123Net’s partnership with Telia Carrier expands network capacity

Southfield-based 123Net announced it has tapped Telia Carrier's 100G-enabled, global IP backbone to provide scalable capacity and connectivity to the Michigan market.

“We continue to see a high demand from regional, national and international carriers to establish a point of presence at our Tier 3 facility,” said Bob Evenson, carrier relations manager at 123Net. “Being the largest carrier-neutral facility in the state makes it easy for not only carriers, like Telia Carrier, but also content providers who want to connect here and peer closer to end users. We hope to continue to provide solid options to carriers interested in the Michigan market."

123Net has three data centers in Southfield and one in Byron Center. The company’s 80,000-square-foot facility at 24700 Northwestern Hwy., Southfield, where Telia is now a carrier, is the largest data facility in Michigan, Evenson said.

He added 123Net’s expansive network helps keep internet traffic in Michigan. 123Net's fiber footprint throughout Michigan includes up to 4,000 route miles of fiber in over 106 communities.

“In the past, all carriers would interconnect with Cermak in Chicago,” Evenson said. “It can be difficult to move around for cross carriers. Michigan didn’t have a true carrier-neutral data center, and that’s where we came in.”

Art Kazmierczak, director of network and business development at Telia Carrier, said while 123Net benefits from Telia’s global reach, the carrier also benefits from having a regional partner in 123Net and its fiber reach throughout Michigan.

“If you don’t have to connect to competing resources in Chicago, and you have direct connectivity, it adds up to being a better customer experience for the end user,” he said.

Currently, 123Net is experiencing demand for data connections from content providers and businesses in health care, engineering, graphic design, technology and finance. This trend coupled with the ongoing digitalization of business and its move to the cloud are driving significant demand for data center connectivity throughout the state.

Autonomous vehicles also are heightening demand for connectivity. As driverless cars enter the market, the volume of data generated and used by these cars can be considerable. 123Net estimated autonomous vehicles use roughly 40 terabytes of data for every eight hours of driving.

“Over the past several years, the auto industry, as well as other businesses in Detroit, have been focused on driving more innovation," Kazmierczak said. "These applications utilize the dynamic on-demand provisioning and low latency performance of Telia Carrier's global network, enabling access to cloud capabilities at the network edge and empowering developing technologies like autonomous vehicles and smart cities in the supporting infrastructure.”

While Telia Carrier is set up in Southfield, West Michigan businesses still can take advantage. Chuck Irvin, 123Net’s director of network development, said the company can easily provision a circuit across its network, which includes the entire greater Grand Rapids area.

“It depends on the bandwidth requirements for the customer, but it’s well within the budget of most tech businesses,” Irvin said. “For the money they’re spending on cloud services, it can be very cost saving.”

Telia Carrier operates in 35 countries and carries an average of 12 billion voice minutes yearly.