5 ms·
a fairly large number - a bigger question is what happens to all the CO buildings once all the copper is turned down. There is a huge opportunity about 5 years
by Aloha 11mo ago
a fairly large number - a bigger question is what happens to all the CO buildings once all the copper is turned down.
There is a huge opportunity about 5 years from now for edge datacenters. You have these buildings which have highly reliable power and connectivity, all thats needed is servers which can live in a NEBS environment.
- kjs3 11mo agoThe CO closest to me was turned into condos. A friend was the general contractor. It was by all accounts a nightmare.
- kayfox 11mo agoCOs are already being used for edge datacenters, its just not been talked about much outside the industry.
- bluedino 11mo agoMost of those CO's are in buildings that don't have all that much space in them, were built in the 40's and 50's, and likely aren't suitable for that kind of thing. Cooling would be a big deal.
- Aloha 11mo agoI have been in ~15 CO's - there is tons of floor space in them, and the only thing telephone switching equipment has done since the 50's is shrink - beyond that, most existing CO buildings had expansions when electronic switching came about, because they couldnt add the new electronic (1/1A/5 ESS) without additional floor space. Cooling is noted by the requirement for NEBS compliant equipment.
- Animats 11mo agoThe older ones have lots of tall windows. It's the newer windowless ones that cannot be easily repurposed, unless you want to build a data center.
- bediger4000 11mo agoCentral offices are everywhere, too. You've driven or walked by any number of them, and the most you noticed was a Bell System logo. The downtown COs in big cities are on expensive real estate.
- ipdashc 11mo agoI want to know so badly what the telcos are still doing with all that space. Some, like mentioned above, are probably edge data centers. I imagine there's a lot of Internet infrastructure in them as well. But even the biggest IXP is surely tiny compared to the space required for an electromechanical exchange (that would host human operators as well). Are there just floors and floors of empty space? Like you said, on very expensive downtown real estate?
- gjvc 11mo agoit makes sense when you realise they are actually machines disguised as buildings
- peterbecich 11mo agoRelevant https://www.co-buildings.com/ https://www.co-buildings.com/