States Should Use BEAD Funds to Finance Internet Exchange Points | Broadband Breakfast
August 9, 2023
Internet traffic points will create a ‘better ecosystem for interconnection.’
States Should Use BEAD Funds to Finance Internet Exchange Points
Author & Source: Teralyn Whipple @ BroadbandBreakfast
DENVER, August 9, 2023 – Experts urged states during a discussion at the Mountain Connect conference Tuesday to set aside a percentage of their Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment allocations for building internet exchange points in their state.
Internet exchange points are facilities where local ISPs, transport networks, content networks, cloud services, education networks, and others exchange data traffic. In the United States, 14 states and 3 territories have no IXPs and another 3 states are functionally limited, with not enough IXPs to handle traffic at high speeds, the conference heard.
Large distances between IXPs and end destinations create large lag times, said Hunter Newby, chief strategy officer of service provider Telx and partner with internet access solutions non-profit Connected Nation to establish carrier neutral IXPs in regional hub cities and towns across the nation. A carrier neutral IXP is not owned by any one carrier, which means that any provider can build into the data center without concerns about unfair competition.
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