Carrier-neutral colocation explained
Quick answer
A carrier-neutral facility doesn't lock you into one network provider. Multiple independent carriers and networks are present in the building, so you can choose your own uplink providers, negotiate your own terms, or run diverse, multi-homed connectivity for resilience. A carrier-locked facility offers only whatever single carrier the facility itself uses, which means less choice and less resilience against that one carrier having an outage.
What "carrier-neutral" means
A data center facility needs network connectivity to the outside world, and that connectivity comes from carriers, the companies that operate the fibre and transit networks a facility plugs into. In a carrier-neutral facility, more than one of these carriers has a physical presence in the building, with their own fibre entering the facility and their own equipment in the meet-me room. As a customer colocating equipment there, you're not restricted to whichever single carrier the facility owner happens to use, you can order connectivity directly from any of the carriers present, or from more than one at the same time.
The opposite is a carrier-locked, or single-carrier, facility, where only one network provider is present in the building. Anyone colocating there gets connectivity through that one carrier, whatever terms and pricing it offers, and however reliable its network happens to be, because there's no alternative already in the building to switch to.
Why the distinction matters
- Choice of provider and terms. With multiple carriers present, you can compare and negotiate separately with each one, rather than accepting whatever a single carrier offers because it's the only option physically available in that facility.
- Multi-homing for resilience. Carrier neutrality is what makes it practical to run diverse, multi-homed connectivity, taking uplinks from two or more independent carriers so that an outage, fibre cut, or routing problem affecting one carrier doesn't take your connectivity down entirely. See BGP and multihoming for colocation customers for how that's set up at the routing level once you have more than one carrier to work with.
- Not being exposed to one carrier's outage. In a carrier-locked facility, a problem on that single carrier's network is a problem for every customer in the building at once, with no independent alternative already present to fail over to.
- Negotiating leverage over time. Being able to bring in a different carrier, or credibly threaten to, gives you leverage on pricing and service quality that a single-carrier facility doesn't allow.
A question worth asking about any facility
Carrier neutrality is a genuinely relevant question to raise with any colocation provider you're evaluating, not something specific to one company's marketing. If uplink choice, multi-homing, or independence from a single network's outages matters to your setup, it's worth asking directly which carriers are present in the specific facility you'd be colocating in, and confirming that with the provider rather than assuming.