Meet Me in St. Louis

Part of a series of articles published in FATPIPE magazine from 2003-2005 examining carrier interconnection options in major North American cities. This article was published in the July 2004 issue. To download the complete series as one consolidated PDF (2.7 MB), click here.

In the award-winning Broadway musical Meet Me in St. Louis, everybody who was anybody was at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. The same can be said of the Bandwidth Exchange Buildings.

The two Bandwidth Exchange Buildings at 210 North Tucker Blvd. and 900 Walnut St. are owned and operated by Bandwidth Exchange Buildings, LLC as a single, 500,000-plus-square-foot facility. They are the primary carrier hotels and carrier interconnection facilities for St. Louis and the entire region. The two meet me rooms are connected by 432 strands of dark fiber, owned and maintained by the Buildings.

The Bandwidth Exchange Buildings are operated first and foremost as carrier hotels. Since the primary need of the tenants is that of interconnection to the other network-operating tenants, the owner has established a main interconnection point within each building. The 210 North Tucker meet me room is a passive interconnection-only facility, and the 900 Walnut meet me room is a full-service facility that is actually a former LayerOne site.

The meet me rooms are considered amenities that serve the buildings, so all carriers otherwise present in the buildings are provided rack space in the meet me rooms with no additional charge and with no recurring cross-connection fees. "Ensuring that every provider active in the region is only a cross connect away is what makes ours a unique and valuable facility," says Bob Guller, managing member of the Bandwidth Exchange Buildings. "Lowering barriers to carrier access while creating a secure, reliable environment is what we do best."

The Bandwidth Exchange Buildings feature a significant range of plug-and-play collocation options, from Web hosting/collocation providers (Cybercon and Xiolink), enterprise IT outsourcers (Connectria), pure collocation facilities (Switch and Data) and a building-owned-and-operated Class-A collocation facility. The Switch and Data facility at 210 North Tucker also acts as an active network element extension from the passive building meet me room for those that need more than just an interconnect.

In addition to attracting major telecom players, the Buildings owners also play matchmaker between providers and users of communications and bandwidth services. "You can't just bring everybody to the Fair, you have to get them dancing too," says Guller.

The buildings are on multiple, underground power grids with six 1.5-megawatt generators and several small generator sets. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers designed one building, and both are near the incumbent primary central office. Both buildings also qualify for power discounts and various economic incentives. So if you are looking for a fair place to meet in St Louis, take a look at the Bandwidth Exchange Buildings.

For more information on the Bandwidth Exchange Buildings, please contact Bob Guller at (314) 621-1226 or [email protected].

Originally published in FATPIPE magazine, July 2004.

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