Low Costs For High Tech
Montgomery Internet Exchange Increases Competition, slashes costs
The Montgomery Internet Exchange has firmly planted the River Region on the high-technology map, as it is just one of four such exchanges in the Southeast – the only one in Alabama – and the only one in a city the size of Montgomery.
It has generated such significant news that stories have appeared in various publications about the exchange across the country. That’s the sexy side, but the not-so-glamorous yet most important side is about saving companies money – large sums.
Consider this: Internet service providers such as WOW, Charter, and Troy Cable often pay transit fees to use other transit providers’ networks. Hurricane Electric Internet Services out of Fremont, Calif., who is connected to 130 Internet Exchanges worldwide, is connecting to the Montgomery Internet Exchange and will offer 10 gigabyte wholesale internet capability out of the Montgomery Internet Exchange in a price range we are now seeing for one gigabyte capability, said Joe Greene, vice president, Military & Federal Affairs for the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce.
Information Transport Solutions Inc. slashed transit internet costs by nearly two-thirds by switching to Hurricane Electric. Those transit line costs are among the highest costs for internet service providers. These transit lines connect between other exchange points and with different content providers’ networks such as Google, Facebook, and Netflix.
“Because we’re getting so many companies to connect (to the Montgomery Internet Exchange) it will increase speed, increase capacity, increase competition and reduce costs,” Greene said. “It also opens up opportunities for internet service providers that do not do business in Montgomery to come here, because they don’t have to lay fiber lines to Atlanta or other Internet Exchanges or pay high transit costs to come in. They can use the competitive transit lines of a Hurricane Electric or other transit service providers connected to the Montgomery Internet Exchange.”
“What that also does is…allows us to possibly provide internet services at higher capacity to locations that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise, including rural areas.”
The bottom line is that more internet service providers, content service providers and transit service providers connecting to the Montgomery Internet Exchange equates to less cost for their customers.
Charter Communications is expected to connect to the Montgomery Internet Exchange in the fall after “major upgrades to their network here in Montgomery,” Greene said.
Southern Light Fiber, which is building a fiber network throughout Montgomery, also recently connected to the internet exchange. That fiber network will “provide a higher speed capability for businesses in the higher gigabyte range,” Greene said.
Packet Clearing House, which does analysis of traffic flows and speeds, is completing its connections to the Montgomery Internet Exchange. The San Francisco-based firm has international offices in London; Kathmandu, Nepal; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Johannesburg; and the Port of Spain.
Meanwhile, the Retirement Systems of Alabama is “setting up a commercial private cloud capability” at its Datacenter in the RSA Dexter Avenue Building, which would enable businesses to store data. Even the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of South Alabama are planning to use the RSA Datacenter to store information as a back-up facility, Greene said.
