Fiber infrastructure is becoming increasingly important to UK data center operators, and lack of availability is holding back projects across the country.

That's according to a survey from networking firm Neos Networks, conducted in partnertship with Censuswide.

The survey, commissioned by Neos in August of this year, had a sample size of 300 composed of “100 data center decision-makers, 100 large enterprise tech/IT decision-makers (with at least 1,000 employees), and 100 local government stakeholders.”

According to the survey, fiber availability has caused delays to infrastructure projects. 82 percent of UK data center operators had delayed site builds or expansion due to fiber availability, 89 percent of local government stakeholders said that fiber gaps have delayed infrastructure projects, and 45 percent of enterprises cited fiber as the key bottleneck holding back AI and digital infrastructure.

CEO of Neos Lee Myall gave DCD an example of a common delay, saying that the buildout of fiber depends on duct infrastructure, which means that data center projects in areas outside of the UK’s traditional data center hotspot – Greater London – will require extensive civil engineering and planning.

“The permission can be closing roads, closing footpaths, which is not easy to do, and local landowners, and so on and so forth. So suddenly, with these new locations, the time frame for connectivity starts to become longer, and the demand on that connectivity goes up as well.”

Myall added that connectivity was typically the third thing prioritized by a data center operator behind land and energy. But the movement of data center development to other parts of the UK, along with the rapid rate of uptake and the buildup of traffic, means that “connectivity is chasing up.”

“I’m not going to say a second or first, it’s still third, but the focus on it is much more intense than it was even a couple years ago.”

The UK government has announced two AI Growth Zones in the country so far, with the first located in Culham, Oxfordshire, and the second in Blyth and Cobalt Park, located near Newcastle. Operators looking to build data centers and other AI infrastructure in the Zones will benefit from expedited access to power, streamlined planning processes, and a host of other incentives.

Ninety six percent of operators agree that the zones have influenced their decisions around expansion and site selection, and a majority of participants (28 percent) expect that most data centers in the UK would be built in the north of the UK, which includes Scotland and the North of England.

Greater London still remains an attractive hub, with 23 percent expecting that most of the UK’s data centers would be built there.

Although no data center respondents considered the UK’s fiber unprepared, 41 percent of respondents judged network infrastructure to be only partially ready.

Neos is a UK-based telecoms provider that operates a 34,000km (21,000 miles) fiber network with 500 exchanges. It primarily provides services to businesses.

In June, the company announced Project Reach, a telecoms infrastructure modernization project conducted with network company Freshwave and railway company Network Rail. This will see Neos bolster telecoms infrastructure along railways.