DECEMBER 1, 2008
Equinix Launches the First Roaming Mobile Data Exchange Service in the U.S.
Expansion of Service Currently Offered in the Asia-Pacific Market Comes After Equinix D.C. Area Center Selected by GSMA as One of Three GRX Peering Hubs in the World
Foster City, CA – December 1, 2008 – Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), a provider of global data center services, today announced the expansion of its GRX Peering @ Equinix (GPE) service to customers located in the company’s Washington, D.C. area International Business Exchange (IBX®) data center campus. The service, currently offered to customers located in Equinix’s Singapore IBX, will represent the only service in the U.S. that enables the exchange of mobile Internet traffic between telecommunications service providers.
The expansion of GPE to the U.S. market comes after the GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade association representing more than 750 GSM mobile phone operators, selected the Equinix Washington, D.C. area IBX as the first Global Roaming Exchange (GRX) peering hub in North America. It joins two other GRX peering hubs located at Equinix’s Singapore IBX center and at AMS-IX in Amsterdam. The hubs serve as scalable platforms for the interconnection of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) roaming networks. Within these centralized locations, GRX operators can interconnect their networks within a neutral environment to ensure cell phone data applications work seamlessly across different networks around the globe.
Currently offered to GRX operators in the Asia-Pacific region from Equinix’s Singapore IBX center, GPE features a resilient, fully-managed, Ethernet-based switching platform designed to ensure the seamless interconnectivity between mobile networks. The service is available for all GRX operators and qualified customers that are located within the Equinix Washington, D.C. area IBX campus that wish to exchange mobile Internet traffic with their peer of choice.
The GPE switching platform provides a redundant architecture designed for improved resiliency and greater port density. Specific features include:
- Redundant Infrastructure: Equinix provides GRX operators with fully redundant LAN infrastructure for improved service delivery;
- Private Bilateral Peering: Freedom to negotiate private peering arrangements without any restrictions;
- Dedicated GPE portal: Full service transparency with access to port-level statistics, including traffic utilization graphs, and service availability and quality.
Some of the current participants on the GPE platform in the Equinix Singapore IBX include Aicent, Belgacom ICS, Comfone AG, Neustar, Sybase 365, Telenor Global Services, Telekom Austria TA AG and TeliaSonera.
“After a successful introduction of a GRX peering point in Asia with Equinix, we are pleased that the North American peering point in the Washington, D.C. area is ready for service and a number of GRX service providers are concluding contractual agreements,” said Robindhra Mangtani, Director, Interworking and Roaming at the GSM Association. “The GRX is a success story with over 25 international GRX carriers providing data roaming services to mobile customers. Peering in three geographic regions (Europe, Asia and now U.S.) enables the provision of QoS and provides an improvement in latency and resilience of the data roaming networks. In addition the peering points lay down a solid framework for migration to IPX.”
“Most people that have traveled outside of the coverage area of their mobile data service provider have experienced delays and performance issues in the transfer of data to their PDAs or other mobile devices,” said Eric Troyer, director of peering services at Equinix. “The GRX Peering initiative has addressed this issue and significantly enhanced performance. With the expansion of GRX Peering to the Equinix Washington, D.C. area data center campus, mobile data transfer for users in the U.S. will be further enhanced, as it can now occur inside the U.S., as opposed to being routed through the other GRX Peering hubs in Amsterdam and Singapore.”
In 2001, the first GRX peering hub was established at AMS-IX in Amsterdam after a cross-industry working group implemented a multi-party peering agreement. This agreement was a breakthrough in laying the groundwork for developing an interconnectivity infrastructure supporting roaming mobile Internet and data services on a global basis.
For information about the GSMA and its activities, visit www.gsmworld.com.