DE-CIX Initiates Game-Changing Carrier-Neutral Internet Exchange in New York

FRANKFURT, GERMANY--(Marketwired - Sep 18, 2013) - DE-CIX, the world's leading Internet Exchange operator headquartered in Frankfurt am Main (Germany), announces today the launch of its U.S. operations. DE-CIX North America will establish Internet exchanges in major U.S. metro regions, with New York City as the first market to receive a distributed, carrier- and data center-neutral Internet Exchange. DE-CIX makes this game-changing move in the North American telecommunications market in an effort to begin boosting the country's vital digital infrastructure and the infrastructure of the cities in which it will operate.

Built on the same successful open model as DE-CIX in Frankfurt, DE-CIX North America will engineer the new Internet exchanges in the U.S. for the high-capacity, high-performance Layer 2 interconnection known as "Peering."

Different than the prevailing U.S. Internet traffic exchange model, DE-CIX will deploy a large-scale Ethernet switching fabric, combined with an all-fiber metro optical backbone that supports traffic volumes of up to numerous Terabits per second across multiple data centers in the selected metropolitan areas. This will enable all types of Internet providers to exchange traffic across the neutral, distributed infrastructure. This is an advantage over current U.S. colocation and exchange models, in which data centers primarily serve their own on-campus tenants or connect customers with passive Private Interconnects (PI).

"New York is a world-class city with an active interest in evolving its digital infrastructure to the highest levels," states Harald A. Summa, CEO for DE-CIX. "The city is the top choice for Internet companies right now. We therefore selected New York City as the headquarters of our new U.S. operations and also decided to make New York the home of our first Internet exchange deployment in North America."

"NYC is home to a huge concentration of ISPs, including broadband providers, content companies and a thriving and growing tech community," continues Summa. "Establishing and developing the new exchange will go far in elevating New York's reputation as one of the world's great technology hubs, in addition to its other first-rate attributes. DE-CIX's new exchange in New York will be operational soon, while we are also planning for deployments in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. DE-CIX will help these selected cities to grow their role as Internet hubs and finally achieve the major role they deserve in the global Internet ecosystem."

The City of New York has already taken action to address digital infrastructure development with programs such as the ConnectNYC Fiber Access program. These efforts are an essential element of making the city a better place for both companies and individuals.

"We are in the midst of transforming New York City into the world's leading digital city," says Rachel Haot, New York City's Chief Digital Officer. "Our work is about ensuring that digital technology touches all New Yorkers to improve their lives. Implementing this neutral Internet exchange in our City is an important step forward in improving the fundamental technology infrastructure that fuels our New York City and enables it to compete globally with other digital hubs."

Following the open Internet exchange approach, DE-CIX will continue to support the Open-IX initiative, which is a new industry group that supports, among other topics, the creation of neutral and cost-efficient Internet exchanges that are backed by the Internet community at large.

DE-CIX successfully operates and manages Internet exchanges throughout the globe, including UAE-IX in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), which recently announced record growth; and DE-CIX in Frankfurt, Germany.

About DE-CIX
Founded in 1995, DE-CIX in Frankfurt is the leading operator of Ethernet-based carrier and ISP interconnection (Peering) worldwide. DE-CIX facilitates the exchange of IP traffic between networks through a distributed, failsafe and scalable infrastructure in various metro markets across Germany and in the Middle East. This includes broadband networks, hosting providers, content providers and cloud computing players. More than 500 ISPs from over 50 countries use DE-CIX to handle a large fraction of their Internet traffic and make DE-CIX the world's largest interconnection facility that supports peering. DE-CIX's customer base includes the world's leading players, such as 1&1, Akamai, China Telecom, Facebook, Google and Telefonica.

The company began its international growth with the takeover in 2012 of the operations of UAE-IX in Dubai, UAE, the country's first carrier-neutral interconnection and peering platform. Further information is available at: www.de-cix.net.