E X P E R T O P I N I O N
Wichita State University are so important. By bringing neutral, high-performance interconnection into the heartland, we’ re not just solving the latency problem; we’ re rewiring the connectivity map.
As Witherspoon put it,“ It’ s not just about bringing fast connectivity to the middle of the country in areas that don’ t have it, but also for the redundancy and resilience that the entire country needs so that we’ re not solely dependent on the few nodes that have already been built.”
3. Round-trip delay will define AI connectivity
Round-trip delay( RTD) is becoming the defining metric for AI viability. It measures the time it takes for data to travel from the user to the compute instance and back again. In the context of AI inference, that journey needs to be completed in just a few milliseconds. And yet, RTD remains poorly understood, often confused with‘ fast fibre’ or dismissed as a non-issue by those who focus solely on power and compute capacity.
Newby made the point with some clarity:“ Gone are the days where you could say,‘ I ' ve got powered land and fibre is a mile away, so latency isn’ t a problem.’ None of that makes sense anymore.”
He’ s right. The location of compute power, the route of fiber, and the presence of a neutral interconnection point all now define whether an AI application can function as intended. This is especially true for applications that require deterministic routing, where the AI doesn’ t just need access to data, but needs it from a specific source, at a specific time, through a specific path. That’ s what RTD is really about: not just speed, but certainty. And to achieve that, we need to bring routing, interconnection, and AI workloads into much closer physical alignment.
4. Enterprises must control their data journey, or be disrupted by it
In a post-AI world, the enterprises that succeed will be those that treat digital infrastructure as a core business asset instead of just a back-end IT function. Enterprises must think about their networks the same way they think about physical supply chains; something to control, optimise, and secure. That means building presence in regional interconnection hubs, engaging directly with Internet Exchanges and designing architectures that support real-time performance at scale. If you want to monetise a digital asset effectively – whether it’ s a vehicle generating real-time telemetry, or a financial service delivering AI-driven insights – you need to control how and where that data flows.
And this isn’ t just theoretical. As I said in our discussion, if automakers don’ t control the data flowing into and out of the car, someone else will. The same logic applies across every industry. Witherspoon summarised this well when she said,“ It’ s not nearly enough to just think about your own building, service, or product, because with inference – with all the data that’ s moving – you don’ t know where you’ re going to connect or who you’ re going to connect to.”
Enterprises must extend their digital presence beyond their walls and build infrastructure strategies that align with how AI actually operates. Those who don’ t will soon find themselves disrupted by those who do.
5. We need a new Internet for the AI era – and it starts locally
We’ ve entered a new phase of digital infrastructure – one that requires us to rethink not just how the Internet works, but where it works. AI can’ t be built solely on hyperscale data centers or global cloud backbones. It needs a new layer: local, neutral, high-performance interconnection that sits closer to users, devices, and machines.
We’ re not talking about replacing the global Internet – just filling in the gaps. The future will depend on a distributed mesh of IXs, regional edge hubs and localised routing platforms that can support deterministic, low-latency data flows at scale. That’ s why we’ re building smaller, more accessible Internet Exchange models – what I like to call the“ pizza box” IX – that can be deployed anywhere from shopping malls and universities to roadside fibre huts.
Infrastructure isn’ t just an enabler of AI – it’ s the foundation. And unless we build it where people live and work, AI will remain an uneven promise: powerful in some places, inaccessible in others. The good news is that we now have a blueprint – combining neutral facilities, regional IXs, and public-private cooperation – to ensure that the AI revolution reaches every corner of the map. �
44 www. intelligentdatacentres. com