So the track record of 'infrastructure' investment/development on
these issues has not been congruous to your proposition.
Given that everything goes through Auckland right now, building such a DC in Auckland isn't going to be any worse.
This seems like a silly thing to be debating though, one in somewhere that's less than ideal is better than none, and, we're unlikely to be the sole people involved in this sort of decision. A good DC seems like a great idea. Let's figure out how to get one, then people can snipe about where.
Might be a good opportunity to give you all an update on our plans.
We (Vocus) have been pretty unhappy with the interconnect situation in AKL pretty much since we entered the market. We looked at building a decent DC in the CBD but building codes and power proved to be an issue for the scale (and power density) we wanted. This is the reason we ended up buying Maxnet, we loved the DC but it had been historically too expensive to get capacity there from the Skytower/CBD. With all your regulatory changes, fibre capacity there ended up making sense and that was the last problem we needed to solve.
Our goal for the maxnet site is to expand the facility (we haven't announced it yet but we'll be building another ~50% DC space in the coming months) and turn it in one of the better places to interconnect in AKL, already it has a lot of content / sites, hosting companies and ISPs so it already has a reasonable start. Vocus now has a diverse fibre loop from Albany via both SX landing stations to the CBD and I believe the guys have just ordered the optical gear (Cyan kit which is really cool stuff) to light it, so hopefully we have solved the connectivity problems. I can also confirm we'll be operating the DC as carrier neutral, you won't have to take any Vocus connectivity/transit if you don't desire.
If people have interesting ideas for content aggregation or would like to see services there or things we could do to enhance the site for interconnection, please let me know off list.
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Nathan Ward
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James