EXA infrastructure anchors network investment in Barcelona and connects to Barcelona Cable Landing Station leading the industry interconnectivity and regional economic growth
Barcelona, 30 March 2023 – EXA Infrastructure, the largest dedicated digital infrastructure platform connecting Europe and North America, today announced it has committed €39 million of network investments to date in supercharging its digital infrastructure assets in the Iberian Peninsula, serving the growing traffic demands entering the Iberian Peninsula, where Spain and Catalonia, thanks to the Barcelona Cable Landing Station (Barcelona CLS) play a fundamental role.
EXA continues to invest and is at the forefront of enabling its customers by diversifying its network to create and service traffic demands in and out of Southern Europe. It has upgraded 100km of metro network in Barcelona, connecting a number of new datacentres and the Barcelona Cable Landing Station linking InterXion, Equinix, Edged Energy and EdgeConnex.
“EXA’s investment plans are strategically driven to support the growth of our customers, the industry and for the local economy. Barcelona is increasingly becoming a hot spot of subsea and data centre activity, and is ideally located to serve our customers’ requirements for resilient connectivity to other data centres and cable landing stations across the Iberian Peninsula.”
Steve Roberts, VP Network Investment
The digital ecosystem of Spain is expanding significantly with hyperscale data centre developments, appetite from cloud service providers and the surge of data centres. Barcelona is fast becoming a thriving interconnection point, attracting an increasing number of tech and data-intensive companies, due to its strategic location between Africa, the Middle East and Asia and Europe. The Catalonian city has increased its international internet bandwidth at a compound annual growth rate of 35%, placing it at the top of southern Europe, according to a 2021 report by TeleGeography.
“The exponential growth we are seeing across the Iberian Peninsula is driving greater economic growth and investment in and around Barcelona. We are extremely proud of the investment EXA Infrastructure is making in this region and the growth that will continue in years to come.”
Miguel Angel Acero, CTO and co-founder of AFR-IX telecom
“EXA is preparing for even more growth and demand coming in and out of Barcelona and the Iberian Peninsula as a whole. We are proud to be driving the connectivity diversification by expanding our footprint and taking strong routes to market for our customers and the industry. Our business is built on investing and growing to champion our customers and importantly the regional economic growth across Spain. As a dedicated operator of hyper scale digital infrastructure we are continually developing the reach of our footprint.”
Ciaran Delaney, EXA Infrastructure Chief Operating Officer
EXA owns and operates 114,000 kilometres of fibre network across 34 countries. Last year, EXA announced a new 600-kilometre network link between Barcelona, Zaragoza and Bilbao, linking data centre clusters that are growing in all three cities. This is in addition to enhancements to metropolitan fibre in the Barcelona and Madrid areas, and around 1000km of network over-pull upgrades that are currently underway.
Roberts added: “Our focus and commitment on transport to high growth cable landing stations and data centres means our customers can be guaranteed the most modern and most reliable connectivity options on Europe’s leading fibre network.”
About AFR-IX telecom
AFR-IX telecom, founded in 2013, is an infrastructure and telecommunications operator with European capital. It has the largest pan-African Metro Ethernet network and provides Internet access in more than 50 countries in Africa, thanks to terrestrial and submarine cables and its more than 60 POPs. According to the annual Financial Times Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies list, AFR-IX is one of the fastest growing telecommunications companies: positions 8 (2020), 16 (2021) and 11 (2022) according to the FT 1000.
