Telehouse Building 11-Story London Data Center

Telehouse Europe, the data center service provider subsidiary of the major Japanese telco KDDI, announced plans to build an 11-story data center in London. This will be the company’s fifth London data center, adding nearly 250,000 square feet of space to its portfolio.

The Telehouse North Two facility will be on the company’s London Docklands campus. Its existing data center there, Telehouse North, is the primary site of the London Internet Exchange. The campus provides access to more than 500 network carriers, internet service providers, and Software-as-a-Service companies.

The company is investing £135 million in the London data center expansion.

As a major player in the European market, Telehouse is looking at a different competitive landscape today than it was about one month ago. The balance of power in the market shifted substantially after its competitors TelecityGroup and Interxion announced a merger in early February, and NTT (also a giant Japanese telco) acquired a controlling stake in e-shelter, another major European data center provider, earlier this month.

Redwood City, California-based Equinix remained the top data center provider in Europe, with the post-merger TelecityGroup taking the number-two spot, and NTT becoming third.

While extremely competitive, London is one of the world’s data center markets where capacity is always in high demand. Expanding capacity in markets such as London, Amsterdam, New York, or Silicon Valley is not a risky move for data center providers, especially when they can offer robust connectivity options.

Telehouse is planning to bring some initial capacity at North Two online in the first quarter of 2016.