What is meant by carrier neutrality?
Carrier neutrality is an operating model for data centres that allows customers to freely choose between different network and internet service providers. In a carrier-neutral environment, the data centre operator acts independently of individual telecommunications providers and merely provides the physical infrastructure for their interconnection.
What is a carrier in IT?
A carrier (also network provider or Internet Service Provider, ISP) is a company that owns or operates the infrastructure for long-distance data transmission. In the IT landscape, carriers act as suppliers for bandwidth and connectivity. They operate fiber optic networks and Points of Presence (PoPs) to connect end-customer locations and data centers to the global internet or other locations.
Why is carrier neutrality important?
The importance of carrier neutrality lies in avoiding dependencies, the so-called vendor lock-in. Without this neutrality, a company is tied to the prices, technology and availability of a single provider. Carrier neutrality creates an open marketplace for telecommunications services within the data center, where customers can flexibly adapt contracts to react to market changes or technical failures.
The three main advantages of carrier neutrality
- Cost efficiency through competition: Since several providers are on site, they compete for customers, which leads to market-driven prices for bandwidth.
- Increased resilience (redundancy): Customers can obtain lines from different carriers. If a provider fails due to a fault, the infrastructure of the second provider automatically takes over.
- Maximum flexibility: Companies can choose the specialized best-in-class provider for different locations or services (e.g. site networking, cloud connection or IP services).
Comparison: Carrier-neutral vs. carrier-specific
Carrier-neutral data centre
- Provider selection: Free choice from a wide range of providers
- Prices: Lower due to direct market competition
- Redundancy: High (multi-carrier concept possible)
- Scalability: Very high due to provider change
Carrier-specific data centre
- Provider selection: Limited to the operator/in-house provider
- Prices: Monopoly prices of the sole provider
- Redundancy: Limited (single point of failure at the provider)
- Scalability: Limited by the portfolio of the sole provider
Practical example
In practice, this means: A company hosts its
firstcolo expert assessment
“True carrier neutrality is the foundation for modern hybrid cloud scenarios. Only the presence of numerous carriers in the Meet-Me-Room (MMR) enables us to minimize latency by transferring data streams where the physical path to the destination is shortest.”
