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The Differences between a Meet Me Room and a Carrier Neutral Data Center
There are two types of facilities that are used for network to network interconnections and their ambiguity is often used interchangeably. The Meet-Me Room [MMR] is typically a small space, approximately 5,000 square feet, located in a major carrier hotel. For spaces larger than a MMR, carrier-neutral data center can be a stand-alone building, detached from carrier hotels. Even though terms are quite vague, there remain key differences when examining the two categories of interconnection requirements.
• Ownership
The stand-alone, carrier-neutral data center can be privately owned or leased for 15-30 years by the operator. Another option is to be a tenant in a larger carrier hotel on a 5 year lease. Operated by building management, Meet-Me Rooms are never stand-alone facilities. Found in carrier hotels, they are normally directly under a management contract with another firm.
• Size
Meet-Me Rooms tend to be smaller because originally, fibers would be run from a tenants suite to patch panels in a Meet-Me Room to be interconnected, which requires little space. With time, these rooms have grown in size and are starting to resemble data centers, including features such as cages.
• Customer Mix
Clients of MMR’s are the operators of large networks, such as RB0Cs and major content providers. Carrier-neutral clients include operators of large networks and also enterprise customers and smaller network operators.
• Service Offerings
MMR service offers the basics, typically providing a remote hand. They also maintain power, cooling and cross-connects. Carrier-neutral data centers offer the basics, but also extra amenities such as managed servers/hosting. The larger data centers will try to keep sales at a minimum of 5-10 racks per client, while Meet-Me Rooms sell half racks or quarter racks [in addition to full racks], because of their smaller space.
• Interconnection
Meet-Me Rooms have a primary purpose, to interconnect tenants. Carrier-neutral centers however, are rich in interconnection. MMRs allow any tenant of the building to interconnect, even if they have not leased cabinets inside the MMR. This is beneficial for clients who only need to make a small number of interconnections. On the other hand, carrier-neutral data centers often reserve the right to allow only tenants of the data center itself to interconnect. Since most of these centers are stand alone buildings, this form of interconnection is accepted.
