In an exclusive interview with Telecom Review Americas, Jim Fagan—the newly appointed CEO of EXA Infrastructure as of August 1—shared his strategic vision for EXA Infrastructure and highlighted the company’s plans for sustained growth and innovation as it navigates the rapidly changing digital landscape under his leadership.
Congratulations on your appointment as CEO. What are you prioritizing as the new CEO of EXA Infrastructure? What are you most excited about?
Firstly, I am incredibly excited to take on this new role and lead EXA Infrastructure into the next phase of its growth journey. Before joining the business, I was impressed by the company’s level of ambition and the way EXA Infrastructure innovated and competed in the market. It was clearly out-pacing other players in the industry in terms of investment, and in the digital infrastructure business, this is a must-have.
Settling into the CEO role, my first few weeks have been spent listening to our customers, our people, and our industry partners. We are a highly focused business, and as I think about my priorities, I intend to build on the foundations that are already in place.
Front of mind for me will be continuing and accelerating everything that differentiates us. This includes meeting our customers’ needs with robust and scalable infrastructure through a solid investment strategy, delivering complex and large-scale digital infrastructure projects also led by customers’ needs, and forging industry partnerships that contribute to the broader ecosystem.
Central to what makes EXA Infrastructure special is our engineering capabilities and doing the ‘hard stuff’. It is important to me that we are at the forefront of the industry by investing in the best available technology and providing the expected level of expertise in planning and delivering future-proof digital infrastructure. Central to realizing this is a focus on our people, and we have a remarkable team at EXA Infrastructure. Making EXA Infrastructure a great place to work that attracts the very best talent in the industry is what will set us apart.
The third priority will be related to our geographical focus and presence. Today, EXA Infrastructure operates across Europe and North America, however, the U.S. business is relatively nascent for us. Growing our presence in North America to serve more customers across our focus segments will allow us to leverage our formidable trans-Atlantic capabilities. I am excited about the opportunity for EXA Infrastructure to be the digital bridge between North America and Europe.
As to what excites me? Lots of things excite me about this industry and the opportunities ahead for EXA Infrastructure, but one thing in particular would be the challenge I see in front of us in terms of providing the best infrastructure platform to sustain the impact of the AI wave. We are increasingly seeing our customers dealing with larger amounts of data and expressing a greater desire for diversity and flexibility. They need a partner that can unlock access to a wide digital ecosystem in different geographies, is able to understand their needs, and is able to respond at the pace they need.
How does EXA Infrastructure ensure seamless and reliable wavelength delivery across diverse network paths, especially during peak traffic periods or in the event of disruptions?
EXA Infrastructure is Europe’s largest digital infrastructure owner, backed by over EUR 300 million in new network investments since its launch in September 2021.
One of our key market differentiators is the sheer size of our established and growing network. We work hard to ensure that growth is always combined with the resilience the industry needs. We build with diversification in mind because it is fundamental for seamless and reliable connectivity.
For example, EXA Infrastructure is currently the only operator able to offer four diverse routes from Sicily, providing greater choice and resiliency for businesses. Additionally, we offer six fully-diversified Transatlantic Routes, resulting in the strongest U.S. and EU terrestrial combination, lowest latency and a variety of route choices. This means EXA Infrastructure is uniquely positioned to capture emerging connectivity demand waves due to its network presence in both the mature, growing and early-stage markets.
We also proactively survey our customers to understand where they need to be in three-to-five (or more) years’ time, with the intent of being amongst the pioneers in these locations. Operating in such a strategic way not only enables EXA Infrastructure to grow with its customers but also drive industry developments.
From a technology perspective, in the past 12 months, EXA Infrastructure has upgraded over 90% of its network to flex-grid technology, enabling dynamic bandwidth allocation and 400G services, ensuring efficient and reliable wavelength delivery even during peak traffic periods, and facilitating faster service activation.
Can you describe how EXA Infrastructure's submarine cable systems are designed to scale efficiently and support the growing bandwidth demands of data-intensive applications?
EXA Infrastructure exists to serve high-growth customers with high-bandwidth requirements. With that as our core focus, our investment approach and network expansion are tightly interwoven. We aim to be the reliable operator capable of guaranteeing alternative routing, while being conscious of the fact that subsea and terrestrial routes are highly interconnected.
Redundancy, business resiliency, and continuous planning, together with risk mitigation strategies, are some of the items we bring to the table when we start any discussion around subsea services.
From a technical perspective, let me point out the following aspects:
- High-Capacity Upgrades: Our extensive submarine cable systems, including the recent additions of high-capacity Trans-Atlantic cables like HAVFRUE, Dunant, and Amitié, are designed to handle growing bandwidth demands, with capacities exceeding 144 Tbps to support data-intensive applications across continents.
- Scalable Flex-Grid Technology: Our upgrade to flex-grid technology allows for scalable wavelength provisioning, enabling efficient bandwidth expansion and rapid service activation to meet the evolving needs of high-bandwidth applications and hyperscale data centers.
- Strategic Submarine Landing Stations: We have built and maintain 20 CLSs across Europe, Canada and North America. Our new open cable landing stations in Genoa and Mazara (both in Italy) enhance network diversity and scalability, and improve service quality, resulting in lower costs and better network resilience.
Can you discuss recent developments or strategic partnerships that have enhanced the company's submarine cable connectivity in the region?
Partnerships are a key focus for EXA Infrastructure, particularly when it comes to the interconnection of subsea cables with terrestrial infrastructure. Some recent highlights include:
- HAVFRUE Cable Integration: EXA Infrastructure partnered with Bulk Fiber Networks and NJFX to integrate the HAVFRUE subsea cable with its pan-European network. The cable, spanning 7,851 km and boasting a system capacity of over 144 Tbps, marks the first transatlantic system connecting Norway and provides onward connectivity to hundreds of data centers and cable landing stations, allowing customers to benefit from diverse options, extremely high availability and green data centers in the Nordic region.
- Telecom Egypt Partnership: EXA Infrastructure’s strategic partnership with Telecom Egypt connects its European infrastructure with Telecom Egypt’s cable landing stations in Egypt. This collaboration enhances connectivity between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and now provides customers from Asia and the Middle East with two routes from Egypt to Europe. The partnership essentially makes us a one-stop-shop for traffic between the regions.
- The Mediterranean Region: Overall, this region has seen major developments and partnerships—involving different partners such as the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), Grid Telecom, and Islalink—all aimed at delivering leading edge data connectivity for Greece as well as neighboring countries across southern Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East.
EXA Infrastructure recently announced new fiber connectivity between Ashburn and Atlanta; a very strategic route. Can you please tell us more about your plans for North America?
As the home of some of the world’s leading public cloud hyperscalers, content production powerhouses and AI-influenced innovators, North America generates huge volumes of data traffic. The Transatlantic submarine cables that connect North America to Europe are therefore critical to the global ecosystem and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
By ensuring we have the latest fiber in place, facilitate route diversification, and continuously out-invest the market for new infrastructure, we are prepared to cater to the demand for AI-related bandwidth across the Atlantic and beyond. The need for cross-continent bandwidth shows no signs of abating; unless there are subsea cables fully integrated into robust networks, capable of providing onward connectivity to hundreds of on-net data centers and cable landing stations, their significance will be diminished—This is why we are also investing in new routes in North America.
Our new route between Ashburn and Atlanta is a critical expansion strategically designed to support the rapidly growing data center market in Atlanta, which has seen a 211% increase in data center projects between H1 2023 and H2 2023. Atlanta remains the fastest-growing data center hub in the U.S. This new route, which follows the base of the Appalachians, offers highly resilient and diverse connectivity, setting it apart from existing options. The deployment of the DWDM Flex Ciena system will ensure optimal latency and bandwidth capabilities of up to 400G, making it ideal for data-intensive applications, including those in AI-focused industries.
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