The shift in Europe’s data centre and interconnect market well beyond the traditional locations of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris is creating some promising dynamics elsewhere on the continent. This is happening not least to the south, where interconnection opportunities are opening up between regions.

Italy, for example, has seen a surge in subsea cable projects passing through the country, as well as new waves of data centre development. This is helping drive interconnection between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Far East.

Milan in the north of the country is at the heart of this growth, with over 400MW of installed capacity currently and almost 700MW more expected by 2028, according to some estimates.

“Italy is booming as a data centre and interconnection market at the moment, and Milan is a hotspot for expected growth,” says Mauro Magrassi, CTO of the carrier-neutral and data-centre-neutral Milan Internet Exchange (MIX), Italy’s largest internet exchange point (IXP).

Growing the ecosystem

Yet the story behind MIX’s success is not only about traffic growth; it is also about the infrastructure ecosystem that enables interconnections to scale efficiently, reliably and sustainably.

Today, MIX counts on more than 460 interconnected networks, with a platform capable of handling almost 22Tbps of installed capacity. Daily traffic peaks currently exceed 3.7Tbps, confirming the growing strategic role of the exchange within the Italian and Southern European internet ecosystems. This scale allows operators, cloud providers, content networks and enterprises to exchange traffic with low latency, greater resilience and improved control over data flows.

Unlike many European IXPs, MIX combines the role of internet exchange with direct ownership of data centre infrastructure. This makes such facilities themselves strategic assets functional to the development of interconnection by fostering connection density, simplifying peering opportunities and supporting the continuous expansion of the network ecosystem.

In 2025, the company inaugurated DC3, a new data room within its historic Caldera data centre in Milan. The facility increased the campus footprint to about 1,400 square metres and up to 2MW of power capacity, further strengthening MIX’s readiness for future growth.

But opportunities for MIX extend beyond its Milan stronghold. As edge connectivity gains weight across Southern Europe, new locations are becoming attractive for strengthening reach and ensuring low latency in places where fresh routes and demand converge.

‘Glocal’ approach

As a result, MIX has also added regional points of presence (PoPs) in Palermo, Bologna, Rome and Caserta near Naples in the past five years.

Furthermore, last year the company established its first presence outside Italy, setting up an IXP in Thessaloniki in northern Greece that also acts as a key connectivity hub linking to the Balkans, Central Europe, Turkey and the Middle East.

Magrassi explains how MIX is taking a ‘glocal’ approach, combining both a push towards greater international appeal and the continued goal of improving local connectivity. Under this strategy, the company expects to add one or two other PoPs in Italy over the next 12 months, while ultimately also adding other international locations.

“We want to become more international, and are trying to support large networks and content providers, but at the same time local network players and the likes of family businesses covering rural areas,” says Magrassi. “A strong challenge that we face daily is being able to implement services for very different organisations across the board.”

Agile and experienced

Part of overcoming this challenge is the agility built into MIX’s DNA through its streamlined workforce, says Magrassi, along with the over 25 years of experience the company has already gained in the industry.

“We are a very agile organisation and want to ultimately help the overall connectivity market and ecosystem grow rather than pushing for every last penny of revenues as our main goal,” says Magrassi. “We have all the bricks in place to replicate the success story in terms of both data centre and internet exchange development.”

In growing its presence, MIX emphasises its focus on building the internet community rather than charging premium prices for players to access exchanges and data centres. Prices for cross-connects can be just a tenth of those in commercial data centres in more advanced markets, says Magrassi, while MIX bundles in some free-of-charge rack space in facilities to support developing ISPs.

The company also seeks to promote the community aspect of data centres and internet exchanges through training programmes and initiatives to introduce secondary school and university students to the workings of such facilities.

“We’re looking to disseminate the concept of the internet as a community of players that need to cooperate with each other to develop the market,” says Magrassi. “To help catalyse the industry, we emphasise that creating value is not about just building your business in isolation, and that growing the network of networks is a community-driven phenomenon.”