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Thursday, October 20, 2022

Data centres feel crunch of escalating costs, report says 2022

Data centre construction is facing record-breaking inflation amid delays stemming from several factors, a report from Turner & Townsend says.

The report indicates that there are delays to material deliveries and competition for skilled labour from large-scale advanced manufacturing projects and reveals how the average cost to build data centres has grown 15% on average across global markets.

The Data Centre Cost Index 2022 analyses construction input costs, including labour and materials across 45 key markets, alongside industry sentiment and insight from a survey of 250 data centre professionals.

Almost all (95%) of respondents agreed that global material shortages have impacted construction timescales, with most citing delays of over 12 weeks.

Meanwhile, 92% of respondents said they are struggling to meet construction demands due to a shortfall of experienced site teams.

Lisa Duignan, head of European data centres at Turner & Townsend said: “Developers are facing a perfect storm of currency fluctuations, a race for talent from other advanced technology sectors and materials delays and shortages.

“The sector has been adapting to this challenging environment over the past 12 months. It’s becoming increasingly vital for clients to prioritise a programmatic, collaborative approach to procurement, project delivery and project controls.

Despite these challenges, optimism remains high, with 85% of respondents saying that construction has struggled to meet demand in 2022.

As a result, 71% said they saw the sector as less susceptible to recessionary pressures than other industries.

The report adds that continued market growth is expected to be led by large scale data centre end users and developers as established companies scale their capacity to meet burgeoning demand in the system.

The 2022 Global Carrier Awards (GCAs) celebration took place last night during this year's Capacity Europe conference. Taking place at Indigo at The O₂ in London, executives from the telecoms, tech and ICT space, came together to honor some of the biggest accomplishments from across the industry over the last 12 months. Hosted by chair of the judging panel, Carl Roberts with co-presenters CEO of Capacity Media, Ros Irving; Michelle Senecal de Fonseca of Citrix Systems; Gina Nomiellini, chief product marketing officer at Globalgig, and Editor at large of Capacity Media, Alan Burkitt-Gray and Deputy Editor Natalie Bannerman, 33 trophies were taken home on the night! Featuring a touching tribute to Ukraine, a silent auction in aid of Telecoms Sans Frontières, World Cup giveaways, it was night of celebration and revelry.

The 2022 Global Carrier Awards (GCAs) celebration took place last night during this year's Capacity Europe conference.

Taking place at Indigo at The O₂ in London, executives from the telecoms, tech and ICT space, came together to honor some of the biggest accomplishments from across the industry over the last 12 months.

Hosted by chair of the judging panel, Carl Roberts with co-presenters CEO of Capacity Media, Ros Irving; Michelle Senecal de Fonseca of Citrix Systems; Gina Nomiellini, chief product marketing officer at Globalgig, and Editor at large of Capacity Media, Alan Burkitt-Gray and Deputy Editor Natalie Bannerman, 33 trophies were taken home on the night!

Featuring a touching tribute to Ukraine, a silent auction in aid of Telecoms Sans Frontières, World Cup giveaways, it was night of celebration and revelry.

Neterra launches cloud platform that is five times faster

Global operator Neterra has tested and deployed a cloud platform that it says is five times faster than ever before.

Neterra customers can rely on high-performance virtual servers that drives on these new machines and uses non-volatile memory express (NVMe) with fast response times under bigger workloads.

The processors are the latest generation of Intel Platinum, the company adds.

The platform offers customers the ability to upload templates that contains software configurations as well as open-source containers to their virtual servers.

It is based on a high-performance and innovative data storage system of the software, which is flexible and efficient, while ensuring data safety with its three copies.

Services are offered in Neterra’s Sofia data centres and customers can combine cloud services with modern backup solutions and DDoS protection.

Neterra adds that for only a monthly fee and no long-term commitment and even a free trial period, the customer receives first-class equipment and services without having to buy their own machines, make updates to them, and hire people for support.

The company is keen to stress that that the cloud servers to not require a large initial investment and anyone can select, configure and set up cloud servers in minutes.

Iceblue published price book for global internet access

Iceblue Internet, an internet aggregator formerly called Blue Planet Networks, has published its publicly accessible, global internet access price book at Capacity Europe.

The UK-based company says it brings the services of over 1,100 internet service providers to its customers in the form of a “platform for the pricing, provision and support of internet access circuits”.

The new price book lists thousands of destinations from Antigua and Barbuda to Zimbabwe in a downloadable Excel spreadsheet.

“Access to the Iceblue price book is available, at no charge, to business professionals who have registered their email address on the Iceblue landing page,” said the company.

The price book is offered to network connectivity buyers, network managers and telecoms sales teams looking to provide rapid turnaround on internet access pricing for their internal and external customers.

“Anyone looking to obtain current market rate, internet access pricing, instantly, for business sites located anywhere in the world will find the Iceblue price book invaluable,” it added.

“The pricing contained with the price book reflects actual pricing supplied within the last four months by multiple on-net providers in the offered countries. The pricing is updated quarterly and is guaranteed to represent current market rate.”

The book contains pricing for both broadband and dedicated internet access service offerings for a variety of internet access bandwidths covering over 160 countries.

Chicago scientists are testing an unhackable quantum internet in their basement closet

CHICAGO — The secret to a more secure and powerful internet — one potentially impossible to hack — might be residing in a basement closet seemingly suited for brooms and mops.

The three-foot-wide cubby, in the bowels of a University of Chicago laboratory, contains a slim rack of hardware discreetly firing quantum particles into a fiber-optic network. The goal: to use nature’s smallest objects to share information under encryption that cannot be broken — and eventually to connect a network of quantum computers capable of herculean calculations.

The modest trappings of Equipment Closet LL211A belie the importance of a project at the forefront of one of the world’s hottest technology competitions. The United States, China and others are vying to harness the bizarre properties of quantum particles to process information in powerful new ways — technology that could confer major economic and national security benefits to the countries that dominate it.

A storage area outside of the quantum computing lab at the University of Chicago’s Eckhardt Research Center. (Taylor Glascock for The Washington Post)

An equipment closet contains a fiber link through which University of Chicago researchers fire quantum particles to Argonne National Laboratory in the city's western suburbs. (Taylor Glascock for The Washington Post)

Quantum research is so important to the future of the internet that it is drawing new federal funding, including from the recently adopted Chips and Science Act. That’s because, if it pans out, the quantum internet could safeguard financial transactions and health-care data, prevent identity theft and stop hostile state hackers in their tracks.

Just this past week, three physicists shared the Nobel Prize for quantum research that helped pave the way for this future internet.

Seven basic questions about quantum technology, answered

Quantum research still has plenty of obstacles to overcome before it reaches widespread use. But banks, health-care companies and others are starting to run experiments on the quantum internet. Some industries are also tinkering with early stage quantum computers to see whether they might eventually crack problems that current computers can’t, such as discovering new pharmaceuticals to treat intractable diseases.

Grant Smith, a graduate student on the University of Chicago’s quantum research team, said it’s too soon to imagine all of the potential applications.

“When people first made the rudimentary internets connecting research-level computers and universities and national labs, they couldn’t have predicted e-commerce,” he said during a recent tour of the university’s labs.

SpaceX rolls out Starlink aviation product for satellite internet to private jets

SpaceX rolled out aviation-specific Starlink satellite internet service on Tuesday, with Elon Musk’s company looking to expand further into the inflight WiFi market.

The company is charging $150,000 for the hardware needed to connect a jet to Starlink, with monthly service costs between $12,500 a month and $25,000 a month. Deliveries to aviation customers are scheduled to “start in mid-2023,” the company said, and reservations require a $5,000 initial payment.

SpaceX advertises “global coverage” through a flat-panel antenna that customers would install on top of an aircraft. SpaceX said it is seeking Federal Aviation Administration certificates for a variety of aircraft, most of which are typically owned and operated as private jets.

As for the quality of the service, SpaceX says Starlink aviation customers can expect speeds up to 350 Megabits per second, “enabling all passengers to access streaming-capable internet at the same time.”

“Passengers can engage in activities previously not functional in flight, including video calls, online gaming, virtual private networks and other high data rate activities,” SpaceX said on its Starlink website.

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SpaceX won’t install the antennas, however, noting that customers “will have to arrange the installation with a provider.”

But the company’s aviation service does not require a long-term contract, with SpaceX saying “all plans include unlimited data” and the “hardware is under warranty for as long as you subscribe to the service.”

One of the company’s flat aviation-specific Starlink antennas is seen on top of an aircraft.

SpaceX

SpaceX has signed early deals with commercial air carriers, inking agreements with Hawaiian Airlines and semiprivate charter provider JSX to provide Wi-Fi on planes. Up until now SpaceX has been approved to conduct a limited amount of inflight testing, seeing the aviation Wi-Fi market as “ripe for an overhaul.”

This latest offering marks a direct challenge to leading inflight connectivity provider Gogo. But William Blair analyst Louie DiPalma said in a note to investors on Wednesday that the Starlink product “appears to be too big and too expensive to challenge” Gogo’s position in the small-to-midsize business jet market and that “this will likely come as a welcome relief to Gogo investors.”

“Starlink’s entry into the business jet connectivity market has pressured Gogo shares. We anticipate that Gogo will be able to fend off competition because of its unique air-to-ground cellular network. Gogo is the dominant provider of inflight connectivity for business jets, and serves over 6,600 business jets with its cellular network and an additional 4,500 aircraft with [satellite] connectivity,” DiPalma said.

Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note that, while Starlink’s “premium pricing” is expected to have “a relatively limited impact to Gogo in the near-term,” SpaceX’s new service “highlights growing competitive
intensity in a market that Gogo has historically dominated with >80% market share.”

Starlink is the SpaceX’s plan to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites, designed to deliver high-speed internet to anywhere on the planet. SpaceX has launched nearly 3,500 Starlink satellites into orbit, and the service had about 500,000 subscribers as of June. The company has raised capital steadily to fund development of both Starlink and its next-generation rocket Starship, with $2 billion brought in just this year.

The FCC has authorized SpaceX to provide mobile Starlink internet service, with the company’s product offerings now including services to residential, business, RV, maritime and aviation customers.

Asia, Middle East ramp up diesel exports to Europe in October

SINGAPORE/LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Oil traders are ramping up diesel exports from Asia and the Middle East to Europe in October to profit from a wide price gap between the regions as weeks-long strikes at French refineries have tightened stocks, although a steep backwardation may cap volumes, according to trade sources and shipping data.

The price spread between front-month Singapore 10 ppm sulphur gasoil swaps and the ICE low sulphur gasoil futures contract, also known as exchange of futures for swaps (EFS) , was close to minus $150 a tonne on Wednesday, versus minus $29 a year ago, data on Refinitiv Eikon showed, making it attractive for traders to send oil to Europe.

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"East of Suez is sending everything they can ship... it's just a question of how much China exports in November," a Europe-based trader said.

For October, around 289,000 tonnes of gasoil will be loaded from South Korea and China to northwest Europe, up from 137,500 tonnes in September, ship tracking data from Refinitiv showed.

Exports from India and the Middle East for October to northwest Europe were at around 480,000 tonnes and 834,000 tonnes respectively, compared with 361,000 tonnes and 511,310 tonnes a month ago, the data showed.

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The trader estimated that Europe may import about 3 million tonnes (750,000-850,000 barrels per day) from east of Suez in November, of which the Middle East could account for two-third of the volume. Traders expect the bulk of supplies to Europe to come from India and the Middle East, on shorter shipping times.

Asia's top fuel exporters in South Korea and Taiwan have issued a flurry of spot tenders this month, while China will also step up diesel exports after Beijing increased allocation.