Cross-connect

A cross-connect is a physical cable link — fiber or copper — run between two customers or between a customer and a carrier inside the same data center, typically routed through the meet-me room. It provides a direct, private, low-latency connection that bypasses the public internet and local loop charges. Data centers charge a one-time installation fee plus a monthly recurring fee, commonly $100-300 per month per fiber pair in major carrier hotels, making cross-connects a high-margin revenue line for interconnection-rich operators. Cross-connect counts are a key health metric for colocation ecosystems: Equinix, for example, reports over 480,000 cross-connects globally. Typical uses include connecting to cloud on-ramps, IX peering ports, and carrier backbones.