The New York Times published a special section on small business in Tuesday's paper, which includes an article on carrier hotels, the multi-tenant bandwidth hubs in the central business districts of major cities. Here's an excerpt:
The premier addresses of the Internet age include 56 Marietta Street in Atlanta, 210 North Tucker Avenue in St. Louis and 111 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. They go by a variety of names, like carrier hotels, Internet peering points and co-locations. And while they may not be located in the fanciest office buildings, and many of them are not in the best parts of town, they are the best places for businesses to get online, taking advantage of huge swaths of reliable bandwidth at a relatively low cost.
Carrier hotels have long been the cornerstones of the Internet economy, and represent some of the most successful properties in the colocation industry. Given the recent buzz around cloud computing and cheap utility hosting for startups, it's interesting to see The Times feature colocation in carrier hotels as an Internet play for small businesses. The article includes a brief guide to buying colo services.
