providers, financial services firms, government agencies and hyperscalers who want to put their workload cache nodes proximate to cable heads for greater performance. Indeed, with this new submarine cable network, financial market participants will be able to link their cloud providers, market data and risk analytics platforms in a seamless and secure set-up.
- Platform Equinix consists of around 10,000 companies, including more than 1,800 networks and 2,900 cloud and IT service providers, providing a strong global interconnected ecosystem for submarine cables to connect to. Today, 40 of Equinix’s 220+ IBXs are subsea-enabled, covering over 60 metros around the world and providing industry-leading reliability, security, performance, and choice of rich digital ecosystems.
- Equinix’s recently expanded Equinix Fabric™ capabilities are changing the way digital businesses connect to critical infrastructure. The number of digital ecosystem customers that can now be accessed via Equinix Fabric has significantly increased and includes subsea cable operators. Participants have the ability to connect to any other customer on Platform Equinix. This increases the interconnection reach to service providers, partners and customers by more than 3x—from 2,300 to over 10,000.
- The unrepeatered and double-armored CrossChannel Fibre cable will include dark fibre and have a target burial depth of 2 metres beneath the seabed for maximum security and performance. The CrossChannel system will also be connected to many neighbouring cable systems to extend its capacity beyond the UK and France, and to other locations in Europe and further afield.
- As enterprises are increasingly looking to expand their services on a global scale, operating within an interconnected ecosystem of players is more important now than ever before. The Equinix 2020-21 Global Tech Trends Survey of 2,600 IT decision-makers, revealed that, globally, IT leaders are prioritising connecting with new digital ecosystems – 59% of respondents cite this as a priority of their organisation’s technology strategy.
Quotes
- Eugene Bergen Henegouwen, President, EMEA, Equinix:
“We are adding new connection points for subsea cables to increase our vast network reach across the globe. Equinix brings global consistency and scale to subsea cable operators, including Crosslake Fibre, for them to connect into multi-tenant facilities to monetise their cable with a diverse set of ecosystems, developing a new business model with a low-latency reach to critical partners. As a result, Equinix customers benefit from an ever-expanding choice of network connectivity, at increasing speeds—a win-win for everyone. Excitingly, this cable marks the first subsea fiber-optic project across the English Channel in nearly 20 years, connecting the UK and France and furthering their advancement as two major growth digital metros.”
- Fergus Innes, Senior Vice President, Crosslake Fibre:
“We are delighted to partner again with the team at Equinix for our first project in Europe. We have developed and built unique, critical internet infrastructure for the next generation of applications and users. Selecting Equinix facilities in Slough, UK and Paris, France, allows us to interconnect with new and existing customers that want to utilise our services. The system is designed to be shorter and diverse of existing, older routes, that are moving ever closer to end of service. It really does offer organisations that need to transport vast amounts of data between core compute facilities in these two major digital metros the very best engineered and commercial option in the market today.”
- Tim Stronge, Vice President of Research, TeleGeography:
“TeleGeography forecasts that UK to France bandwidth requirements will increase eight-fold over the next seven years. We’ve also observed a strong interest in data centre-to-data centre connectivity. CrossChannel Fibre’s plans, along with its partnership with Equinix, will help solve for both.”
- Russell Poole, Managing Director, UK, Equinix:
“Equinix’s recently launched Global Tech Trends Survey showed that over half (57%) of IT leaders in the UK, believe London is one of the best cities to do business in globally. This new cable will enhance the capital's position further, providing enterprises in ultra-latency sensitive industries with the bandwidth needed to operate on a global scale. This latest subsea deployment greatly supports the huge growth in data being transferred between London, Paris and the wider European markets.”
Additional Resources
About Equinix
Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX) is the world’s digital infrastructure company, enabling digital leaders to harness a trusted platform to bring together and interconnect the foundational infrastructure that powers their success. Equinix enables today’s businesses to access all the right places, partners and possibilities they need to accelerate advantage. With Equinix, they can scale with agility, speed the launch of digital services, deliver world-class experiences and multiply their value.
About Crosslake Fibre
Crosslake Fibre is an International Network Service Provider (NSP) and developer of fibre-optic projects throughout North America and Europe. Crosslake’s innovative approach to operating and developing next-generation networks provides a range of capacity services on new backbone routes for financial services, telecommunications carriers and web-centric customers.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX® data centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix products and solutions; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenues from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; a failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; risks related to our taxation as a REIT; and other risks described from time to time in Equinix filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see recent Equinix quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.
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