Broadband Provider Exascale Creates Own Midlands UK Internet Exchange
Broadband ISP and UK network builder Exascale, which has deployed their own gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to a few thousand premises in part of Telford and Wrekin, this week did something quite unique by quietly founding a brand new Internet Exchange (IX) in the Midlands (MidlandsIX).
Internet exchanges are physical sites that allow ISPs, content delivery networks (CDN) and other network operators to interconnect. Such facilities can deliver more efficient network routing and peering, which cuts both costs and helps performance in all sorts of different ways (latency etc.). The UK already has a number of primary IXs, many of which are run by the not-for-profit London Internet Exchange (LINX).
The big news this week is that business ISP Exascale has set up its own IX for the Midlands of England. Initially, MidandsIX will be offering 10G ports for free in Exascale facilities, while 100G and 400G ports will be available at a “low monthly reoccurring cost“. Ports in non-Exascale facilities will attract a monthly reoccurring cost regardless of port size.
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Thomas Bibb, CEO of Exascale, said:
“I’m thrilled to announce the founding of a brand new Internet Exchange, right here in the Midlands!
MidlandsIX is perfectly positioned in the heart of the UK, enabling faster, more resilient, and more efficient interconnection for networks across the country. Our goal is to strengthen regional connectivity, reduce latency, and support the ever-growing demand for high-performance internet infrastructure.”
The new exchange will span Exascale’s facilities in Telford and Wolverhampton initially, although the ISP said they are already in discussions over establishing other facilities in the Midlands. Thomas added that “we’re creating this exchange for the good of the internet and the community we serve, we seek to just recover our costs, nothing more“.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Knew it would be west midlands, east of country is wasteland.
More regional IXP like this are not needed or required in the UK.
The UK is geographically small. For historical reasons traffic is concentrated in London, Slough and Manchester. It’s only around 4ms (one way) between Manchester and London. We don’t need lower latency than that on a IXP. If it needs to be lower then IXP are not the answer.
There’s been similar projects in places previously such as Cardiff, Liverpool and Leeds. None of these have attracted any significant traffic or quantity of peers for several reasons. They largely consist of tiny ISPs or just full of hosting companies with no eyeballs to consume the content.
I applaud the idea of running at cost price, but that’s already done in the right locations by others such as LINX and LoNAP.
Get a datacentre up somewhere like Peterborough, or Norwich, links can come over north sea from mainland Europe as well as from London. Makes colo hosting far more viable for people in the east of the country, its currently too focused to London or west of country, the sold south east, north west thingy.
There’s a Neos Networks datacentre facility in Peterborough already. It’s in PE2 6YN. There are also two in Cambridge. Colocation is available in all three. Others no doubt in the area and Neos might be reselling someone else’s physical facility.
FreeClix offer colocation and other services from their own datacentre in the centre of Norwich.
You are welcome, greggles.
@Polish Poler
Norwich had several purpose built datacentres, 2 HP built for Aviva, and a pair the other side of the city.
they fell out of use, one partially hosts a board game company (with a cafe) and the other is a snack pellet factory.
Distinct from Birmingham IX, which of course is not in the midlands?
This is so silly. The population of Telford and wolves is pretty small and well.. the economy (outside of benefits/PIP) is even smaller.