Internet Exchange Point vital in shaping Birmingham’s digital economy

AN Internet Exchange Point would play a crucial role in underpinning the growth of Birmingham’s digital economy, the head of Digital Birmingham has said.

Raj Mack said the city had attracted a wealth of talent in the media, games and creative industries and the additional benefits of an IXP would be considerable.

“An internet exchange point will play an important role in underpinning our digital economy. The city has already attracted significant numbers of innovative ISPs, award winning content providers such as Maverick TV, and is a thriving talent pool for creative agencies, games companies and global technology giants with more than 1,700 companies located here such as The BBC, Rare games, Codemasters, Blitz, Activision and Sega,” he said.

“It has become host to a growing number of high tier modern, more energy efficient data centres that when networked together will allow internet service providers and other network operators to exchange traffic locally and more cost effectively, which can help lower end-user costs, speed-up transmissions, increase Internet performance, and decrease international Internet connectivity costs.”
 
Portal Data Centres, which provides regional Data Centre Solutions, will start construction on a new 2,800m² centre in Aston that could provide the underlying infrastructure to support a new IXP once a decision is taken on whether the project will go ahead.

Russel Smith, Sales Director at Portal Data Centres, said: “We believe that there is substantial demand for data-thirsty applications, IT storage, cloud-based services and high speed networks both in the city and across the West Midlands.  

“Birmingham was once the known for its industrial heritage, but now we see data centres as the digital factories of the future.  At just 1.5 miles from the city centre, the location is critical, because we can offer direct access to high-speed fibre links, giving our datacentre extremely low latency and high resilience.  
 
“We expect to attract not only local businesses and service providers, but also larger carriers such as BT and Virgin Media and other medium to large companies that rely on data to run their day to day operations.”

The firm delivered its message as it sponsored the ‘Birmingham Digital Day’ in conjunction with Birmingham City Council and LINX (London Internet Exchange).

Cllr James McKay, chair of Birmingham’s Smart City Commission, said: “By investing in world-class digital infrastructure that will deliver super-fast connectivity we now have the opportunity become the powerhouse of the data revolution.
 
“The city already generates £2bn revenue from its creative and digital industries, which employs over 38,000, where there is a high reliance on reliable and high speed data networks. A new Internet Exchange Point and a world-class data centre in the city would help us to support and attract new data-hungry businesses not only to Birmingham but to the Midlands as a whole. In turn this will help to generate new jobs and reduce youth unemployment which currently stands at 40%.”

He said he was delighted that Portal had considered investing Birmingham.