The study, produced by Dstream Group and published at Atlantic Convergence in Lisbon, was timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of DE-CIX's Iberian operations. Its central argument is that Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon function as an interconnected cluster capable of operating with the coherence of a single digital hub, given 7-8 millisecond latency between the three cities. DE-CIX positions this as placing Iberia alongside established single-city digital capitals such as Frankfurt, London, and New York.
The infrastructure figures cited by the study include 35 submarine cables landing at 20 coastal points, 12 major terrestrial backbone networks, 13 internet exchanges, and over 800 connected networks. Close to 9 gigawatts of new data centre capacity is planned for the coming years. Iberia's geographic position, connecting Europe with the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East, is also cited as a factor in the analysis.
DE-CIX Madrid, launched in 2016, is now the largest internet exchange on the peninsula. It connects more than 220 networks with over 11 terabits of connected capacity and peak traffic exceeding 1.5 terabits per second. DE-CIX has since added exchanges in Lisbon (2018) and Barcelona (2021).
Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX, said: "When DE-CIX first established DE-CIX Madrid 10 years ago, Iberia was not yet on the radar for many infrastructure operators. Today, vast AI-related investment volumes are flowing onto the peninsula, and DE-CIX is proud to offer our AI Exchange functionality to make this infrastructure easily available for networks and enterprises."
Serge Radovcic, co-author of the Dstream Group study, added: "The data clearly shows that Iberia has the potential to establish itself as the next European AI hub. In the age of AI, direct and secure network interconnection via Internet Exchanges has become an increasingly strategic necessity, not only for network operators, but also for data center operators and enterprises."
To stay across the latest in cloud, AI and enterprise tech analysis from Compare the Cloud, subscribe to our weekly newsletter at https://www.comparethecloud.net/newsletter
