Pihana recently opened a 66,000 square-foot Internet exchange data center in Los Angeles, after building its first center in Honolulu. An Internet exchange data center is a building that houses computers, servers and fiber optic cabling for telecoms, Internet Service Providers, content companies and other firms that exchange data. The system is analogous to an air travel system. The data center serves as a meeting point, or airport.
Data are the passengers, and ISPs and telcos are the airlines.
Tokyo will open in the next 30 days. The company also plans to build additional data centers in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia, he added. Staffing up Pihana's strategy involves building the data centers independent of major telecommunications companies that have dominated the Asian market. Internet traffic in the Asia-Pacific region is clogging the system, and these new centers will provide relief, the company said. An added benefit is that traffic within Asia won't have to be routed to the U.S. mainland, as it is now.