Colt Technology Services expands high bandwidth IP Transit to new European cities

Colt Technology Services has announced new 400 Gigabit per second IP Transit ports across the popular FLAP route, connecting Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris and boosting its previous investment in 400G IP ports in Marseille, Oslo, Prague, Sofia, Stockholm and Zurich. The latest expansion supports increasing demand for ultra fast, low latency Internet infrastructure as businesses and economies build connected digital services and applications to generate growth.

IP Transit is a networking service which allows network traffic to pass from one ISP to another, reaching every part of the global internet. The internet is a network of networks; every network has a unique identifier, known as the autonomous system (AS) number. Following the acquisition of Lumen EMEA in November 2023, Colt owns the EMEA part of AS3356, the largest Internet backbone globally according to CAIDA. Larger IP backbones with more Autonomous Systems connected are more resilient to network failures, as they have multiple paths to reach other networks in the event of a network outage

Peter Coppens, VP Infrastructure and Connectivity Solutions, Colt Technology Services, said, “Today’s internet economy is worth trillions of dollars and needs a powerful and reliable digital Internet infrastructure to underpin it. Colt owns the EMEA section of the largest Internet backbone in the world, and as such this infrastructure plays a vital role in our customers’ growth strategies as they automate and digitalise more and more services and look to new markets to drive revenue. By expanding and investing in our internet backbone, we’re helping to give our customers the best chance of success.”

The network expansion is announced as Colt reinforces its commitment to AS3356, which it co-manages with Lumen, Inc. Colt and Lumen have engaged in a long-term partnership to maintain and operate this IP network following Colt’s acquisition of Lumen EMEA. The AS3356 internet backbone will maintain its extensive global reach enabling Lumen and Colt to continue to serve their customers with industry-leading IP connectivity.

As Peter Coppens explained, “There are currently over 17 billion IP connected devices in the world, expected to rise to almost 30 billion by 2030. Think how many you have in your own home: your mobile, connected printer, laptop, smart speaker, smart TV, gaming console. Each one identifies with an IP address, and some of these are routed over the Internet. AS3356 is the largest IP network in the world, which means that more IP addresses are connected directly and indirectly to it than any other network. Depending on your location, it’s highly likely that you’ve transited over our amazing global network without even realising it”.