Network provider Southern Light has announced its first data center in the city of Mobile Alabama, providing services to customers in the region. 

Mobile-based Southern Light provides fiber optic cable infrastructure in the southeastern US, using 5000 miles of fiber in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and northern Florida. The company has more 1000 customers, as well as contracts with telcos to connect 1500 regional cell towers. Southern’s business Internet services include dedicated connections from 1 to 10 Gbps, dark fiber and private line services. 

More edge capacity needed

Southern’s data center offers colocation and managed networking services on a contract or ad hoc basis for customers. Because of Southern’s connection to the telco business its data centers are configured to support both AC and DC power for customer equipment.

With an extensive fiber network, adding edge data centers  is the logical progression as customers and vendors realize that proximity to data is an important component in future growth. Minimizing backhaul and latency is becoming a very import aspect of business network design.