Telehouse North in London’ s Docklands
that are high speed, low latency and reliable. AI for everybody is super interesting, but if we look at just data mobility and data transfer, LINX has definitely got a role to play in that moving forward.”
The role of the Internet Exchange IXs like LINX are critical for supporting emerging technologies, with the organisation partnering with data centre companies like Telehouse to cross-sell, promote and build an ecosystem as a working model.
“ We are very proud of the relationship with Telehouse,” Richard explains.“ We’ ve grown with them for the last 30 years and we’ ve expanded to other partners across the London Metro and around the world, working with the likes of Digital Realty and Equinix. The robustness of this ecosystem that we provide is vital for the UK Internet. What we’ re seeing in Kenya and other places that we go, they see the same benefits.”
He adds:“ That relationship between the data centre and the IX has been strong for many years and I don’ t see that changing. We have great partnerships. We talk about AI where there’ s investment in data centres which need connectivity. We’ ve always got a role to play in that conversation.”
Now, there is a significant focus on connecting locally to optimise network performance, which ultimately reduces latency.
“ Connecting locally is all about latency and optimisation, which is very much in our ethos,” Richard says.“ We’ ve got regional exchanges that are set up and down the UK and the idea of that was to promote localised exchange of traffic.”
LINX Manchester in particular peaked to more than 700Gbps whilst this interview with Richard was being conducted. The site has seen consistent growth in traffic throughout 2024, particularly fuelled by recent fibre network developments.
68 April 2025