LINX brings AWS and Google Cloud links to Manchester from £50

The London Internet Exchange (LINX) said on 13 October that its Cloud Connect service is now live at LINX Manchester, giving member networks direct access to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform through the LINX ports they already have. The announcement, issued as LINX appeared at the Capacity Europe conference in London, also pointed to a three-year strategy, launched this year, in which chief executive Jennifer Holmes names the North as a priority.

LINX is a member-owned, not-for-profit internet exchange founded in 1994. Its members are networks, from internet service providers to hosting firms, rather than the businesses that buy from them. Most of those members connect in London: LINX says more than 75% of its 900-plus members are present at its two London exchanges, LON1 and LON2.

Manchester is smaller but growing. LINX says the exchange now has more than 130 networks connected through five partner data centers, and that its traffic passed 1Tbps earlier this year, which LINX says places it well within Europe’s top 10 exchanges.

Before this month, Cloud Connect was not live at LINX Manchester, and LINX’s service page names LON1 in London as the only other exchange where it is currently available. Listing Manchester at the same member fees as LON1 puts those links within reach of the regional networks connected there, which widens the set of suppliers able to offer a business in the North a private route into the two clouds.

What the Manchester price list says

LINX’s published Cloud Connect fees for Manchester start at £50 for a 50Mbps connection and run to £160 for 1Gbps and £550 for 10Gbps. Those fees sit on top of the monthly membership fee, which is £100 at Manchester and covers the first 10GE port and the first peering, Microsoft Azure Peering Service, private VLAN or closed user group service of up to 4Gbps.

The price list names Azure ExpressRoute alongside AWS Direct Connect and Google Cloud at Manchester, although the 13 October announcement mentions only AWS and Google Cloud going live. For ExpressRoute, LINX notes that Microsoft requires a resilient service with a primary and a backup connection, so the fee doubles.

Peering is also cheaper in Manchester than in London. LINX lists a monthly 1Gbps peering service at £11 in Manchester, against £38 at LON1 and £15 at LON2.

Why the route matters to buyers

LINX’s case for the service is about the path traffic takes. Reaching Azure, AWS or Google Cloud over the public internet “means unpredictable performance, added latency and less control over where your data goes”, its Cloud Connect page says. The announcement ties the Manchester launch to keeping network traffic regional and to the need “to reduce latency, increase resilience and improve control over cloud connectivity”.

For a mid-market firm running finance, ERP or contact center software in AWS or Google Cloud, latency and resilience show up in how calls sound, how quickly systems respond and what a provider will commit to in a service level agreement. A regional provider that can hand off cloud traffic at a Manchester exchange has one more option to price into that agreement.

Manchester also offers distance from London. The announcement describes the city as providing “diversity and resilience from London”, and LINX has spent this year pushing networks to spread their London traffic. Its Metro Resilience pricing discounts mirrored services across LON1 and LON2 and, LINX says, returned more than £41,000 to members in July alone.

What LINX has not said

The announcement leaves gaps. LINX has not said how many members have ordered Cloud Connect in Manchester, which providers plan to resell it to business customers, or what those customers will pay once a provider adds its own access circuit and margin. The published fees are what a member network pays LINX, not what a business sees on its invoice.

Holmes placed the North in a longer plan. “A strong focus and growth in the North of the UK is also part of our strategy for the next three years,” she said, adding that this “may be new strategic partners or product innovation”. She also said LINX is “confident to have the engineering in place” for growing AI workloads and cloud demand.

A provider connected only in Manchester can now sell a private route into AWS or Google Cloud through LINX without first reaching London, at the same member fees LINX charges at LON1. That gives a business in the North more suppliers able to quote for the route. What it pays will turn on which regional providers take the service up and what they add for access circuits and margin.