Colocation facilities in Britain

Thu May 17 11:22:16 UTC 2007

michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:

> England really needs more data centres to locate well away from London,
> closer to power generation sources. 

Perhaps s/England/The UK/ (our Scottish, Welsh and NI countrymen run
bits of the internet too ;) ).

The real issue is not power. This seems like a self-perpetuating myth
grown out of some whimsical excuse given for a lack of short-term
expansion in the London Docklands area (a major economic development
zone with significant infrastructure development underway.) As you
yourself say, the UK is small, but moreover has a dense, reliable power
grid. The biggest single base-load power station in the UK is only 100mi
from London, but even then it's not anywhere you'd want to put a
datacentre.

IMO the real issue is going to be more related to the sustained economic
growth in London which has driven up property prices there and in the
South East of England, coupled with the same commercial growth requiring
more colo space in itself. This is a situation which several colo
operators seem well on the way to addressing. :-)

Will