Interoute makes a stand against data centre industry’s £70m patch tax

Data centre owners practice of charging monthly recurring fees for static data centre cables is unjustified says Interoute.

  • Thursday, 25th September 2014 Posted 10 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Interoute has opened the doors of its new London data centre and announced that any customers using its European data centres will not be subjected to the standard industry practice of recurring colocation patch costs. Interoute estimates that businesses in the UK currently spend between £70 and £100 million a year1 on recurring patch charges. The London City data centre is Interoute’s eleventh data centre and forms part of a chain of distributed data centres across Europe connected by Interoute’s pan-European fibre optic network.


Jonathan Wright VP Service provider commented: “The demand for data centre services has never been higher than it is today. Almost every business is a digital business in some way and carriers and businesses alike need secure, well-connected environments to enable business to flourish. There are many legitimate expenses involved in managing a high quality data centre, but charging a monthly fee for a piece of cable that nobody touches or moves is not one of them. We’ve taken the launch of the Interoute London City Data centre as an opportunity to tear up the rules on patch pricing so we can deliver even better value for our customers.”


36 million adults access the internet every day in the UK which coupled with tighter regulations and data sovereignty legislation is helping drive demand for local managed hosting. With 11 data centres and eight virtual data centres distributed globally, Interoute makes it simple for businesses to be closer to their end users, delivering faster services, across the world.


From today customers using any of Interoute’s 11 data centres or 31 additional colocation facilities will only have to pay a one off set up fee for any connecting patch, regardless of the length of contract.