The Global Pattern: Why Major Connectivity Hubs Concentrate
This infrastructure concentration pattern isn’t unique to any single market, it’s how connectivity ecosystems naturally evolve worldwide. Major European hubs demonstrate exactly how and why this happens.
Amsterdam serves as Europe’s primary digital gateway, with massive concentration around the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX). Initial carrier-neutral data centres became the main peering points, attracting vast networks to a small physical area. Whilst newer facilities have emerged, legacy connections and business-critical peering relationships remain anchored at original high-density locations, where migration becomes prohibitively complex and expensive for networks whose entire operational architecture depends on established peering relationships.
Frankfurt houses the German Commercial Internet Exchange (DE-CIX), historically one of the world’s largest internet exchanges by peak traffic. Much of Germany’s and Central Europe’s internet traffic flows through core data centres housing DE-CIX infrastructure. Whilst DE-CIX distributes across several facilities within Frankfurt, reliance on the metropolitan area for this critical exchange means regional issues pose systemic risk. The cost and operational risk of moving peering agreements actively discourages migration to less dense but more diverse locations.
Paris attracts substantial network traffic through carrier hotel facilities that became primary landing points for international submarine cables and large national carriers. Whilst new facilities are being built, foundational national connectivity often still relies on links originating from older, central, high-density sites. Established carriers remain reluctant to decommission core infrastructure at these highly-connected locations, maintaining them as essential interconnection points even whilst using newer facilities for expansion.
The universal challenge: Once a connectivity hub establishes itself, network effects create powerful incentives to remain concentrated there. Peering relationships, operational complexity, migration costs, and business continuity risk during transition all favour maintaining infrastructure at established locations, even when businesses intellectually understand the concentration risk.
How Connectivity Infrastructure Concentration Develops
Infrastructure concentration emerges wherever connectivity ecosystems mature. The pattern repeats because it’s economically and operationally logical. Initial facilities that attract cable landings and establish peering relationships become natural concentration points. Networks cluster where interconnection already exists, creating powerful economic incentives to remain concentrated even as businesses recognise the dependency risks this creates.
Here’s the uncomfortable reality: you can’t truly validate physical infrastructure diversity without extraordinary effort. Several years ago, municipal workers cut a telecommunications cable in a major European city, and airlines across the globe experienced significant operational disruption. These airlines had “redundant” connectivity from multiple Tier 1 carriers – different provider brands with different contracts. But underneath those different providers, traffic was flowing through shared physical infrastructure because it offered the most efficient routing. No one had verified actual physical diversity because providers don’t typically share detailed infrastructure path information with each other. Genuine diversity requires understanding which providers actually own capacity on undersea cable systems versus simply purchasing capacity from others. Some carriers own portions of undersea cables and operate their own physical fibre, whilst others, including major mobile network operators despite their extensive networks, ultimately purchase capacity from these infrastructure owners. Understanding these relationships helps determine whether your “diverse” providers genuinely use independent physical paths. The challenge for businesses planning redundancy architecture is that short of physically inspecting cable routes, you’re depending on provider documentation and technical representations. Until a significant incident actually occurs, you won’t know with absolute certainty whether your diverse connectivity paths share critical infrastructure dependencies. If you’re architecting business continuity for operations with significant connectivity dependencies, several questions deserve serious consideration: Infrastructure location verification: Where do your undersea cables actually land, and do different providers use genuinely separate landing points? Which facilities house your providers’ interconnection infrastructure, and do your “diverse” services rely on shared physical locations? Ownership versus leasing: Do your providers own physical cable capacity or lease from others who might share infrastructure with your other providers? Understanding ownership relationships reveals whether supposedly diverse services ultimately depend on the same physical infrastructure. Dependency mapping: Have you mapped your connectivity dependencies to understand what happens if a major infrastructure facility experiences a significant incident? If your honest assessment reveals that multiple “redundant” services share critical infrastructure dependencies, you’re carrying concentration risk that deserves business continuity planning attention. Infrastructure resilience planning requires understanding the physical architecture underneath provider marketing claims. Whether your concentration exists in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, London, or any major connectivity hub, the principle remains consistent: genuine redundancy demands verification of physical diversity, not just multiple provider relationships. Infrastructure resilience planning works best before incidents rather than during crisis response. The time to understand your connectivity dependencies is whilst your operations run normally, not when an incident has already disrupted business continuity. For business leaders responsible for operational continuity, the question isn’t whether your MSP can provide redundant connectivity, most can quote additional circuits readily enough. The question is whether your MSP understands global infrastructure architecture patterns well enough to map dependencies you might not be aware of, research solutions that deliver genuine physical diversity, and engage in consultative planning that addresses your actual business requirements rather than simply maximising their connectivity sales. Business continuity architecture requires understanding the infrastructure underneath provider relationships, not just accepting marketing claims about diversity and redundancy. That understanding determines whether you’re implementing genuine resilience or purchasing comfortable assumptions that share the same critical dependencies.The Redundancy That Isn’t
Verifying Your Connectivity Architecture
Planning Architecture Before Crisis
Infrastructure resilience requires understanding the physical architecture underneath provider marketing claims.
