Hello All!
We have been in the hosting/colo business for over 4 years and now have a great opportunity to partner with another company to open a 26,000 sq ft datacenter with room to expand further.

Obviously the easy (and most popular) way to bring bandwidth to the site is to simply purchase multiple lines from several providers. My question is: at what point do providers begin to establish a POP at your facility to directly service your customers?

Perhaps I’m going off in the wrong direction but my thought was that if we can convince a few providers to establish POPs in our datacenter at the beginning (based on location, space available, pre-sale commitments, facilities, projected bandwidth needs, etc.) then we would significantly reduce our initial bandwidth costs and allow clients to either buy mixed bandwidth from us or connect directly to one of the carriers—we win by having lower bandwidth costs, clients win by having a greater choice of providers, and providers win by having a relatively large customer base in a small area.

Assuming that is just a dream and carriers only grow their on-site facilities as bandwidth needs increase how do DCs handle cost/fees when several large clients begin to connect directly to a provider? Do we live with only the revenue from space and power? Do we charge the provider for space occupied in the DC? Do we charge the client for the lines run outside of their cage/suite?

Thanks in advance for your input,
jjs