Report: New Colocation Space Fills Quickly

New colocation space is filling quickly when brought online, according to new data from the telecom research firm TeleGeography. Global colocation service providers surveyed by TeleGeography have added 1.66 million square feet (154,016 square meters) of new space since the beginning of 2008, many of which were more than 50 percent full by mid-year 2009.

"While ample capacity is available in aggregate, operators in some cities, such as London, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, reported fill rates of more than 80 percent" for their colocation footprints, TeleGeography said in announcing an update of its Colocation Database, one of the company's paid services.

"Despite a global capital crunch, capacity growth has not stagnated, and operators with strong operational cash flow continue to build new sites," it reports. The markets with the most new colocation supply have been Hybderabad, India (230,000 square feet), Washington/Northern Virginia (214,000 SF), Dallas (166,000 SF), Amsterdam (150,000 SF) and London (131,000 SF), according to TeleGeography.

The report also includes data on average power density per rack, which suggests that colocation providers are continuing to build ahead of the average power loads. "Colocation operators increasingly push boundaries in the installation of new high-density space (defined as space using at least 14 kilowatts of power per rack), but low-density spacecontinues to supply a majority of the market," Telegeography writes. "The average colo site density among sites surveyed is about 3.8 kilowatts per rack, and major metro areas generally do not veer far from this average."

Average density rates can be misleading when it comes to the potential business value of high-density space, however, as the average can include several high-density customers whose impact is broadly offset by customers with lower densities. In practice, the availability of space engineered for higher densities is crucial to capturing these deals, which can feature high-value customers.

The markets with the highest average densities were Chicago (5 kW average per cabinet) and Dallas (4.5 kW average).