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HawkTalk 49 with Todd Cushing, President at 1623 Farnam

By Rhett Gill · 8/3/2020

1623 Farnam’s president Todd Cushing discusses the importance of carrier hotels and connectivity.


This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe here.


On HawkTalk 49 David chats with Todd Cushing about 1623 Farnam and what it means to be a carrier hotel in today’s data center industry. They discuss the importance of connectivity as it continues to be a higher priority to businesses today, and the growth of the Omaha data center as a whole.

If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below.

The value of the carrier hotel

Carrier hotels are places where connectivity lives, whether it’s regional, long haul, dark fiber, or another type, the carrier hotel is a location for it all to aggregate. Connectivity has become an important factor in the last 5-10 years as businesses have learned to create mature IT infrastructure that ultimately allows their business applications to work more efficiently.

1623 Farnam - a rich ecosystem of connectivity

1623 Farnam has become a crucial part of connectivity growth in the Midwest. The company is focused on a better network, lower latency, and faster connectivity. The growth of fiber in Omaha is a big reason why 1623 Farnam has put so much of their focus on connectivity. With the fiber infrastructure continuing to grow they see it as an opportunity to control fiber access in Omaha.

The Omaha data center market and why it’s growing

It’s not surprising the recent major growth has come from hyperscale users. From social media companies to major search engines, they’ve all established a presence in Omaha which is causing continual growth to the area.

We also talked about…

  • The transformation of 1623 Farnam, from a bank building to Omaha’s carrier hotel
  • Todd’s prediction of the creation of data in the coming years
  • The impact of COVID-19 on the data center industry

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our HawkTalk's and don’t miss out on our latest release of market data for the data center industry.

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